@hawkeye10,
Quote:we dont have enough facts to make victim/abuser determinations here......
We have enough facts to know who the victim was.
Trayvon Martin was the victim of a homicide committed by George Zimmerman--Zimmerman admitted to killing him.
Zimmerman was tried for murder and was acquitted. That doesn't make Trayvon Martin any less a victim of a homicide commited by Zimmerman, it just means Zimmerman's not being held criminally liable for the act.
Zimmerman wasn't the victim of the sort of "attack" where a total stranger suddenly jumped out of the bushes to mug him, and they fought, and Zimmerman wound up killing someone who he felt was threatening his life and who had just attacked him in the commission of a crime. In that scenario, Zimmerman could be considered a victim--a crime victim of an attempted mugging.
That wasn't what happened that night in February 2012. Zimmerman was not a crime victim. The police investigation concluded that Martin had not engaged in any criminal activity, and there was no evidence to suggest he had any intention to do so. It also concluded that this was a totally avoidable death, had Zimmerman not followed Martin, and that he further failed to defuse the situation by not identifying himself to Martin.
Those things make it inaccurate to consider Zimmerman a "victim" in terms of what happened that night. He instigated and provoked the encounter with Martin--he went after him, he stalked him.
Whether Martin reacted to Zimmerman's actions with a blow thrown in self-defense, or in anger, we do not know, and will never know, and the jury verdict made no decision on that score at all. Trayvon Martin was not on trial, only Zimmerman was, and he could have shot in self-defense no matter how that struggle started, and whether Martin was acting in self-defense or not, because there was no convincing evidence either way. The trial issue was only whether he
needed to shoot him, at the moment he pulled the trigger, or whether he shot him for other reasons.
No matter how you look at it, Zimmerman was not the victim. His actions instigated, provoked, and brought about the encounter with Martin. So, while he does not have criminal liability for the death, morally he is responsible for causing a needless death that could have been totally avoided.
That makes Martin the victim of a needless and avoidable homicide.
Martin is clearly the victim, Zimmerman is not.
His rabid supporters seem to think that someone should be able to follow an innocent person, provoke an encounter with that person, shoot and kill him, make up any cock and bull story about it being self-defense, and the police should unquestioningly swallow that story and never make an arrest or charge the person. Anything else becomes a "malicious prosecution" and, in their thinking, turns the shooter into a "victim". His supporters want an unquestioned license to kill. That's absolutely nuts.
Zimmerman should have been arrested the night of the shooting because his account was "unconvincing" to the chief police investigator--his account was inconsistent, contradictory, and seemed "embellished", his injuries were extremely minor, and his victim was unarmed and showed no evidence of having been in a fight, his only injury being the bullet-hole in his chest. The D.A. had been wrong not to agree to charge him with manslaughter, as the chief police investigator had recommended to him.. Had Zimmerman been arrested and charged that night, those public protests would not have happened. That outrage was appropriate--this was a very questionable death.
In no sense is Zimmerman a victim--the victim wound up dead.
