Do you think Zimmerman will be convicted of murder?

Oh unless and until a jury find him guilty of murder he is not a murderer.

An to me it is equally clear that a young hoodlum attacked him and try to kill him by pounding our his brains on the sidewalk and he acted in self defense and charges should never never had been file.

oralloy wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Well, there is the fact that they lied about how much money they had in the first place. Doesn't seem like anyone is disputing that. Judges don't look to kindly upon lies.

Cycloptichorn

While I can agree that it is bad to lie to the judge, I question the policy that if the defendant has money, bail needs to be set at a higher level so as to deprive him of all his money.

Not only does this deprive defendants of the money they need to defend themselves, it can also unjustly bankrupt innocent people.

The entire point is to set it high enough that the defendant won't run off and cut his losses. Zimmerman also reportedly had a second passport he didn't tell anyone about.

If you have an extra passport, and a few hundred thousand dollars, and you thought you were being railroaded for a crime you didn't commit - you wouldn't consider running? I sure as hell would.

Remember that high bails don't bankrupt people - as long as they show up for court.

Cycloptichorn

That is what it should be. However, what it seems to be in this case is an attempt to soak up all of his money so he has nothing to fund his defense.

In the eyes of the law, perhaps. It's clear to me that he provoked a confrontation with the kid and then shot him to death when it went south.

BillRM wrote:

Years ago repeat years ago he lost one passport and apply for another and in packing to leave his home for a safe house he came across his lost passport and turn it over at once to his lawyer who then turn it over to the court.

Well, if you believe everything the guy says implicitly, than sure. But we usually view the accounts given by those who have murdered someone skeptically.

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In the eyes of the law, perhaps. It's clear to me that he provoked a confrontation with the kid and then shot him to death when it went south.

That's what it sounded like to me at first as well. The difference is that I did a bit more reading and research.

It's clear to me that he provoked a confrontation with the kid and then shot him to death when it went south.

Cycloptichorn

Your 'young hoodlum' didn't have half the police record Zimmerman did

Cycloptichorn wrote:

BillRM wrote:

Years ago repeat years ago he lost one passport and apply for another and in packing to leave his home for a safe house he came across his lost passport and turn it over at once to his lawyer who then turn it over to the court.

Well, if you believe everything the guy says implicitly, than sure. But we usually view the accounts given by those who have murdered someone skeptically.

That's an Orwellian catch 22. You are presuming he is a murderer, and then using your presumption that he is a murderer to help determine that he is the murderer that you presume he is.

And at the most this was manslaughter. No chance it was murder.

In any case, if he did give the passport to his lawyer to hand over to the court, that should be on the record somewhere. If it is, there should be little question that it happened. How exactly did the court find out about the second passport?

Prosecutors provided bank records that showed that on April 20, the day of Zimmerman’s original bond hearing, he had $135,000 in cash at his disposal, even as his family professed to be broke. Taped jailhouse phone calls between him and his wife showed he had instructed her to transfer money he had raised online out of his bank account into hers.

“Even though the defendant was in jail at the time, he was intimately involved in the deposit and transfer of money into various accounts,” Duval County Assistant State Attorney Bernie de la Rionda wrote. “Defendant was directing the show.”

For saying under oath that she did not know how much money they had raised and that the couple had no assets, Zimmerman’s wife, Shellie, was charged with perjury.

Prosecutors also said the taped calls show the couple talking about the whereabouts of Zimmerman’s second passport.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

It's clear to me that he provoked a confrontation with the kid and then shot him to death when it went south.

Cycloptichorn

What evidence is there that Zimmerman provoked the confrontation?

He can always get a court-appointed attorney if he can't afford outside council - just like the thousands of poor folks who are charged for crimes every year, but have no free publicity or legions of NRA members to pay their legal bills. So, I am unconcerned about this.

Not only that, but bail on a million bucks, at 10% for the bond, is 100k. Zimm's legal fund reportedly raised more than double that, plus he had previous cash savings, plus he will continue to get more donations to fund his legal case

from his admiring group of mouth-breathers.

I find the idea that the bail was set in order to bankrupt him to be unpersuasive.

He also could have elected to just stay in jail, if he thought the bail was unaffordable. Not like the guy has a job to go to or anything to do on the outside.

Why don't you spend a minute commenting on Zimmerman's history?

They clearly raised the bail in response to him having more money than they originally thought.

ignored their orders not to follow the kid, provoked a confrontation knowing he had a deadly weapon on hand, and used that weapon to kill the kid. Murder 2 is a reasonable crime to charge him with, given the circumstances - and his troubled past, something his admirers never seem to want to talk about. The guy was an aggressive dickhead and the current events fit the pattern established by his previous behavior completely.

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Why don't you spend a minute commenting on Zimmerman's history?

Because it isn't relevant.