Do you think Zimmerman will be convicted of murder?

Making contact with a person does not equate starting a confrontation. Is questioning a fellow citizen about the presence in a particular place the starting of a confrontation? Could be.

Zimmermans own lawer said at one point that he doubted this will be a stand your ground case, but nobody seems too confident that it will not be. Whether it is or not I don't think that the state has a case for the top charge, and I don't think they have any chance of getting a jury to go with manslaugter.

After you're recorded on a phone call to police dispatch making derisive and aggressive statements about the person, and you disobey their instruction to not follow and confront the person, I think that it most certainly does.

Cycloptichorn

They can make a case for the top charge if they portray Zimmerman as a man with a history of problems controlling aggressive impulses--he was court-ordered to take anger management classes in the past--and if they portray him as a man with psychiatric/personality problems that could have affected the judgment and actions on his part that led up to the shooting--and he was prescribed two types of psych meds at the time of the shooting.

Zimmerman did misjudge Martin's behavior from the getgo--Martin wasn't doing anything but walking in the rain and talking on his cell phone, and he had a legitimate right to be in that gated community--he was the guest of a resident. Because Zimmerman convinced himself the kid was a criminal and up to no good, and because he was obsessed with not letting this alleged punk get away and elude the police, it was Zimmerman who engaged in the impulsive actions which brought about a deadly confrontation.

Zimmerman provoked a confrontation that was entirely avoidable. All Zimmerman had to do was sit in his car and wait for the police to show up in response to his calls.

I don't know whether the state can make a convincing case for the top charge, but they have a stronger case for manslaughter.

And it's Zimmerman who has a number of inconsistencies to try to explain away at an immunity hearing in order to make a justified self defense claim. And his credibility with this judge is already tarnished because he did mislead the court at his first bond hearing.

Zimmerman is a man with very lousy judgment--and his trying to mislead the court revealed that. I think the state can show he displayed very lousy judgment in the actions he took that led up to the killing of Martin. The death of Martin was entirely needless and avoidable--he was a 17 year old kid returning to where he was staying after a trip to a convenience store. It was Zimmerman's poor judgment and impulsive actions that turned an innocuous situation into a tragic needless encounter. Whether a judge or jury can be convinced that this killing was legitimate, justified, self defense remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, this won't play out in a courtroom for another year, and this thread will just keep going around in circles.

When the fellow citizen is a barely 17 year old, who was minding his own business when this strange guy began watching and following him on a dark night, which might well frighten the kid, and apparently did frighten him, it certainly could result in a confrontation in which that kid was trying to defend and protect himself. Zimmerman never even bothered to tell Martin he was part of a Neighborhood Watch, to explain his behavior. How could Martin have had any idea what Zimmerman was up to?

So has it ever been, some bully-boy decides he's the local law and tries to intimidate some passerby, but then, because he's mis-judged who he has picked on, the bully-boy gets his ass handed to him.

I watched one night when a guy, shaking a tire iron, shook it at the wrong other guy and ended up getting the tire iron taken away..... but it was returned to him after it had visited both of his car's headlights and the left-side mirror; it had already visited the right side of his left knee cap.

Zimmerman wouldn't have been killed by Martin, but he would have been one sore cowboy in the morning.

Joe(Fricking Idiot)Nation

Please......not only is that exchange not going to help the state, it will enlist enourmous sympathy for Zimmerman. He was clearly caring about the lawlessness that had taken hold in his neighborhood, and was trying to doo his part as a good citizen to do something about it. Fellow citizens of the community will once this case is evaluted on the facts have more sympathy for Zimmeramn than for Martin.

Tell it like it is, Joe.

My guess is that people will feel a lot more empathy for the innocent kid walking home than they will for the "caring... good citizen" that shot the innocent kid.

I know that you're working on perfecting a method of shoveling bullshit, but that's just a pathetic attempt.

Irrelavant. A major flaw of modern self defense laws is that the citizen does not need to convince 12 of his peers that he likely would be gravely injured or killed if he did not take action, he only needs to convince them that he had fear in his heart at the time.

Martin was already going to be shown to be a kid with major behavior issues, if Gunga is right that he can be shown to be a trained street fighter with a love of chemicals that **** with the head then the story that he is a innocent kid will be gone.

Furthermore, the LEGAL drugs that zimmerman takes cause side effects along the lines of what she claims in only 10% of cases. The state is going to have a tough row to hoe on that line of argument.

"if Gunga is right"

and if the earth rotates backwards for a day...

I suspect that Gunga's entire "case" is predicated upon the one witness who reported seeing punches being thrown "MMA style." From this, Gunga has fabricated a story in his head that Martin is a trained street fighter.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/trayvon-martin/martin-zimmerman-witness-758903

I'm guessing that "MMA style" simply means "wild punches."

Gunga's theory about "purple drank" is not supported by the toxicology report, either. The report does not mention codeine, at least I could not find any reference to that, but it does mention traces of THC.

Dang. I was just thinking about what ( I think it was ) firefly said... that this case might not even go to trial for another year. The prospect of covering the same ground over and over endlessly in this thread is pretty disheartening.

There are aspects of this case that could have potential for useful discussion, but the intractability of certain participants' arguments here seem to preclude ever moving along.

I googled it.....what I get it that it tends to be a sedative, so I am confused about Gunga's train of thought.

Besides, that whole thing about a "homebrew hallucenogenic" was just rightwing gun nut blather. You can't even buy anything with codeine in it over the counter at a 7-11. At least not in this country.

From who? The judge who already thinks he's a liar? From the jury? Doubt it.

Cycloptichorn

You do know how to stay out of this thread don't you? Alternately you could add what ever it is that you think is missing.

You have free will and choices....embrace your freedom man!

THC? It means he smoked or ingested some weed sometime in the days before the incident.

Dunno about you, but I'm simply terrified of all the potheads I see going around and biting people's faces off....

P.S. "Gunga's train of thought...." Good one. Gunga's train of thought looks more like a conga line at a My Little Pony convention.

Yeah, right? All them homocidal potheads roaming the streets...

And the witness who reported seeing punches thrown "MMA style" has since changed his story--now he doesn't think he saw that.

Gunga is trying to portray Martin as some inner city hoodlum type, when, in fact, he was a kid from the suburbs, from a nice middle class family, who was looking forward to going to college just like his older brother.

And Zimmerman's rather minor injuries were not consistent with his having been repeatedly punched, "MMA style" or otherwise.

Martin could have smoked some pot up to as much as 30 days before he was killed to have that trace amount in his body. He was not under the influence of drugs at the time of his death.

Gunga just keeps repeating the same stuff over and over. And the things he is repeating would not constitute an adequate defense for Zimmerman. Zimmerman was not at any significant disadvantage in relation to Martin in terms of their respective sizes, and he considerably out-weighed Martin. He wasn't incapable of fighting back, and defending himself, without using his gun.