Dia on 14/7/2013 at 01:51
Okay, I was willing to sit back and wait to see how our justice system handled this case, but now I'm thinking that come Sunday night I'll just go stock up on necessities and hunker down til after Zimmerman's verdict is made known. Not that I'm a scaredy cat, 'cuz I'm not. It's just that I've always believed it's better safe than sorry. After I read this article (see link) I decided prudence was called for; I mean, I really didn't think much about seeing certain people these past few weeks at the local WalMart or gas stations wearing t-shirts with Zimmerman's face as a target emblazoned on the front, or with sad Trayvon Martin face pictures and anti-Zimmerman slogans on them. And I currently live in Racine, WI. But this article hit too close to home. Literally. I have family who live in an outlying suburb of Zion, ffs. And Zion is a town whose majority populace is African American - at least in the town-proper. I figure that for every moron who Tweets shit like this, there are probably twice as many morons who won't bother to Tweet, but who'll just decide to go out and riot if Zimmerman is acquitted. And I really HATE letting idiots like that make me afraid to get out of my car at the gas station. I live in a multi-racial community and have been seeing a lot of signs and t-shirts that indicate there are quite a few neighbors who feel strongly about Zimmerman - and not in a very positive way. I'm just thinking back to the whole OJ Simpson fiasco and Rodney King incident; there were riots in the Zion community then, so it's not like it couldn't happen again.
Am I really turning into a pile of chickenshit as I get older?
P.S. Regarding the video of the old man at the end of this article: I was afraid he was gonna stroke out.
(
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/tensions-run-high-awaiting-zimmerman-verdict-article-1.1398008)
Renzatic on 14/7/2013 at 02:02
The Rodney King beating was a blatant act of corruption on the LAPDs part, and ended up being the small spark that ignited the already overfilled powder keg they'd been building underneath themselves over the last few years. Assuming Zimmerman is acquitted, I believe the worst we'll see is a ton of indignant people on the internet.
edit: Just got the update on my phone right as I finished typing out the paragraph above. Zimmerman is Not Guilty.
faetal on 14/7/2013 at 02:23
Oof. I'll look forward to hearing how he was acquitted. Seemed to me a pretty open and shut case of a guy killing someone for having the wrong skin colour. How someone can shoot a person armed with nothing but skittles and get off the hook is fucking crazy. Seriously, wtf Florida.
Dia on 14/7/2013 at 02:36
Say what dethy? That I'm scared of people running amok, rioting in the streets, and hurting innocent people who have nothing to do with the reason the rioters are angry? I don't think that it's just going to be African Americans doing the rioting; the signs I've seen weren't just on the lawns of African Americans. Guess I thought I made that clear when I said I live in a multi-racial community. It's just that the notoriety is being given to African American protestors right now, which is why I called attention to the video at the end of the article. Sorry if I offended anyone, but the prospect of anyone doing harm and damage to others over this trial scares the bejesus outta me. Sorry again, but rioting is rioting, and I've lived through it before when I cowered in my car at a gas station while my windshield was shattered by angry men with baseball bats and the hood of my car bashed in by perfect strangers; all because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and, it must be said, my skin color wasn't the same as theirs. I honestly, truly don't mean to sound racist. Just scared.
And while I'm typing this, there's a group forming at the intersection of my street and there's lots of angry shouting going on. I have no idea what race any of them are; just that they sound very angry. And here come the police.
P.S. I love you too, dethy. Wish you were here right now. I just heard several gunshots coming from three or four streets over. More sirens now. Hopefully this is just Saturday night drunken shenanigans. Hopefully.
I think it's going to be a long night in my neighborhood.
Renzatic on 14/7/2013 at 02:38
I don't know what to think about it. I thought he was guilty of Manslaughter myself. It's very obvious he racially profiled Martin, but I doubt he went after him with the intentions of killing him. He only did so when the situation escalated, and he felt his life was in danger. Which wouldn't exactly get him off the hook, because his actions landed him in a dangerous situation in the first place.
Thing is, he's legally licensed to carry a concealed weapon, and Florida's Stand Your Ground laws do allow him to defend himself with it in a worst case scenario. With that in mind, what it comes down to is who started the confrontation. Zimmerman might've followed Martin from a distance and made him suspicious, but if he didn't instigate initial contact, if Martin did "jump out of the bushes" as he was walking to his car and attack him, then Zimmerman was in the right legally to shoot Martin, if not morally.
Thing is, we don't know what happened that night. For all we know, Zimmerman could've ran up to Martin, called him all kinds of names and baited him into attacking, then used the situation as justification for self defense. Martin's dead, and can't offer his side of the story. All we have is Zimmerman's statement, the dispatcher call, and the (somewhat conflicting) eyewitness reports. There are holes in Zimmerman's story, but nothing that directly contradicts what he's claimed. Based on the evidence we've got, he's either Not Guilty, or he gets an acquittal due to lack of evidence.
The whole thing is a teetotal clusterfuck, the perfect nexus of a multipronged political shitstorm. No matter the outcome, you'd have tons of angry people out screaming for "true" justice.
demagogue on 14/7/2013 at 02:39
I just watched a little of this from the start, but my gut feeling wasn't very sympathetic to either party from the start (which is a much different issue from whether the outcome was just/unjust to either party BTW).
Zimmerman definitely came across as sleazy following around this kid in the first place, and I don't think anyone had much illusion race was a factor there, and IIRC one of the reasons he felt most threatened was from Trayvon reaching for his gun, which obviously wouldn't happen if you weren't carrying around a piece like you were some village-idiot vigilante! And on the other side, at least the jury seemed to be persuaded that the facts were Trayvon just cracked and started whaling on the guy, which, yeah, would have been disproportional (if we believe the extent of it), although so was getting shot for it.
Of course the real issue with the case was that the stand-your-ground law seemed to allow for Zimmerman to do what he did; it's always been a controversial law, and it's exactly for a reason like this case (even aside from the race angle), where it allows things to escalate in just the way you don't want to encourage, which is exactly what the outcome of this case just did.
I mean, I think it's right that a case upholds the actual law on the books, and the stand-your-ground rule is what's on the books, since it's the legislature's job to tease apart how they want these situations worked out. So I can believe the case was resolved legally & properly (again, I didn't follow it well enough though to know the particulars, so might change my mind on that)... But I still recognize it was a clusterfuck case all around and I hope the legislatures take notes from it to figure out a better approach for dealing with these kinds of cases.
Edit:
Quote Posted by Renzatic
Based on the evidence we've got, he's either Not Guilty, or he gets an acquittal due to lack of evidence.
Yeah, this is another thing central to our legal system that's sometimes a tough pill to swallow, when there's not enough evidence but you still have an idea something hinky is going on. It's just the nature of our system to say the default position is presumption of innocence. That by itself could have been doing the heavy lifting for the outcome more than anything else, and is of course why the government always wants to ramp up its surveillance powers.
Renzatic on 14/7/2013 at 03:00
Quote Posted by demagogue
Yeah, this is another thing central to our legal system that's sometimes a tough pill to swallow, when there's not enough evidence but you still have an idea something hinky is going on. It's just the nature of our system to say the default position is presumption of innocence. That by itself could have been doing the heavy lifting for the outcome more than anything else, and is of course why the government always wants to ramp up its surveillance powers.
Right. The only thing we know for a fact is that two people handled a tense situation in the worst possible way. Zimmerman should have never left his car, and Martin shouldn't have attacked Zimmerman out of anger (which we have to assume happened because we don't have evidence to the contrary). Since the entire case of murder vs. self defense hinges on who accosted who first, a fact that exists in a deadzone where only one of the two persons involved is alive to tell the tale, there's no way to prove murder beyond a reasonable doubt. He was destined to walk from day one.
We don't have to like every outcome of every case, but the system works this way for a very good reason.
Muzman on 14/7/2013 at 03:13
Most of all this hinges on the way the case was approached in the first place. It was not treated as a potential crime scene or death investigation right away because they assessed it wasn't needed right away. From memory the city had tried and lost a lot of SYG cases lately and had basically given up dealing with them a it opened them to law suit too easily. So Zimm walks free barely any time after wards. He's not interrogated or tested for intoxicants. The scene is not properly kept as it would be in a murder.
The situation is basically an embarassment to the entire concept of law and order, justice, good governance, you name it.
Renzatic on 14/7/2013 at 03:19
Actually, Zimmerman was interrogated. I don't think it was as indepth as it'd be were he a suspect in a murder charge, but he did go through a bit of a grilling.
