In a disgusting if not surprising development, George Zimmerman has been found not guilty of killing Trayvon Martin. For coverage, see here.
Discuss, post links, etc below.
EDIT: This is a troll-free thread. If you’re coming here to gloat over the verdict, to use the verdict as an excuse to trash women or feminism, or post racist garbage, don’t. If you want to argue that the verdict was just and/or we live in a post-racial society, go somewhere else. None of us are in the mood for that bullshit.
It is very heartening, when you put it that way.
Manboobz: Come for the mockery, stay for the hope in humanity. 😉
A stray kitty showed up at my house on the Sunday after the verdict, she’s enjoying the good life now and likes to sleep in the windowsill… But this verdict has been bothering me all week. Now I’m reading a lot of idiot racist stuff about it on my facebook feed with no way to comment, if I didn’t it wouldn’t matter, those people are so dense and ingrained in their way of thinking like MRAs. I want to kick & scream and upload it to youtube. Argh. Florida is dumb. The judge was dumb. The jury was dumb. The prosecutor was dumb. The defense was dumb. Zimmerman was dumb. It must be so upsetting for the parents. I was reading right-wing bile on The Daily Mail when I saw the verdict, and was shocked, angry, and sad, but reading Trayvon’s father’s twitter was the most heartbreaking, I cried. The audio from the phone calls prove everything, Rachel’s story checks out and it was not self-defense. I enjoy listening to Randi Rhodes, where would we be without her voice? The judge allowed obviously biased jurors and one of the defense witnesses sat & watched 2 weeks of testimony before his turn, which is against the law. Furthermore the prosecution was asleep at the wheel and didn’t even prepare their own witnesses, the prosecutor seemed more upset that he lost a case rather than at the loss of a child, police served as a witness for the CRIMINAL DEFENSE (since when has that ever happened?) and don’t you just love that awful racist moron juror with no critical thinking skills on Anderson Cooper was saw dollar signs and was mostly interested in writing a book to profit off a kid’s death? wtf.
Sandinafem: Black racist rioters? really.
And the jury ignored the evidence of Zimmerman’s clean jacket; Martin was covered in grass and mud. Zimmerman wasn’t. Zimmerman also claims to have done a damn near impossible thing (in the way he cleared his gun).
Certainly if he was on the ground, on his back, digging his gun out, there would be some evidence on his coat.
So, in all earnestness, go to Hell.
Just wanted to put this here – good message.
http://www.upworthy.com/a-perspective-on-george-zimmerman-that-every-person-should-hear?c=ufb1
I haven’t read all the posts here and I’m not sure if this has been mentioned, but did WP just jump the shark: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-racism-vs-reality/2013/07/15/4f419eb6-ed7a-11e2-a1f9-ea873b7e0424_story.html?hpid=z2? I know it’s an opinion piece, but what editor read this and thought, “sure, stark racism is how I want the paper represented.”
To Tracy, that’s a good link; she has some good points.
Galunadi: Barf. I cannot believe there are still people going around saying “But racial profiling works!”
I know I am late to the discussion here, but I have been busy re-obsessing over Skyrim lately and that get’s every spare moment. I remember there being something about a 911 call that clearly has Trayvon yelling for help in the background (made by a neighbor?)…what happened with that? Also what’s up with the cowardly news people? I only watched a few minutes of the new coverage, but I was too grossed out by the suplicating way they talked to the Zimmerman defenders. It makes me scream at the tv.
@Tracy: on the same idea
http://wearenottrayvonmartin.com/
Yellaine thanks, hadn’t seen that.
Dropping this here too: a cop’s take on the verdict.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/14/1223459/-A-Cop-s-take-on-the-Verdict
I don’t know the law in Florida, so I can’t say if the verdict was in the rule of law. However, I strongly feel that if I, or one of my white male 30 year old friends had been walking behind Martin there wouldn’t have been any fight. I don’t know who hit first, but if that is really all that matters we live in a scary world.
Is following someone for no good reason really not a crime? It seems like it would be
“I remember there being something about a 911 call that clearly has Trayvon yelling for help in the background…”
Clearly? Why yes, according to his mother and “of course she’d say that”. /channeling my father
Iirc Zimmerman’s mother said the same thing and thus it became she said, she said.
And “of course she’d say that” is a fallacy, though I forget which. Basically, it means that it isn’t definitive proof that what she said is true but is also not proof that the opposite is true. (duh)
Regarding these long lists of fallacies that are here and there on the internet… I think they might make argumentation seem trickier than it is. We don’t deal out long fallacy lists to our first semester students when they are to learn argumentation. They just need to know that an argument for a thesis is a good one if a) we have good reason to believe that it’s true, and b) it’s relevant.
I think these long fallacy lists usually revolve around various ways in which something can be irrelevant, so it’s really better to try to get a feel for relevance than to study these lists.
The fact that most mothers in Trayvon’s mother’s situation would say that her child tried to call 911, even if true, is clearly irrelevant as an argument for the thesis “Trayvon didn’t make that call”. It can be true that someone made a certain phone call even if zir mother had independent reasons for claiming that zie did.
Couldn’t that have done expert voice analysis to find out if the phone call was Martin or Zimmerman? Does that not work?
I thought I read that there was an expert voice analysis done and it said that the voice screaming for help was Trayvon Martin, but the judge ruled that the the analysis was not relevant and so it could not be entered as evidence.
If I remember correctly, the two women (both thought that it was clear that Zimmermann had been the aggressor) who were first to confront ZImmerman after he killed Trayvon also said that it had clearly been Trayvons voice. They also said that the police had apparently not been interested in this partitular testimony, so I believe it never made it to the trial either.
Clearly none of this is a result of racism… / sarcasm
Lurker — I was wondering about that myself. And yep, clearly not racism >.<
Dvärghundspossen — yeah, I only trot out Spot! That! Fallacy! when trolls are long last being told their point is either not a point at all, or completely irrelevant (or wrong in various fallacious ways)…they seem less inclined to pull "of course it's relevant cuz X Y Z" when faced with "no, really, it's a fallacy, STFU already". Non-trolls? It doesn't pass the sniff test, it doesn't pass the sniff test — smells like bullshit is enough for me. (Hence why I didn't bother looking up which fallacy that was)
Lurker, if that is true that is surprisingly bad. I was trying to work out if one wasn’t done because these things don’t work, there weren’t any voice samples to use, or because the investigation wasn’t done fully. The idea that one was done and not used didn’t cross my mind.
Just googled, here is the AP story: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/judge-no-audio-testimony-zimmerman-trial
From what I gather it wasn’t ruled “irrelevant” it was ruled “unreliable”. Apparently there were two voice analysts hired by the prosecution, one who concluded that it was not Zimmermann and one who concluded that the voice was Trayvon.
The voice analysts from the defense claimed that the sample was too short to determine anything / you can’t tell whose voice it is when it’s screaming. (Strange reasoning to me, cause in my experience voices don’t change drastically just cause they are louder)
Curiously enough the first voice analyst was able to identify several additional words, including Zimmermann saying “These fucking punks” instead of “These fucking n-words”. Somehow all the Zimmermann fans are happy to concede to this being the correct analysis…
I also think it’s kinda strange for the judge to rule that the method is still too “modern”, especially in light of the prosecution being able to show that this very method had been used in earlier trials.
How I wish I had not strayed from ‘the liz library’ page listing the dangers of pregnancy.
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/therapeutic-jurisprudence/custody-evaluator-testing/forensic-psychs-opine-stupidly-on-Zimmerman-case.html
Just… Wow. Time for more mindbleach, or maybe just a brick to my head.