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.
*Sniffle* I don’t know. I’m listening to Glenn Gould play Bach inventions for some Sunday morning brain bleach/hypertension relief. Had to stop thinking about it after reading
this.
If there’s a Bay area protest today I may go.
Well said. From my understanding, this ruling might have been the legally correct one, but that is a horrible horrible thing. Zimmerman murdered a kid. The fact that it is in any way legal is monstrous and an indictment of how racist and corrupt our country really is.
I am deeply saddened about the verdict. I don’t even know what to say about it beyond that.
I made this diptych last night, of Emmett Till & Trayvon Martin. Just very saddened & frustrated.:
http://jennydevildoll.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/emmett-till-trayvon-martin-19552013/
That’s a beautiful piece, thank you for sharing it.
From what I understand, Zimmerman’s defence was explicitly NOT based on Stand Your Ground, because they would have lost (I think due to the context of him disobeying the police and getting out of the car, but I could be wrong). The self-defence argument was based not on the whole scenario, but in the possibly-a-whole-minute when Zimmerman actually pulled the trigger.
So, the jury was instructed to look at ONLY that possibly-a-whole-minute, without context. The events leading up to the possibly-a-whole-minute were not allowed to colour their conclusion. It doesn’t matter that Zimmerman stalked Martin, that he profiled him, accosted him. It only mattered that, in that possibly-a-whole-minute, Zimmerman felt that Martin was going to kill him, and it was therefore acceptable to save his own life by killing him.
It’s more of the enraging nit-picking, vocabulary-trolling, rules-lawyering bullshit you see on contentious threads, writ large. Context matters, but it’s never allowed to benefit the marginalized party in court, or in adjudications, or in hearings.
#HoodiesUp in Vancouver BC TODAY! https://www.facebook.com/events/1398112617068594/ … See you in the streets! #NoJustice #NoPeace
Colorado’s stand your ground law only applies in your own home? Is that more Castle
Doctrine? And that set of laws I can agree with. Anything so shitty worded as to make shooting a hole in the wall to scare off a known violent person a serious crime, but stalking and killing someone minding their own damned business self-defense…provides legal cover for racism.
Our species appalls me sometimes.
As a white feminist living in a mostly black neighborhood, I take a bit of exception to Elmers assertion that my husband, my mother and I do not exist.
Oh, wait. I forgot that an MRAs assfacts totally trump any womans lived experience.
I reported Elmer’s poop to our dark master, but maybe the comment should stay since (a) a bunch of people have replied to it, and (b) it demonstrates SO perfectly that the MRM’s response to a young, black man being killed with impunity is “How can we use this against feminists?”
By the way, you’ll be glad to see the misters’ take on the verdict*:
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1i9s1e/any_thoughts_on_zimmermans_all_female_jury/
Summary: Women are terrible, but the verdict they reached was correct, even though they clearly reached it because of FEELS not STEM logic, hope “those people” don’t riot, also women are terrible.
Nope. Bullshit. No one will ever convince me this is the correct legal ruling. Sorry. Want to know my reason for that? The law is supposed to protect people. The law is supposed to punish people who commit murder. Regardless of what the laws say, this will always be a case of the legal system failing to put a murderer behind bars and therefore it is the wrong fucking legal ruling.
He’s a murderer. He should be in jail. The justice system should have put him there. That would be the correct legal ruling.
I’ve heard that, one, Zimmerman’s team didn’t invoke Stand Your Ground for some reason I didn’t follow and, two, it wouldn’t have mattered if they DID, because Stand Your Ground absolves you of the obligation to retreat before escalating and Zimmerman’s account is that retreat was impossible because he was being horribly beaten.
Now, the fact that Zimmerman’s account is so obviously fabricated bullshit, and that he was entirely responsible for the confrontation BECAUSE HE STALKED THE BOY HE THEN MURDERED, was not brought up. But as far as I can tell, Florida has LOTS of terrible self-defence laws that need repealing, not just SYG.
I’d QFT SittieKitty, but it’s right there.
I don’t get it, what don’t people understand? The police told him to back off. Right there, he disobeyed. Are people stupid?
jennydevildoll, that’s amazing, beautiful.
@Xen, the justification they use is that the person who told him to back off was a police dispatcher, not an actual LEO, so he was under no obligation to listen. Which is technically true, but at the same time so much bullshit. Just because his decision to follow Martin wasn’t *technically* illegal doesn’t mean it is justifiable in the least.
I’ve heard all the arguments but I also just don’t really understand how people can support Zimmerman. He’s a murderer and I fully agree he should be in prison. I hope my previous post didn’t come across as a defense of him.
This happens in a lot of cases where someone is killed. The dead person is not around to tell a story and unless the killer breaks down and confesses it’s very hard to prove any guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
So Zimmerman may not have committed legal murder, but he committed murder all the same.
That doesn’t make any sense. Murder is the malicious Unlawful taking of human life. Killing or homicide is not always illegal so you can say that Zimmermann committed homicide but it was not Murder or illegal as determined by the court and jury. The jury listened to all of the admissible evidence and you didn’t. There must be rules of evidence in court or everyone would just make up their own. If you asked 10 people what happened in this case you’d get 10 different versions of what they Think or project. There are Statutes that clearly define what a crime is. The same is true with rape. The Statute will define what it is and you just can’t make something up and call it rape.If we just allowed people to make up what that thought should be illegal no one would know what the law was or if they were violating the law. It would be chaos.
Sadly (horribly, sickeningly, rage-inducingly), Darth Conans is, in fact, correct. The justification to use deadly force even if you got yourself into the situation where it seems necessary to you* is precisely covered by the Florida law.
http://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2011/Chapter776/All
Zimmerman, as the “aggressor” under this provision, was entitled to use deadly force if he believed that he was in imminent danger of death, and the prosecution did not prove (perhaps could not have proved, without more witnesses) that he did not exhaust every “reasonable means to escape danger.” Whether or not he was responsible for getting himself into that dangerous situation, he was permitted under the law to kill in order to get out of it.
Let’s make no bones about it, Florida law explicitly allows you to start a fight and then shoot someone dead in “self defense.”
I do second Cloudiah’s point, though. If the demographics were reversed, and Zimmerman were black and he shot and killed a white kid, I don’t think the police would have let him go home that night and it would not have taken three weeks of outrage to get a prosecutor to even look at the case.
*please don’t take this as a statement in support of what he did. I think it was a travesty and the only thing worse is that it is precisely and explicitly allowable under Florida law. I think Florida just made it onto the list of states I never want to set foot in ever again.
Argenti-this has nothing to do with Stand Your Ground and even if Florida didn’t have this Statute it would still come down to whether or not it was self defence.
@ Futrelel- I didn’t see anything disturbing about that press conference. They were simply describing what happened and at the end made a good point about the power of the State with unlimited resources (my taxes) against an ordinary person who has to defend himself against that State. And their point about the DA not cooperating in the normal manner is correct. And let’s remember that a defendant can’t recover any money he spent on a defence in a criminal trial.
Suppose that you were arrested in a case of mistaken identity for bank robbery. Do you have the funds for bail and an expensive trial? What may happen is that the DA will get you to plead to a lessor crime especially if you couldn’t make bail and she was sweating you in jail for a few months. You simply cannot defend yourself against a powerful State with unlimited resources which means that we are going to have to limit what a DA can spend and make sure that even an indigent defendant has the same. Think of all of the things that a DA gets for free from cop investigations to lab test etc etc etc
Well, I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me it compounds the horror of such an unjust act to know that the framers of the law explicitly allowed for such behavior to be covered by it. Faced with the problem of clarifying when it is legally plausible to make a claim of self-defense, Florida lawmakers chose to empower people to act out their wild-west post-apocalyptic wet dreams.
If it’s any consolation, Florida will be underwater soon and then their stupid laws will not matter.
Zimmerman, as the “aggressor” under this provision, was entitled to use deadly force if he believed that he was in imminent danger of death……………
I don’t really like this “believed” that you were in danger. You would really have to prove it in some way. Many paranoid or sensitive people believe a lot of things that to a normal person would be ridiculous. I guess that Zimmermann argued that the cuts to his face and back of head where it was pounded into the pavement were an attempt to kill him or cause severe bodily injury at that moment.
Did Zimmermann perhaps incite the whole thing leading Martin to believe that some mugger was shadowing him? Perhaps. Perhaps he was a 17yo who thought he’d punch the guy for following him while a more rational adult would just try to run away. But the problem is that when he hit Zimmermann he was the aggressor, while following someone is not a crime and Zimmermann made no attempt to stop or interfere with him.
I was being ambiguous there, sorry. I meant to say that I was annoyed at people I know saying shit like “Well, hey, the courts did the right thing” as if that matters in the case of this tragedy.
I’m not touching Marie’s comments. Zimmerman murdered a kid. He should be in jail.