@hawkeye10,
Quote:when the state can hold a trial without probable cause...
Except there was probable cause, and this was established to a judge's satisfaction in a courtroom. Zimmerman received due process, in accord with law. No way was he abused by the state or denied any legal rights he was entitled to.
In many states, including those in the Northeast, Zimmerman would have been found guilty of manslaughter because he recklessly and needlessly provoked an encounter, after stalking and frightening an innocent kid who had no way of knowing who Zimmerman was, or what harm Zimmerman might do to him in that dark area. The fact that Zimmerman created the circumstances of menace, and then provoked a confrontation, with this frightened unarmed minor, would have invalidated his claims of self-defense, since Martin was the one justified in protecting himself in that context, and Zimmerman's minor injuries were nowhere near life-threatening.
Had the police arrived while the struggle was still in progress, before that shot was fired, I doubt that Martin would have been arrested for punching Zimmerman in the nose, and that is the only punch that Zimmerman's body or face showed any sign of receiving, beside two tiny scrapes on the back of his head. Given that this was an unarmed minor, who was a guest in that housing complex, who had been unfairly and inaccurately profiled by Zimmerman as a criminal tresspasser, and one who felt justifiably menaced by Zimmerman's stalking of him in the dark, I doubt Martin would have been arrested because Zimmerman would likely have felt too foolish, and too embarrassed by his own misperceptions and recklessness to have pressed charges. Martin was the one entitled to stand his ground and protect himself in that situation, and that would have been clear to the police as well.
Had the police even known, immediately after the shooting, that Martin belonged in that community, they would have been even more skeptical of Zimmerman's actions and his version of events, the forensic collection of evidence would have been more careful, a toxicology test on Zimmerman would have been done, and Zimmerman probably would have been arrested that night and charged with manslaughter. Unfortunately, to some extent, the police bought into Zimmerman's racial profiling of this dead kid, since they also appear to have assumed he was an intruder in the complex and probably up to no good.
Rallies were held in over 100 cities today to help bring about justice for Trayvon Martin, and one way of doing that would be to change or repeal the flawed Florida self-defense laws that allowed his killer to avoid any legal punishment for actions that would be considered manslaughter in other parts of the country--to keep something like this from happening again to another innocent young black male who gets erroneously profiled by a vigilante with a gun. And even the jurors who acquitted Zimmerman want to see changes to those laws that allowed him to go free.
