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[Trayvon Martin]'s Violent Attack on George Zimmerman
Posts
Because yeah, the dude I see now doesn't look anywhere near that heavy.
Same goes for Martin's weight, of course.
OK
First, we are not the American justice system.
You do not know We have seen video immediately after the events that show no wounds. However, if we are to assume that somehow they magically disappeared between the scene and the station, this does not mean they occurred due to Martin. So? That does not mean it wasn't a primary part of the reason he thought he was suspicious. George Zimmerman is listed in a 2005 police report as 250 pounds. According to his family he has lost a lot of weight recently due to stress in the last 2 months and was booked 190. Martin's family says he weight 140-150, and given the police couldn't figure out who he was for 3 days despite a missing person report I don't give their estimates a whole lot of extra credit. But fine, perhaps Zimmerman only outweighed Martin by 30 pounds.
And yet includes a violent criminal history, and still a psychotic level of calls including false accusations against black teenagers. Nope, that's right wing propaganda. Into the chest of a teenage boy. Zimmerman is white and Hispanic.
No. Multiple experts have said it could not have been Zimmerman. The 48% did not mean there was a 48% chance it was Zimmerman, it meant it matched 48% which is more than sufficient proof to disqualify him. Witnesses said the screaming immediately cut off with the gun shot. The "eyewitness" was a 13 year old boy who police pressured to claim Zimmerman was on the ground who repeatedly said he couldn't tell who was on the ground.
No they have to prove one at least aspect of his self defense claim is false. For instance, if Martin was the one screaming for help its highly unlikely a reasonable person in Zimmerman's position would fear for his life. If Zimmerman, a man with a history of violent confrontations and anger management issues, made Martin feel threatened by stalking him through a neighborhood in his car and then getting out and following him on foot then Martin has a right to defend himself. This would mean Zimmerman couldn't claim Stand your ground.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Looks like an old police report from '05 had him at 250. 185 when he was booked.
I have found the description of Zimmerman's race as a "White Hispanic" to be kind of interesting. Reading up on this case was the first time that I had even heard the term. The term is used for people whose race is white, and their ethnicity is Hispanic. According to Wikipedia over 50% of ethnically Hispanic or Latino Americans are white. If this is true why is White Hispanic not used more often, and why is it being used in this particular case?
Taken in context of this case you have the following:
When the story first broke Zimmerman was often described as white, and accused of being a racist.
Zimmerman's father comes out in his sons defense saying that he was not racist. That his son was Hispanic, and grew up in a multicultural family.
From this point on you often see Zimmerman's race described as White Hispanic.
It looks to me like they are intentionally trying to downplay his Hispanic ethnicity. "You're not really Hispanic, you are White Hispanic." That the use of this term may be technically accurate is ignoring that this is not a term that has been widely used before.
White Hispanic is a thing and has been for decades. It's been on every census form, every warranty card, every application that I've ever filled out.
That's quite the enlightened response. So you don't think that Zimmerman is a tragic outlier, then, and that Americans just shouldn't own guns for any reason? Gun owners are literally all Yosemite Sam with different facial hair and hats? Do elaborate!
Because people think Hispanic is a race and it is not.
I don't know how to phrase this best, but high profile stuff tends to be forced into contrast. Kid gets shot by a man. It's a horrible thing. Maybe if it were framed in a pre-established context, like, say, racial violence, it becomes easier for the public at large to process the event, because suddenly everyone knows how they should feel about it. Doesn't make the event ok. Doesn't make it any less of a horrible thing to live through if the event is something that's part of your personal life because you know people involved and the trauma of the experiences happening on both sides.
But racism is a nice, irrational, antisocial motivation. It immediately excuses so many other issues from things, like, whether or not the shooter was suitably trained with a gun to make real-life decisions involving firing it, or what kind of life he was living prior to the actions that lead to the death of a minor, or what kind of person the minor decided to be when he saw the guy with the gun. And lots of other, less concrete, ambiguous factors that ripple around this event. And of course, the bigger social issues implicit in the event that we defined by our laws and our policies as a nation.
Of the people that think Zimmerman is guilty, there are those among them who think Zimmerman is also racist. I don't know if anyone thinks he is racist but innocent.
White people have the most well-documented history of racism, therefore, if Zimmerman can be white, it raises the odds of him being racist.
But they're trying to make it a WHITE thing? Don't you understand?
No, neither do I.
So ... you're saying there IS a liberal narrative the media follows because the media knows it will resonate with viewers?
This isn't elaboration, it's you casually linking to a picture of the box art from a documentary film inspired by an unrelated incident, in some vain hope that because the film is broadly about guns, it would give any sort of veracity to your serious claim that the second amendment should be repealed. And it doesn't.
Here, here's an equally nuanced argument on the subject of gun ownership. It's monkey_with_gun.jpg:
Am I high, like the level of discourse, or does that monkey have a gun??
I don't consider it a liberal or a non-liberal thing. But it is a media thing.
My Backloggery
Actually no, SYG and castle laws are an exception, not "business as usual".
Especially given, at least where I grew up, Hispanic and black relations were horrendous.
I'm pretty sure most inter-minority relations are horrendous.
http://www.pagunblog.com/2012/03/22/crowdsourcing-no-duty-to-retreat-states/
31 out of 50 have no duty to retreat codified in law.
Other places such add Hawaii pretty much just hand wave it in court unless reliable evidence is presented.
So. Yeah. business as usual.
My Backloggery
A subset of those then go a step farther, and explicitly codify no duty to retreat. Most of the rest have case law establishing no duty to retreat. Some states, like Florida, chose to codify it explicitly because they had case law (or previous statutes) establishing a duty to retreat...but for a lot of states, this is the way it has been for a long, long time.
I believe the roots of castle laws go back even deeper, and this should make sense...where else can the right to self defense be stronger than in your own home? And in what location would the duty to retreat make less sense? You're already in your home. Where, precisely, are you supposed to retreat to? It would seem that, in general, you are only making yourself less safe by leaving your home.
Wonder how long this will last.
Also, yes, I should have wrote "No Duty To Retreat" specifically and expanded, but the link was pretty thorough and typing too much on Swype kind of sucks.
My Backloggery
I still think it sounded like "poon."
I think the issue with stand your ground laws is that, if there is a way to deescalate, you don't have to kill a guy and therefore aren't defending yourself. I also can't see any problem for SYG to address.
It is a doctrine commensurate with the way defendants in life threatening situations, with no prior training, actually act and think. It also simplifies the jurisprudential process. A jury spends time critically examining whether the use of deadly force was justifiable rather than whether a prior act constituted retreat or not.
You know, assuming there is a trial in the first place! And not one sort of begrudgingly held after public outcry! But that is a different nit to pick when it comes to the Martin shooting.
Many Americans in general are a crab bucket when it comes to ... well everything. They distrust everything that isn't just like them and hate it when anyone who isn't like them is successful.
Than why are we're #1, we're #1 and USA, USA!
If faith is just a silent tribute, mine is just a desperate act.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
So if someone gets better than us, they're number 0. You don't want to be number 0, do you? I thought not.
But I am a pessimist.
If it makes you feel better, in a court of law he doesn't, it's just he court of people who barely understand what's going on on the internet.
Neither one has to prove their innocence. Were martin alive, he'd have the same presumption on any applicable assault charges.
Removing Zimmerman's presumption of innocence won't make martin any less dead.
Doesn't he though? Barring the unlikely Zimmerman will stick with his current story; i.e. "I shot him, it was self-defense." Thus the question becomes, "was he defending himself?" And with presumption of innocence means the prosecution has to prove that Zimmerman did not have reason to fear for his life.
Is this not the case? I'm just an internet-lawyer, so I am open to new information.
No, it is, but here's the thing: that doesn't mean that Martin has to prove his innocence.
That doesn't mean that Martin isn't presumed innocent.
It doesn't mean that the onus is on Zimmerman to prove his defense because self defense isn't an affirmative defense in Florida.
It's almost like the law is a bit more complicated than us bunch of internet sher and mat locks seem to pretend it is sometimes.
Exactly. The court didn't kill Martin for being guilty. We can't confuse actions that happened outside the court with what happens inside. Considering an alternate outcome where Martin was shot but survived, neither Martin nor Zimmerman would have to prove their innocence. Martin would not need to prove he didn't assault Zimmerman, Zimmerman would not need to prove Martin did assault him. The default outcome is that both walk free.
The fact that Martin died does not change much in this regard. It just changes the potential end charge from, say, assault with a deadly weapon or attempted homicide, to an actual homicide. But shooting Martin would already be a use of deadly force, and thus already be subject to essentially the same legal issues. And same burdens of proof.