Do you think Zimmerman will be convicted of murder?

We don't know if the gun went off during a struggle.

Zimmerman's action led to the death of Martin and that is all the law requires. It was the series of actions that Zimmerman took that ultimately led to the death. Each of those acts if looked at alone may have been legal but taken together they appear to add up to Zimmerman being careless and creating a dangerous situation.

That sounds like an argument for manslaughter.

Not really, since it meets the requirements of 2nd degree murder if they can prove that Zimmerman acted in a depraved manner.

This sounds about right to me.

Cycloptichorn

"These guys, they always get away."

I think these words that will be used to illustrate that Zimmerman intended to not only follow, but catch/detain TM.

A
R
T

You're such a hypocrite. You carry on about a "disinformation campaign" on the part of the groups who wanted Zimmerman arrested, but you've been trying to mount your own disinformation campaign in this thread from the outset.

Let's look at your disinformation...

First you carried on that it was only the black activist "agitators" who wanted Zimmerman arrested, because of their own political agenda and not because Zimmerman's behavior warranted an arrest. To back this up, you repeatedly pointed out that the "first responders" saw no reason to arrest Zimmerman, that they believed he acted in legally justified self defense. But that's not true at all--the lead investigator for the police department wanted Zimmerman arrested and charged with manslaughter the night of the shooting. So, all that "agitation" was a demand to know why the state attorney hadn't acted on that recommendation, and a demand that the state now follow through with a thorough investigation and an arrest--and it was, quite legitimately, primarily coming from the parents of the dead victim who wanted to know why their son's killer wasn't being held accountable or answerable for his actions in a court of law.

Then you posted disinformation about the Stand Your Ground immunity hearings in the state of Florida. You repeatedly insisted that at such a hearing a defendant doesn't have to prove anything, that the burden of proof is on the state. That isn't true either, at an immunity hearing the burden of proof is squarely on the defendant who must try to convince a judge, by a preponderance of the evidence, that they acted with justifiable deadly force, in self defense, as defined by the laws of the state of Florida. But, even after the correct information was pointed out to you, you continued to post disinformation until you finally realized that you actually had to acknowledge the truth about immunity hearings.

Then you tried to post disinformation about the victim, by repeatedly referring to him as "a hoodlum"--a violent young criminal--when there is no information to support that conclusion. The victim had no criminal record, the victim had no history of violent or aggressive behaviors that anyone is aware of, and even Zimmerman, in his 911 calls, did not describe the teen as behaving in a menacing, threatening, or aggressive manner. Nor did Zimmerman know the teen had been suspended from school, for rather minor reasons, he reacted only on the basis of the teen's external appearance and what he thought was a "suspicious" manner. The suspicions were all in Zimmerman's mind--the teen's behavior (walking around, talking on a cell phone), was innocuous. But you still persist in trying to justify Zimmerman's inaccurate perception of the situation, and his potential victim, by trying to imply the teen was some kind of criminal. Conveniently, you choose to ignore the fact that that Zimmerman was the one with a documented history of run-in's with the law because of his problems with violent, aggressive impulses--he was the one who was court ordered to take anger management classes. You ignore facts in order to continue to promote disinformation.

You have tried to promote disinformation about the racial factors in this case. You have repeatedly exaggerated and distorted the notions that Zimmerman was a racist, while totalling ignoring the fact that the issue is whether he engaged in racial profiling when he first saw Martin, and whether that racial profiling caused him to misinterpret Martin's behavior. To suggest he engaged in racial profiling is not calling him a racist, nor is it even accusing him of being a racist. And the fact that the state attorney didn't have Zimmerman arrested on the spot may also have been a decision influenced by racial profiling of the victim, but you continue to disregard the real issues so you can promote more disinformation.
And, in addition, you disregard the information that Zimmerman has a history of racial/ethnic profiling based on his own negative remarks about Mexicans on his old myspace page--again, ignoring information helps you to promote more disinformation.

To top it off, after outrageously calling other posters in this thread "Nazis", you now seem to be trying to apply some Aryan purity litmus test of your own regarding whether to consider Zimmerman "white" because of his Peruvian heritage--which puts you in good company with the neo-Nazi National Socialists who don't consider him white either. Will the real "Nazi" please stand up.
There are people who self identify as being white Hispanics.

The issue is not what racial category you, or anyone else, wants to ascribe to Zimmerman, it's whether Zimmerman engaged in racial profiling when he first saw Trayvon Martin (whose skin color was undeniably dark)--and whether Zimmerman based his subsequent actions on assumptions inherent in that sort of negative racial profiling of African Americans.

You continue to post disinformation by asserting, as though it were established fact, that Zimmerman had his head repeatedly pounded into concrete by Martin. That is not fact. You have not seen a video of the actual encounter between the two. All you have seen is a photo of Zimmerman's head showing some apparent sort of injury, but you don't know how that injury was acquired. Disinformation about how the injury was acquired does not substitute for fact.

And you have chosen to ignore the Florida statutes which pertain to "unnecessary killing", use of excessive force, manslaughter, and second degree murder, in your assertion of Zimmerman's "innocence" when, in fact, it will be those laws, and the circumstances of the encounter, that will determine whether or not he is guilty of a crime--you cannot disregard what those laws say, and exactly how they are worded, because that's essential to determining whether a violation of law took place in this case. But you disregard actual laws so you can promote disinformation.

You persist in trying to discuss this case only in terms of your disinformation campaign. And, in the process, your own impaired judgment, and how you selectively use, and distort, and disregard, information becomes very evident. If you are typical of the sort of person who carries a concealed weapon in Florida, and thinks they can kill with impunity and then hide beyond Stand Your Ground, that's a frightening state of affairs. You're a good argument for tightening the gun laws and revising or getting rid of problematic laws like Stand Your Ground. You think you've got a license to kill without having to provide or demonstrate any legal justification for your actions or your use of deadly force. You illogically think that you can be the pursuer of someone engaged in no criminal acts, shoot and kill them, when they may be trying to protect themselves from you, and then claim you were only defending yourself and standing your ground--which is not really what that Stand Your Ground law says, or the sort of behavior it protects. People like you, who walk around armed with concealed weapons, and think in the distorted way that you do, are quite scary in terms of posing a threat to public safety.

Zimmerman admitted to an intentional shooting of Martin.

Agreed. Except you can also see him as being reckless, and not just "careless".

Most things about Bill are quite frightening, I think he's incredibly selfish, only bothering about things that might affect him, and not seeming to have any regard for the lives of others, but I don't need to tell you that.

He doesn't debate, he just sets out a list of demands.

BillRM is upset about the uproar, and the public pressure, that finally brought this case into court because he sees any questioning of Zimmerman's innocence as a threat to gun laws he wants to see remain in place, for his own personal reasons. And he's said as much.

This is all he sees--a threat to gun laws he supports.

I must admit the whole concept is completely alien, I will never understand that mindset. We've got some of the tightest laws in the world, but a lot of people don't think they're quite tough enough. Any attempt to weaken them would be electoral suicide.

No dear heart, I picture my wife or one of my step daughters being in Zimmerman place and being beaten to death. Needing to used deadly force to stop it and then having the Sharptons of this world using false information to drum up public pressure to have her charge with murder should her attacker had a dark skin and he see some gain for himself.

Oh even the fact that my two step daughters are half black will be no protection for them, as their skins are not dark enough, any more then the fact that Zimmerman is no more white then Obama from being label a white racist.

All the cases over decades where Sharpton had gotten behind the stories of racist whites harming blacks that did not have any connection to the real world and still he get always with another repeat of the same nonsense.

Not only had he harmed many proven completely innocents men over the years but he had help set off civil unrests that had results in dozens of deaths for no damn good reason.

Yes, there are real very real problems in our society that had resulted in a million black men in prison at any one time and thirty percents ot all black men in Florida having felony convictions but neither you Firefly or Sharpton and others promoters of this story give a **** about these men.

Do you think your wife or step-daughters would also pursue someone, who was not engaging in any unlawful activity, until they caught up with him and provoked an aggressive confrontation? That's what "being in Zimmerman's place" would mean. And, if they'd do something that reckless, that would wind up with their shooting and killing someone, they shouldn't carry guns either.

Martin didn't out-of-the-blue attack Zimmerman, he didn't stalk Zimmerman, Zimmerman went after him--against the instructions of the 911 operator.

Shut up about Sharpton already, this case is now in court, where many people, including those not influenced, in the slightest, by Sharpton, feel it belongs.
Stick to the facts of what we do know about this homicide--if you can even distinguish between facts and conjecture--and stick to what the laws define as crimes, and precisely how they define those crimes, before you decide that Zimmerman is not guilty .

You're just a broken record--you keep repeating the same stuff over and over.

LOL how you keep trying to sell the act of a good citizen to follow someone long enough to be able to direct the police to them when you think they need to be check out is somehow a justification for an assault on them by the person being follow.

But to answer your question my wife many many years ago did indeed pursue not follow a hit and run driver long enough to get his tag number for the police.

Both the driver of the car that had gotten hit and the police was happy that she did so.

But an act of good citizenship is now an excused to be attack it would seems by spinners like you.

For me the only pursue/following I ever done was of a truck for many many long miles out of my way as all his back lights was out and the weather and road conditions was such that I fear that if I let him go someone would plow into his unlit rear.

Could not get him to stop no matter how often I use my high beams off and on.

A police car finally pull him over but I would assume you would had granted the trucker the right to assault me on the theory I might had been a truck highjacker.

We shall see whether the state of Florida regards the homicide Zimmerman committed as an "act of good citizenship".

Here's what should have happened.

After the dispatcher says "We don't need you to do that." referring to Zimmerman's following Martin, Zimmerman stops.
Cops come.
They meet with Zimmerman.
They walk around together looking for Martin.
They spot him.
Cops tell Zimmerman to stay put.
They go talk to Martin, ask for ID, he doesn't have any, says he is staying with his father, cops say "Oh, yeah?"
Martin takes cops to father's place.
He IDs his son.
Cops say "Goodnight"
Cops meet with Zimmerman and tell him the good news.
The kid wasn't a burglar after all.

Joe(all he had to do was listen to the dispatcher.)Nation

ALL Mr. T had to do
to remain intact was to NOT get physical.
That 's not asking too much.





David

Strange thinking or spinning that for the "crime" of following someone on the public streets you are allow to be attack by the person you are following and if you dare to defend youself you are a murderer.

Shame on Zimmerman for following Trayvon and even more shame on him for not allowing Trayvon his right to kill him for doing so.

The state REALLY does not want to get into attacking citizens for vigilance in SAFETY! ....being hypocrites will not wear well.

We know what happened the last time Zimmerman took this "good" advice..the bad guys got away. Are you really going to sit in judgement of George based upon his known history of the state letting him down?

I dare the state to take a murder charge to trial...It will be Casey Anderson all over again...

Neither of us, David, nor anyone outside of this matter, has any evidence or testimony as to who struck the first blow, who laid hands of who first, do we?

We have Mr. Zimmerman's purported statement to police.

That is enough for you.

We will see if it is enough for a jury.

Joe(it may be, it might not be)Nation