@MontereyJack,
MontereyJack wrote:
Under Florida law, Finn, Trayvon was perfectly justified in anything up to death if he felt threatened. That's the way the law is working out in actual practice there. If you don't like it, don't take us to task, tell Florida. We've been saying that all along. Bad law. That's why it's becoming known as the Kill At Will Law. It authorizes peremptory violence. Trayvon, wisely, probably felt threatened. He certainly was right to do so. So, even if he fought Zimmerman with what he had available to stop him, which might only have been fists, Florida law gave him that right.
Did he attack Zimmerman, or did Zimmerman, who as we know from the tapes was pissed that "assholes always get away" and went after Trayvon, start it? Who ran away? Who pursued him? We have only Zimmerman's word Trayvon attacked him. Considering he's been shown to be untruthful in other things he's said, considering he's had other violent encounters with the law, I don't put much faith in his veracity here.
If Trayvon broke Zimmerman's nose, why were there no marks on his hands. He was hitting something relatively tough, cartilage and bone. Skin is fragile. There should have been marks. There weren't.
And if you've ever had any experience with fights, either as participant, or onlooker, or hearing about it, you know that in probably 99% of them, both sides claim "it was the damned other guy who started it".
Sorry, Zimmerman still seems the far more likely candidate for starting the confrontation.
I'm no expert on the law, but I feel certain that you aren't either.
I find it very difficult to believe that the law allows someone to kill a person because they believe they are being followed. If it does, it's a travesty and should be overturned immediately.
We don't know all the facts and you like me are entitled to form an opinion based on what information you have read or heard.
I have tried to make three points in this discussion and one of them has been, that no matter what our opinions may be, that what we are not entitled to do, or at least should not be, is to put a bounty on his head (New Black Panthers), abuse the power of our office and propose a resolution that judges Zimmerman racially biased (Congressinal Black Caucus), distort 911 recordings in an attmept to lead the American public to believe Zimmerman is a racist (NBC) broadcast the man's address to the world (Spike Lee) and foment rage within a community (Jackon and Sharpton).
In you assumptions about Zimmerman that lead you to believe he attacked Martin first, you are foregetting that there is an eyewitness who claims she saw martin on top of Zimmerman; beating him. I haven't done exhaustive research on him but I don't believe Martin was a choir boy. If his past transgressions have nothing to do with determination of guilt, (and they shouldn't) then so do Zimmerman's.
It should not be difficult to have medical evidence that proves Zimmerman has a broken nose and lacerations on his head...or not. If such evidence appears, are you going to suggest that Zimmerman broke his own nose and cut up his own head to support his story?
Again, you are more than free to form an opinion about who is most or only at fault in this incident. I would like to think, however, that when the Special Investigator presents his report that you will be open to the idea that your opinion was wrong.
When the story about the white Duke lacrosse players and the black stripper came out many people followed their political inclination and assumed the young men were guilty of rape.
When the Tawana Bradley story came out, many people followed their political inclination and assumed the accussed white men were guilty of raping and essentially torturing a black girl.
In both very high profile cases, what the politically inclined assumed was wrong.
Unfortunately for the accused individuals, the public, media and institutional rush to judgment can only be proven wrong, not erased. They and their families went through hell and their reputions forever stained.
Stories like these have been proven true in the past which might affect your personal opinion, but I can't believe that you find that a justification for what
the wrongly accused individuals went through.
The Duke case was such an injustice that the local DA was disbarred. Perhaps I am doing you an injustice, but somehow I don't think you were railing as loudly against that injustice.
Should the evidence show that Zimmerman was guilty of a crime and he gets off scott free, I'll join you in expressing outrage. Until then, I'm only forming uncertain opinions.
It's interesting that no one seems to have noticed the story I linked to about the black man in Arizona who shot and killed a white man because he felt threatened and , most importantly, has not been arrested or charges.
I feel safe in assuming that neither you nor your like minded A2K members believe Arizona is a haven of liberal thought and tolerance and yet here we have a story (which I admittedly only stumbled upon due to FreeDuck's challenge) where the very thing you base much of your arguments (a black man in Zimmerman's postion
certainly being arrested and thrown in jail for killing an unarmed white man) didn't happen.
