The State of Florida vs George Zimmerman: The Trial

@revelette,

Quote:

However, Trayvon Martin's mother was a strong witness.

I think she and Trayvon's brother were important witnesses to give jurors an idea of the type of family Trayvon came from.

Martin has been portrayed in the media as a thug, a ghetto type hoodlum kid, and I think his mother and brother dispelled that image. His poised mom is a college graduate, with a B.A. degree, who has held her current job for over twenty years, and his well-spoken brother is in his senior year of college.

Trayvon was a middle class kid, from a stable functional family, with caring parents, and a caring brother, and even though his parents were divorced, his brother made it clear that their father was always a part of their lives and they had regular contact with him. Trayvon would likely have gone onto college, just like his older brother, had he lived.

So Trayvon really didn't fit the stereotype that the media, and the internet, had created of him as some sort of inner city anti-social punk or criminal type teen who would be "up to no good," as Zimmerman had suspected. And I think it was important that his mother and brother got that point across to the jury.

I think that was even more meaningful than their testimony that the screams on that 911 call were Trayvon's.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

cicerone imposter wrote:
How does Zimmerman overcome all the lies that's been confirmed in court?

He doesn't have to. True, Zimmerman is guilty of lying, of exaggerated self-importance, of gratuitously ignoring the 911 dispatcher, and a lot of other things. But all of these things are legal. To go to jail, the state needs to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman committed manslaughter or murder. Every reasonable alternative to the prosecution's story will get Zimmerman acquitted --- whether he's a liar or not, a wannabe cop or not, or wrongly fearing for his life or not.

Only if you are a jury, I have been in many, many threads with you - you aren't female, therefore, you are on the jury - you opinion has no bearing on the trial.

1 Reply

@revelette,

revelette wrote:

Not that it did have an effect, only that it could have had an effect.

And that's enough to retain Zimmerman's allegation that "he's on drugs or something", "he" being Martin, as a reasonable hypothesis other than racism about the reason Zimmerman suspected him.

Perhaps this is a good place to raise a point about attitude: The presumption of innocence does not spring from an open mind, trying to figure out what probably happened. It springs from a prejudiced mind, biased against the prosecution and in favor of the defendant, and prioritizing the liberty of the innocents over the conviction of the guilty. (That's the way it should be, anyway!) The open mind that DrewDad demanded of me many pages ago is proper in civil cases, which turn on the preponderance of the evidence. But in criminal cases, where the standard is "proven beyond a reasonable doubt", this mindset is utterly misplaced. All of you who are trying to keep an open mind are not doing a Good Thing (TM).

1 Reply

@firefly,

Besides, there's no way anybody can determine who a punk is by their looks - black, brown, white, or yellow.

1 Reply

@BillW,

BillW wrote:

Only if you are a jury, I have been in many, many threads with you - you aren't female, therefore, you are on the jury - you opinion has no bearing on the trial.

My opinion doesn't, but the law does. I am simply explaining what the law says about standards of evidence.

1 Reply

@BillW,

BillW wrote:

This doesn't have relavence, it is a completely assine reason to commit murder

It's a reasonable ground for hypothesizing that Zimmerman's mind was not depraved, and that he therefore did not commit murder. This possibility is what has relevance.

5 Replies

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

BillW wrote:
Only if you are a jury, I have been in many, many threads with you - you aren't female, therefore, you are on the jury - you opinion has no bearing on the trial.

My opinion doesn't, but the law does. I am simply explaining what the law says about standards of evidence.

I don't need law explained to me the jury decides not you! Believe it or not.....

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@Thomas,

So I suppose zoned indoesn't count?

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@cicerone imposter,

But this kid wasn't a punk, he was simply a black middle class kid who happened to be wearing a hoodie probably because it was raining.

That he would have been wandering around, looking for a house to break into, was all in Zimmerman's biased mind. He was just meandering back to where he had been staying, after his trip to the store.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

It has also been proved that Zimmerman's mind was depraved, he had more desire to look like a cop than toi do what is right, there are a number of ways he exhibited a depraved mind. It is how the jury sees it; but, you can have your own opinion, but it is your opinion, as mine is my opinion. It belongs to the jury, it is in evidence!

1 Reply

@firefly,

I know Martin was not a punk, but somebody said that he was a punk, and I'm questioning how anybody can determine who a punk is. Certainly not Zimmerman; nobody.

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@BillW,

BillW wrote:

It has also been proved that Zimmerman's mind was depraved, he had more desire to look like a cop than toi do what is right, there are a number of ways he exhibited a depraved mind. It is how the jury sees it; but, you can have your own opinion, but it is your opinion, as mine is my opinion. It belongs to the jury, it is in evidence!

And, btw, the judges believes so to or she would have given a directed verdict.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

You wrote,

Quote:

It's a reasonable ground for hypothesizing that Zimmerman's mind was not depraved,

That's entirely your own opinion, and not necessarily the opinion by the jury - which will determine his guilt or innocence.

1 Reply

@revelette,

revelette wrote:

Yes but we don't know what the expert said, only that the autopsy doctor changed his mind and the trace amount could have had an effect.

Ultimately, all we need to know about his sources is that he found them persuasive enough to change his opinion. That's because his opinion alone is enough for the trial: Expert witnesses like him, unlike regular witnesses like you and me, are allowed to testify not just to the facts, but to their professional opinions, too. This autopsist testified to a fact (1.5 nanograms of THC per milliliter of Martin's blood), on which he based a professional opinion (that this conentration might have been psychoactive in Martin, but maybe not). He didn't change his testimony about any fact. He did change his opinion, to be sure, but so what? Professional opinions change as the minds holding them learn. That's what they're supposed to do; it should not degrade their credibility in the slightest.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

That's entirely your own opinion

It also happens to be true. But even if I accepted this stipulation of yours --- so what?

cicerone imposter wrote:

and not necessarily the opinion by the jury - which will determine his guilt or innocence.

Again, so what? Nobody here is under any illusion that we're going to affect this case one way or the other.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Quote:

This autopsist

Before today, before reading your post, I never knew that this word existed, Thomas.

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@BillW,

Bill, in my expert opinion as a frequent participant in threads like this, you are trying to start a pissing match with me. I'm not interested, so I won't be responding to you for a while.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Quote:

It's a reasonable ground for hypothesizing that Zimmerman's mind was not depraved...

It was depraved enough that it was his own profiling of Martin that fueled his need to make sure "this one" didn't get away from the police, and depraved enough to keep persuing Martin, even though he was told that the police didn't need him to do that, and even though there was no urgency about making sure Martin was there when the police arrived, and depraved enough that he never considered this was an innocent kid and that, by following him, he was scaring the hell out of him, and depraved enough that he never identified himself to Martin, even when he caught up to him.

I see plenty of reason to consider that Zimmerman acted with a "depraved mind". His actions were not reasonable and fully rational. They were all based on Zimmerman's intial distorted perception of Martin, what he thought of such "punks", and his own obsessive need to see this one caught, and his inability to control his own impulses, or to assess the situation with any degree of objectivity.

Zimmerman was so obsessed with these punks, and his need to play cop, he might as well have been hearing voices telling him to go after Martin. His actions were not reasonable and fully rational.

1 Reply

@firefly,

firefly wrote:

It was depraved enough that it was his own profiling of Martin that fueled his need to make sure "this one" didn't get away from the police [. . .]

That's your hypothesis based on the evidence, and it's a reasonable one. Another reasonable hypothesis is that he wasn't depraved at all. "Depraved" means "morally corrupt". You need no morally-corrupt mind to find someone suspicious when he appears to be on drugs. You don't need a morally-corrupt mind to ignore a 911 dispatcher. These dispatchers have no legal or moral authority over anyone. And finally, it is not morally corrupt to be unreasonable.

Zimmerman wrote:

I see plenty of reason to consider that Zimmerman acted with a "depraved mind".

And it's perfectly reasonable that you see it that way. But as long as anyone else can reasonably disagree with you, the law demands that the jury acquit Zimmerman. In my opinion, the prosecution has not cleared this hurdle with its evidence and testimony.

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@Thomas,

You wrote,

Quote:

It also happens to be true. But even if I accepted this stipulation of yours --- so what?

True; all of us are guessing as to his guilt or innocence. As I've said before, the jury will decide that important decision, and I'm going to wait before offering any opinion on his guilt or innocence. I'm only trying to reiterate what's been covered during the trial, and what's been said on this thread.

0 Replies

The State of Florida vs George Zimmerman: The Trial

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