Judge's comments to Zimmerman--any lawyers care to comment?

[flyingpylon]

To get through to him (and people who think like him), it would probably be necessary to:

1. Teach them to assume that every single thing the media tells them is false, and to just enjoy that rare case where a report is actually accurate.

2. Make them understand that the media's agenda is not to inform, but rather to agitate, titillate and obfuscate.  It's hard to fully internalize this concept when you are exposed to such skilled liars when you tune into news programming.

3. Make them understand that nothing the government tells them should be taken at face value.  Many of these people already feel this way about the police, but they need to expand it to cover all politicians (including prosecutors) as well.

My personal philosophy is "Distrust, but verify". Some people think that makes me overly cynical (and sometimes they're probably right), but it has served me pretty well. Many people get blinded by all sorts of different things, and use critical thinking only as a last resort (if ever). I'm not sure how you change that.

[dualstow]

Here's an article floating around as a response to the question, "what if Martin's and Zimmerman's race were the opposite?"

http://rochester.ynn.com/content/top_st ... ot-guilty/

Cervini's family members say justice wasn't served. They say Christopher was murdered in cold blood, that he'd never been in trouble and Scott acted as judge, jury and executioner.
"The message is that we can all go out and get guns and feel anybody that we feel is threatening us and lie about the fact,”? said Jim Cervini, Christopher’s father. “My son never threatened anybody. He was a gentle child, his nature was gentle, he was a good person and he was never, ever arrested for anything, and has never been in trouble. He was 16 years and four months old, and he was slaughtered."

Scott says he acted in self defense when he confronted Cervini and two others saying they were stealing from neighbors cars. He told them he had a gun and ordered them to freeze and wait for police.

[Pointedstick]

Very interesting, especially that he was charged immediately. I'd guess that being black had something to do with that. Then again, he hadn't been injured and he truly was playing "wannabe cop" by using his gun to detain people he suspected of committing a crime. He pulled out that gun far earlier than Zimmerman did and for a less legally permissible reason, especially in New York state.

Still, it proves an important point: if you don't want to get shot, try to avoid attacking strangers.

[cnh]

In the future, five different people will capture the entire scuffle on Google Glass.

...One of them being the shooter and the other being the shootee.

Reminds me of a scene in "Minority Report."  And in that imaginary case, the resulting images were in fact a huge manipulation of the facts.  Given the advance of technology, I suspect even Google Glass "imaging" will be unreliable.  We seem to be getting to the point at which you can't really believe it unless you see it with your own eyes in real time.

[dualstow]

Still, it proves an important point: if you don't want to get shot, try to avoid attacking strangers.

Yep, especially strangers with guns.

There was another case a few years ago in which a member of one group of friends brushed against the shoulder of another group of friends at 3am ("nothing good happens after midnight"). Words were exchanged, and the brushees simply would not let the brushers go, following them down the street. A member of the brushee party punched a brusher in the face. Finally, a brusher pulled a gun and pointed it at the main threat. He fended the guy off as best he could be kicking up and outward, but when the other guy charged him, he shot him five times. This was all caught on street cameras.

Shooter was a young, Asian American law student with no criminal record. The guy who got shot was some kind of lacrosse hero and, as far as I know, also had no criminal record. White guy. He lived, but probably needs to relieve himself in a bag for the rest of his life. Of course his family tried to downplay his charging at the man with the gun and to go with the strategy of Whoever is shot must be innocent / whoever used a gun must be guilty, but thankfully the shooter was acquitted.

@ cnh: I always wonder about that: the possibility of photoshopping in the future without leaving detectable artifacts.

[Pointedstick]

I remember that episode, Dualstow. Great points. It seems like there's this expectation from some quarters of society that street aggression and "minor" violence is just no big deal and people who engage in it shouldn't have to worry about being shot. This is just a very strange attitude to me.

It's something that came out in my wife and my conversations about this; despite her agreeing with me that Zimmerman acted in self-defense, a major point of disagreement has concerned how intelligently we can expect teenagers to act. She grew up around a rougher, less educated crowd than I did, and so to her the idea that you can expect a 17-year old boy to behave in a semi-rational manner in a stressful situation is just far-fetched beyond belief.

I think a version of this is where a lot of people are coming from: the idea that "yeah, Martin was stupid and made mistakes, but, can't we let stupid teenagers be stupid teenagers without worrying about them winding up shot?"

It sounds cold and cruel, but maybe if more stupid teenagers get shot for victimizing innocent people, they'll start to think for a second before doing something irredeemably stupid. Maybe we should be teaching our stupid teenage boys to fight against their stupidity rather than embrace it and indulge it.

A 17 year-old boy may still have a mind more like a child's, but he has the body of a man, and that body can easily kill with its bare hands and feet. Absolving the owners of these dangerous bodies of the responsibility to avoid using them selfishly and violently is something that I just don't think anything good can come of.

[moda0306]

For the concealed carry guys on the board, what is the standard for shooting someone you think is stalking you to possibly rape or assault you if you have a gun?

Or is that more of a state-by-state self-defense law issue?


Because isn't the idea of this "stand your ground" principal that you don't have to flea... that you have the right to "stand your ground" and defend yourself where you stand if you feel threatened?

Racism and homophobia aside, Trayvon's comments indicate that he likely felt threatened in some way.

[Pointedstick]

For the concealed carry guys on the board, what is the standard for shooting someone you think is stalking you to possibly rape or assault you if you have a gun?

Or is that more of a state-by-state self-defense law issue?

That will get you imprisoned in every state of the USA.

You can ONLY shoot when you reasonably feel that your life or health is imminently threatened. This requires using the ability-opportunity-jeopardy test:

Ability - does this parson have the ability to harm me? This requires a disparity of force, a weapon, proficiency in fighting, etc.
Opportunity - Is this person in a position to harm me if they wanted to? This depends on the means; a gun gives the wielder opportunity from far away, for example.
Jeopardy - is this person actively harming me or obviously preparing to do so immediately?

In your example of someone stalking you who you fear might murder or rape you, none apply. You don't know if they have the capability to hurt or kill you, their distance means that they don't have the opportunity to do it, and they aren't actually putting you in any jeopardy.

You always need all three. For example, if someone has a big-ass knife and is screaming that he's going to kill you, but he's on the other side of a busy intersection, he has ability and jeopardy, but not opportunity. In this example, you would want to get the hell out of there, and only shoot if he gained opportunity by crossing the street and coming toward you.

[moda0306]

It would appear that the first two apply.  Distance obviously was varied during the incident and Zimmerman had a gun.

The third is where Martin would have lost it, unless, of course, Zimmerman started to get physical with him first, which wouldn't necessarily leave marks.

[Pointedstick]

It would appear that the first two apply.  Distance obviously was varied during the incident and Zimmerman had a gun.

The third is where Martin would have lost it, unless, of course, Zimmerman started to get physical with him first, which wouldn't necessarily leave marks.

Until the fight started, Martin didn't know Zimmerman had a gun, which is all that matters. So in his mind, no ability has yet been established.

The only time when Martin would have all three on Zimmerman would be:

Ability: Zimmerman is observed to have a gun
Opportunity: Zimmerman's arms are free to use his gun
Jeopardy: Zimmerman started the fight, so clearly he's in an agressive mood and could shoot at any moment.

Again, this is the only version of the events that I can imagine that would give Martin the legal right to batter Zimmerman in the way he did. And it requires Zimmerman starting the fight. If Martin starts the fight, then Zimmerman has every legal and moral right to defend himself, especially given how effectively Martin was battering him.

So we're back to hunting for evidence that Zimmerman made it physical first. Without that, Martin's AOJ triangle collapses.

[Pointedstick]

In an interview with the Huffington Post today, Rachel Jeantel is now saying that she thinks Martin threw the first punch, but that this was justified because Zimmerman was "a wannabe cop, saying, I got you" and telling Martin to come with him, despite the fact that no such vocalization was heard on Martin's cell phone recording.

Jeantel also says that Zimmerman should have taken the "ass whooping" as his punishment for being a wannabe cop. Not for hitting Martin, mind you. Not for starting a fight with him, because she doesn't think Zimmerman did those things! Rather, for being a "wannabe cop", this this "ass whooping" was a perfectly normal and justified thing to do that wasn't really putting Zimmerman in any danger.

She seems to believe that Martin was incapable of killing Zimmerman and strongly implies that giving him some "whoopass" was just a way of letting Zimmerman know he was dissatisfied with his behavior. According to her, that's apparently just how teenagers behave.

I'm not making this up. Watch the interview for yourself and Listen to Jeantel say these things in her own words. Most of the relevant stuff starts at around the 14 minute mark.

http://live.huffingtonpost.com/r/segmen ... 08d90000f5

[Pointedstick]

To summarize:

Rachel Jeantel doesn't think that Trayvon Martin felt threatened or scared of Zimmerman. She thinks he felt mad at Zimmerman for following him and being a "creepy ass cracker" (a wannabe cop) and expressed this anger by beating Zimmerman up, and in no way should this have been interpreted as a lethal attack that required the use of force in defense. Rather, it was justified because when people get mad, they just beat each other up and that's normal! So Zimmerman should just have let himself get beaten up and moved on with his life, being more careful to avoid being a "creepy ass cracker" and making other people mad.

In other words, this is the fairly standard "he looked at me funny" justification for starting a totally unnecessary attack.

Add to this Jeantel's previous comments that she warned Martin that Zimmerman might be a gay rapist and a very ugly yet consistent picture starts to emerge. In her and Martin's minds, Zimmerman was a wannabe cop who might also be a gay rapist. If being creepy and making you mad is reason enough to beat someone up, then a wannabe cop and potential gay rapist is certainly someone who deserves to get his ass beat, right?

Again, these are Jeantel's own words here. I'm not making anything up.

Sigh.

[notsheigetz]

She seems to believe that Martin was incapable of killing Zimmerman and strongly implies that giving him some "whoopass" was just a way of letting Zimmerman know he was dissatisfied with his behavior. According to her, that's apparently just how teenagers behave.

At least she's laying out a line of reasoning I can make some sense out of in sharp contrast to the rest of the brothers and sisters I'm hearing in the media. I just saw a clip of Al Sharpton at the NAACP convention saying it's time for blacks to start marching in the streets again. For what reason and what purpose I really couldn't tell - just to let whites know how pissed off they are, I guess.

[MediumTex]

Again, these are Jeantel's own words here. I'm not making anything up.

Where is the outrage that Angela Corey and her band of unethical retarded cheetahs ruined Zimmerman's life in order to avenge the death of a racist homophobic burglar dopehead who happened to pick the wrong guy to give what looks sort of like a "sport beating."

The alternate reality scenario below is provided for instructional, comparative and stimulative purposes.

I want you to imagine the following situation: It's Mississippi in 1955.  There is a local 17 year old white kid named Trey (his actual name was Jefferson Davis Martin III, but everyone just called him "Trey").  Trey didn't work.  He sat around and drank on most days.  He had been caught stealing from his neighbors.  He had been kicked out of school a few times for fighting, vandalizing property and bringing liquor to school.  Most people in the community felt that Trey was just a typical piece of white trash (which in rural Mississippi in the 50s wasn't really that unusual).

One evening, Trey was visiting his cousin Bob's house in a neighboring community (Bob's full name was Robert E. Lee Farrell, Jr.).  While Trey was at Bob's he decided to walk down to the bait shop about a mile from Bob's house to pick up a bottle of RC cola and a bag of peanuts. 

As Trey was walking back to Bob's from the bait shop, he decided to take a shortcut through a pasture that was owned by the county, but which local farmers used to let their cattle graze.  Unknown to Trey, there was a local black farmer named George Washington Mann who had several head of cattle grazing in the field, and there had been several incidents in recent months where teenagers from neighboring communities had engaged in "cow tipping", which had recently escalated as one of the teenagers had done what was being referred to as a "barn invasion", where he broke into a barn and tipped over every cow in there, and on his way out stole a saddle and two bags of feed. 

(It's worth noting that Mr. Mann was actually not completely black.  One of his grandfathers married a Cherokee indian woman that he met out west in 1875 while working as a cook on a wagon train and their daughter (Mr. Mann's mother) was half-Cherokee, which made Mr. Mann 25% Cherokee, though his features made him look like a typical black male.  Mr. Mann always fancied himself as having a bit of Cherokee warrior blood in him, and some of his friends had joked with him over the years that he was a "wanna-be Cherokee warrior", which Mr. Mann actually took as a bit of a compliment.)

Mr. Mann was a bit overweight, and when he was in grade school one of his teachers told him that when he grew up he better hope that he would turn into a slimmer man than the pudgy kid that he was at the time.  Although Mr. Mann never did turn into that slimmer man (he remained pudgy throughout his life), the nickname "Slimmerman" stuck, and thus Mr. Mann was know to most of his friends as "Slimmerman."

In response to the barn invasion and cow tipping incidents, Slimmerman's neighbors asked him to keep a close eye on the pasture at night (he had often talked of having superior night vision due to his Cherokee blood).  His neighbors figured that Slimmerman would be willing to take on this unpaid and mostly thankless task if they flattered him that only someone like him with superior night vision would be able to perform the "pasture watch" duties in a satisfactory manner.

Although race relations in Slimmerman's community were not great, Slimmerman got along with most of the white people in the community reasonably well and he was viewed as a hardworking farmer and some of the white people in the community considered him a friend.

So on this night as Trey was taking the shortcut through the pasture, Slimmerman was sitting in an observation position he had built midway up a windmill that sat in the corner of the pasture.  Slimmerman was carrying a six shooter that he normally carried when working around his farm and tending his cows (he had joked with his friends that he liked to have his six shooter with him, just in case he ran into some cattle rustlers). 

Although Trey was not planning to do any cow tipping that evening, he had certainly tipped his share of cows, and in fact was once suspended from school after being caught with "cow tipping tools" in his locker.

As Trey made his way across the pasture, Slimmerman noticed him and wondered what he was doing.  He also noticed that the person walking across the field wasn't anyone he recognized from the local community.  He decided to get down from the windmill and get a closer look.  As he was walking toward the stranger, he thought to himself "These fucking cow tippers.  They always get away."

As Slimmerman approached Trey to get a better look at him, Trey saw him approaching as well.  Trey thought to himself "What's that creepy-ass nigger doing approaching me?"

As the two got closer to each other, Slimmerman called out "Hey, what are you doing here in this field?"  Trey responded to this by saying "You got a problem with me?"

The two of them proceeded to have a brief exchange of words, with Slimmerman's suspicion growing that he had identified a cow tipper and Trey's anger growing that a black man was calling him out and making him feel a bit intimidated.

Suddenly, Trey took off running into the darkness.  Slimmerman walked in the direction that Trey had run, but after he lost sight of him he started walking back to the windmill.  As he was walking back, however, he saw Trey suddenly emerge from between two cows and move aggressively toward him.  Before Slimmerman entirely comprehended the change in Trey's demeanor, Trey had hit him very hard in the face and Slimmerman felt his nasal passages fill with blood as his eyes teared up and he felt himself crumble to the ground.  Slimmerman hadn't expected the blow and was still trying to comprehend what was happening to him as he got up and started staggering back to the windmill. 

Slimmerman had no desire to engage in a violent confrontation with a white person, whether justified or not, because he knew that any time a black man and white man got into a fight, it was always the black man that seemed to come out the loser, one way or another.  He was thinking this as he was moving in the direction of the windmill and trying to clear his vision from the flood of tears that the punch to his nose had generated.  Suddenly he felt the person who hit him collide with him from behind in a tackling motion, wrapping him up and taking him to the ground again.  It was at this moment that Slimmerman noticed that the attacker, while skinny, had long arms and was actually quite tall and seemed athletic as well.  Slimmerman wished at that moment that he was in better shape, because he already felt exhausted from what had transpired thus far, and the attacker's lightning reflexes scared Slimmerman a little.  He couldn't believe how fast and out of nowhere that punch had been.

As the two rolled around on the ground, wrestling for position, Trey trying to get in clean shots on Slimmerman, and Slimmerman trying to wiggle free and deflect Trey's punches as much as he could, the two wound up near a pile of rocks that the county had put down to prevent erosion.  When Trey finally had Slimmerman pinned down securely, his adrenaline was fueling what felt almost like a blind rage, and he started methodically pounding Slimmerman's head into the rock pile. Trey had a little trouble getting a good grip on Slimmerman's head and Slimmerman was resisting the pounding motion as much as he could, but Trey finally found the sweet spot by gripping the sides of Slimmerman's head and resumed the motion of pounding Slimmerman's head into the rock pile.  Trey felt a surge of power as he continued pounding the other man's head into the rock pile. 

When Slimmerman felt the attacker pin him securely and begin to use the leverage of his body to pound his head on the rocks, Slimmerman's terror reached a frantic level and Slimmerman felt himself crying for help, almost squealing for help.  Between the dazed feeling he already had from the punch to his nose and the concussive crack he felt each time his head hit the rocks, Slimmerman felt his level of consciousness begin to deteriorate.  Suddenly, he had the feeling that he was likely to only have a few more seconds of consciousness before he blacked out.  As these thoughts crossed his mind, the horrifying image of Emmett Till's mutilated face flashed across Slimmerman's mind as well and he momentarily felt an almost bottomless sense of dread that this was the night he was going to die.  Almost in exact synch with his thoughts, he looked up at the attacker and the attacker looked directly at him and hissed "You're gonna die tonight."  (Slimmerman later realized that his thoughts of death probably came right after the attacker spoke to him, but it felt simultaneous at the time).

As Slimmerman was feeling the sense of impending death, he made one more desperate adrenaline-fueled push to free himself from his attacker, and this time it did seem to loosen the attacker's secure hold on him.  As he wiggled around, he felt his clothes being pushed around as well and he suddenly became aware of the six shooter stuffed into the waistband of his pants.  He didn't know why he hadn't thought about his gun so far in the altercation, but he would later realize that only about two minutes had passed since he had been hit in the nose, it just FELT like a long time, so it wasn't that surprising that he hadn't thought about his gun, given how quickly the attack had progressed.

At almost the same moment that Slimmerman became aware of the six shooter, Trey looked down at the man beneath him with the bloody face and felt a lump in the man's clothing that soon revealed a six shooter in the man's waistband.  Trey suddenly had a feeling of intense curiosity about what it would feel like to shoot another person, especially a black man.  He went for the man's gun at what seemed like the same moment that the man went for the gun as well.

As Trey frantically moved his hand around the man's waistband in the darkness, he briefly felt what he thought was the grip of the gun and the other man's hand and then he heard a loud BANG! and felt his whole body seem to just sort of soften and then felt a distant pain in his chest.  Trey looked into the man's eyes below him and heard himself say "You got me" before rolling off and feeling a sleepy sense of darkness overtake him and then he died.

When Slimmerman heard the shot he initially worried that he might have shot himself with his own gun, and then he imagined how much worse the beating was going to become if he had shot at his attacker and missed, but all of the sudden he felt his attacker's grip ease up quickly and the attacker seemed to go limp as Slimmerman frantically pushed him away. 

When the local sheriff got to the crime scene he realized that Trey had probably been the aggressor and that what Slimmerman had done was probably self-defense.  The sheriff still performed a very thorough investigation, though, because he knew that if no charges were filed against Slimmerman it would trigger an intense backlash.  As the sheriff's investigation proceeded, he called the district attorney (who was his friend), and told him that the investigation was leaning toward a finding of self-defense and wanted to get his thoughts.  The DA told him that he was getting intense pressure from many places to charge Slimmerman with murder, but that if it turned out to be a case of self-defense he had an ethical obligation not to bring any charges if he knew that the charges were not supported by what actually occurred.  The sheriff was happy to hear this and upon the completion of his investigation he concluded that Slimmerman was, in fact, acting in self-defense when he shot Trey.

When the sheriff and the DA announced that they would not be bringing any charges against Slimmerman because it had been found that he was acting in self defense when he shot Trey, the public went wild.  Somehow, a picture of Trey when he was 12 years old wearing a confederate soldier Halloween costume was released and published in the papers and it was reported that this picture was taken the day before Slimmerman shot him, and it was also being reported that Slimmerman had shot Trey in the back, "execution-style."

The papers ran daily coverage of the story, and sensing the public's position on the story, began molding the narrative around this perception.  Slimmerman began being ridiculed often for being a "wanna-be warrior" and for being a "cow tipper vigilante."  People began saying that Slimmerman's story was "shady", and one newspaper began calling Slimmerman "Slim Shady", and ran a particularly vicious hit piece entitled "The Real Slim Shady", which suggested that Slimmerman may have been a homosexual child molester.

Leading white racist leaders from around the country began converging on Slimmerman's community.  Strom Thurmond led a rally demanding that Slimmerman be charged with murder.  The KKK staged rallies around the community demanding that Slimmerman be put in prison, and that if he didn't he would be killed to atone for the brutal murder of who was now being referred to as "Little Innocent Trey Martin."  Later on, it turned out that some of these KKK rallies had been funded, in part, by a section of Eisenhower's Justice Department whose mission statement included "the blind pursuit of justice."

The Mississippi state attorney's office was led by a career political hack named Cruella Dehick, whose ambitions included to be the first female governor of Mississippi.  She saw in the Slimmerman case a chance to realize her ambitions, and as the case against Slimmerman moved forward she found to her embarrassment that any time anyone said "Slimmerman" and "prison" in the same sentence it made her nipples hard. 

Although the local sheriff and DA were outraged when they heard that Dehick was attempting to bring a murder case against Slimmerman, when they heard that Dehick was going to use a technical legal maneuver to bypass a grand jury, they went ballistic, but Dehick was not troubled by their opposition--she had a Governor's office to think about.

When the trial started, the public hatred of Slimmerman reached a fever pitch.  His whole family had to go into hiding.  All of his cows were killed in vicious tipping incidents in which the cows had their heads beaten on rocks after they were tipped over.  The fact that the jury was all-black just convinced the protesters more that Slimmerman might actually get away with the brutal murder of "Little Innocent Trey Martin."  Some media outlets were now reporting that Trey Martin was actually not 12 years old, but actually 10 years old, and that he had lied about his age to get into a KKK "leaders of the future" program that provided, among other things, assistance to orphan grandchildren of Civil War veterans.

On the day that the verdict was delivered, it was not guilty of all charges.  The public went insane.  Cruella Dehick held a press conference immediately after the verdict in which she made the following statement:

May I have your attention please?
May I have your attention please?
Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?
I repeat, will the real Slim Shady please stand up?

We're gonna have a problem here.

If we don't do something about this, every single black man in Mississippi will be a Slim Shady lurking
He could be working at Dairy Queen, spitting on your onion rings
Or in the parking lot, circling
Screaming "I don't give a fuck!"
With his windows down and his system up
So, will the real Slim Shady please stand up?
And as the police approach put each hand up?
And admit that you're outta your mind and outta control
And one more time, loud as you can, how does it go?

[Reporters in the room join with with Ms. Dehick as she angrily shouts]

Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?
I repeat, will the real Slim Shady please stand up?

Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?
I repeat, will the real Slim Shady please stand up?

Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?
I repeat, will the real Slim Shady please stand up?

[Reporters stop shouting and Ms. Dehick now speaks in a low voice.]

And when he does, I want everyone to know that Cruella Dehick will be there to protect the good people of Mississippi from that depraved murderer who has taken our precious little eight year old Trey Martin from us.

As little innocent Trey Martin looks down at us from his perch in Heaven near our heavenly father, he calls to us in his sweet little voice "Is there no justice in that cold world?"

[Her voice now takes on the tone of confident command.]

Now this looks like a job for me
So everybody just follow me
Cause we need a little controversy
Cause Mississippi would feel so empty without demagogues like me
I'm a visionary, vision is scary
I could start a revolution that the people would carry
So just let me revel and bask
In the fact that I got everyone kissing my ass

Long live sweet little innocent murdered four year old Trey Martin!

Avenge his death, get the murderer, fire the torches, burn it all down!!!

[The reporters all run out of the room screaming like crazy monkeys and the same thing happens all over the state of Missisippi as Cruella Dehick stands in the empty room thinking about the Governor's mansion.]

[Pointedstick]

Bravo, MT. Bravo.

[Pointedstick]

This horse has died and already been repeatedly beaten, but I just can't help myself. This article just makes me want to beat my self in the neck with a cactus.

One of the lawyers for Trayvon Martin's family said that the prosecution should have focused more on race.

The "biggest mistake was to ignore race," Natalie Jackson told ThinkProgress.

She argued that the defense used certain racial biases to their advantage, attempting to paint a picture of Trayvon Martin as a thug who used drugs and got in trouble at school.

Yeah, it was just racism and prejudice. Not, you know, because Martin was a thug who used drugs and got in trouble at school:

"Trayvon was not a burglar, he was not doing anything wrong," Sabrina Fulton told "CBS This Morning." "He simply went to the store and was headed back home. And for somebody to look at him and perceive that he was a burglar, that was the problem that initiated everything."

Not, you know, because he was a burglar:

[MediumTex]

For anyone who wants to know a little more about Angela Corey, the actress who will be playing Cruella Dehick in the movie adaptation of the book "The Cow Tipper Killer", here is some good stuff:

In a press conference after George Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder in the death of Trayvon Martin, prosecutor Angela Corey said the case has “never been about race or the right to bear arms.”?

I guess the rest of the media wasn't listening to that part.

Wearing pearls and a dress that seemed more appropriate for a cocktail party, Corey had plastered on her face what the Boston Herald’s Peter Geizinis called the “weird smile of an event planner”? as she said she was “so proud”? of her office for “being part of the historical aspect of this case and show that the American justice system can only be done in a court of law.”?

In many ways, it was her debut on the national stage, and she just wanted to look her best.

So how did she get there? Corey, 58, was chosen by Florida Gov. Rick Scott in March 2012 as special prosecutor to investigate whether charges should be brought against Zimmerman in the shooting death of 17-year-old Martin after police had decided not to charge the 29-year-old self-appointed neighborhood-watch volunteer. On February 26, 2012, Zimmerman shot and killed the teenager after deciding he was a threat and later claimed he had acted in self-defense under Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. After a national outcry, Scott appointed Corey to investigate.

If someone didn't know anything about the case, they might get the wrong idea from the language above, especially considering that:

- Zimmerman "decided" that Martin was a threat only after his nose had been broken by a Martin punch and Martin had decided to pin him down and beat his skull against a concrete sidewalk;

- The "later claim" that Zimmerman had acted in self-defense came minutes after the shooting when the police first arrived; and

- Zimmerman never claimed that his self-defense was justified under Florida's stand your ground law; only the media did that.

Until Zimmerman’s trial, she was arguably most famous for the Cristian Fernandez case. Fernandez was 12 years old when he was charged with first-degree murder as an adult in March 2011 in the beating death of his 2-year-old brother, David Galarraga, facing a possible life sentence. The youngest person to ever get that charge as an adult, Fernandez eventually pleaded guilty to manslaughter in February 2013 and received juvenile sanctions.

I'm trying to imagine placing a 12 year old in an adult prison population after telling him that he will be there for the rest of his life with no possibility of parole.  When he turned 37 he would have served 25 years, and would have nothing to look forward to except another 30-40 years in prison until he finally died.  Does that sound like justice for something that happened when he was 12 years old?

The charges against the 12-year-old attracted many critics, especially as Fernandez said he didn’t intentionally kill his brother and a judge ruled that he didn’t understand his Miranda rights when he confessed.

But Corey staunchly defended her decision to prosecute the charges in the Fernandez case, insisting that the “brutal infliction”? of injuries on David justified the first-degree murder charge and that the beating was “not an accident.”?

Life without parole for a 12 year old. 

In a 2010 case, Corey’s office charged Marissa Alexander, 31, with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after Alexander fired a shot—which she said was a warning shot—at her estranged husband, who had a history of domestic abuse. No one was injured in the incident, and Alexander chose to take the case to trial under the state’s Stand Your Ground law, the same law Zimmerman invoked, rather than take a plea deal that Corey said would have resulted in a three-year prison sentence. Alexander insisted at trial that she felt her life was in danger and that if she had not fired the warning shot she “would not be here.”?

Alexander, who is African-American, was found guilty on three counts and sentenced to 20 years in prison, a mandatory minimum sentence the judge said he had little control over. Corey was confronted by U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown after the sentencing, with Brown saying Corey had overcharged Alexander. Corey, however, insisted the charges were fair.

“When she [Alexander] discharges a firearm in the direction of a human being, the Legislature says it’s dangerous,”? Corey told Brown. “And one of the reasons is because the bullet went through the wall where one of the children was standing. It happened to deflect up into the ceiling, but if it had deflected down, it could have hit one of the children.”?

20 years in prison for discharging a firearm in the direction of an individual who had beaten you up in the past and who was behaving in a threatening manner.  The firearm was discharged with no intent to hurt anyone, and no one was actually hurt.

20 years.

As for Zimmerman, some said his case might have gone the other way had he been charged with manslaughter, but Corey insisted on the second-degree murder charges. Corey said in a press conference after Zimmerman’s trial that the state had charged him with second-degree murder because the crime “fit the bill of second-degree murder.”?

“We charged what we believed we could prove,”? Corey said.

The relevant Florida statute provides that the third element of second degree murder is:

"There was an unlawful killing of the victim by an act imminently dangerous to another and demonstrating a depraved mind without regard for human life."

Did she really think that the state could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman "demonstrated a depraved mind without regard for human life" because when a guy jumped on top of him, pinned him down, and started pounding his head against the sidewalk he shot him?

Really?

Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz criticized her decision to charge Zimmerman with second-degree murder, saying she had acted unethically by omitting the evidence of Zimmerman’s injuries during the incident with Martin in the probable-cause affidavit. According to Dershowitz, Corey called Harvard Law School and threatened to sue to the school for libel for his comments.

Dershowitz is right on the money with this one.  Corey did leave out relevant information in the probably cause affidavit and I don't know why more people aren't talking about this because it would have saved the state of Florida a lot of money (and grief) if Corey hadn't misrepresented the nature of the state's case from the very beginning.

Link to story.

***

Anyway, so that's a bit about Angela Corey.  I think that she will do an outstanding job in the role of Cruella Dehick.

[Mdraf]

I've been following this thread with no comments as I agree with most of the posted ones.  My expectation of what will happen is this: Zimmermann will sue NBC. NBC will settle for a considerable sum. Most of it will go to pay off the attorneys who will then launch a civil rights suit on behalf of Z.

Comments?

[Reub]

This horse has died and already been repeatedly beaten, but I just can't help myself. This article just makes me want to beat my self in the neck with a cactus.

One of the lawyers for Trayvon Martin's family said that the prosecution should have focused more on race.

The "biggest mistake was to ignore race," Natalie Jackson told ThinkProgress.

She argued that the defense used certain racial biases to their advantage, attempting to paint a picture of Trayvon Martin as a thug who used drugs and got in trouble at school.

Yeah, it was just racism and prejudice. Not, you know, because Martin was a thug who used drugs and got in trouble at school:

"Trayvon was not a burglar, he was not doing anything wrong," Sabrina Fulton told "CBS This Morning." "He simply went to the store and was headed back home. And for somebody to look at him and perceive that he was a burglar, that was the problem that initiated everything."

Not, you know, because he was a burglar:

Where are these pictures from and have they been authenticated?

[MediumTex]

Reub,

Are you seriously asking if those photos are real?

Do those photos surprise you?

What's that line the media uses: "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story."

[Pointedstick]

The photos were found on Martin's cell phone:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/trayvon-martin ... d=19271093

...and Twitter feed:
http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/29/secon ... dentified/

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/201 ... ernet-show

If you want to see more, just do a Google image search for "Trayvon pictures".

[MediumTex]

I think I figured out what bugs me so much about the Zimmerman case: It's that I can't argue both sides of it--i.e., I can't understand the logic of the argument that Zimmerman should not have been allowed to defend himself.

With 99% of stories I encounter, I feel like I can understand the arguments that both sides are making, even if I find one far more persuasive than the other.

With the Zimmerman case, however, I feel that the anti-Zimmerman people must literally change the facts in order to come up with any kind of coherent argument for why Martin should have been allowed to continue beating Zimmerman without fear that Zimmerman might try to defend himself with the weapon he was legally carrying, and even then their arguments seem pretty weak.

I also feel bad for Martin's parents.  I am sure they don't realize that they are being used as puppets by people like Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson.  The fact that the verdict surprised them is unsettling to me, because that means that their attorney isn't telling them about the practical aspects of this case.

In fact, it's a shame that apparently no one has sat down Martin's parents and given them the following big picture advice: "Look, this trial was all for show.  Your son's death was tragic, but legally Zimmerman was well within his rights.  Going forward, the Justice Department isn't going to do anything, because there is nothing for them to do.  The only question you folks need to be thinking about now when it comes to your public statements is whether you want to say and do things that will minimize additional violence and property destruction across the country, or do you want to stir things up as much as you can.  If it's the latter, just say and do everything that Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson tell you to, because that's all those guys are interested in, and their interest in you is solely about what publicity you can provide to them.  If you doubt what I am saying, study the other cases they have gotten involved in over the last 20 years and see what positive change or improved outcomes actually resulted from their involvement."

[Xan]

To be fair, Jessie Jackson does have a pretty good record of getting American hostages released by foreign governments.  I'm convinced he does it by saying "You want to really piss off and confuse Americans?  Let them see me accomplishing something."

[MediumTex]

For anyone who is interested here is the affidavit that Angela Corey used to bring the charges against Zimmerman.

It's only two pages and worth a look.

You may notice that nowhere in the affidavit does it say that Martin broke Zimmerman's nose and, according to an eyewitness, was slamming Zimmerman's head into the sidewalk at the time Zimmerman fired the fatal shot.  It also doesn't say that Martin had no marks on his body other than the gunshot wound that would suggest Zimmerman had fought back in any way when Martin began striking him.

Instead, the affidavit says "Zimmerman confronted Martin and a struggle ensued...Zimmerman shot Martin in the chest."

[MediumTex]

Here is the picture that E! is using with a Zimmerman story right now:



That's Martin when he was much younger and Zimmerman after having gained a lot of weight from the stress of being attacked by Martin and then attacked by the government for defending himself from the attack by Martin.

Here is something I ran across that is helpful in understanding the story the media is trying to tell:



This is the person Zimmerman saw about 30 minutes before he was attacked: