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[Trayvon Martin]'s Violent Attack on George Zimmerman
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Until someone is charged with a crime you don't have a defendant. Zimmerman isn't entitled to any evidence while he is being investigated.
I have a gut feeling the nation is about to get Florida'd.
Choice pieces from court-
"The defense picked at the state for using the words 'profiling' and 'confrontation.'
Gilbreath admitted that the state has no evidence who started the fight.
There is also no evidence that Zimmerman didn't walk back to his car after chasing Martin on foot, as the defendant has claimed."
But- "However, he said that Zimmerman's statements, as well as his description of the injuries he suffered, are contradicted by other evidence in the case"
http://southflorida.sun-sentinel.com/news/os-george-zimmerman-bond-hearing-20120420,0,4802623.story
Murder II may be a stretch.... What a ride we are in for.
Potentially graphic/NSFW. Not sure if anyone posted these yet.
Based on what we know so far I think "imperfect self defense" seems to be a more accurate charge. Even this, I think, would be difficult to prove.
I did find this interesting, from the article:
However, he said that Zimmerman's statements, as well as his description of the injuries he suffered, are contradicted by other evidence in the case. That is from the State Attorney's investigator Dale Gilbreath.
The investigator is saying that the injuries Zimmerman says he suffered is contradicted by other evidence. Since his injuries seem to be consistent with the police report, and the picture that has been released I wonder what this is about?
Not sure how that slipped my mind. Having known a couple of ACTUAL photographers, it probably just became a natural thing that "Photographer = Real camera".
The rest of my post stands. Especially how the guy just now came forward?
To me, the fact that they're charging him with second degree murder says that this is motivated by politics, rather than evidence.
In a weird way, this makes me suspect that they don't have the evidence to actually convict him of anything, since if they did they would have charged him with manslaughter without any of the uproar.
Does that makes sense?
Probably shopping around for the highest bidder on that picture.
If faith is just a silent tribute, mine is just a desperate act.
ABC News exclusively obtaining a picture suggests they paid for it. Maybe he was holding onto it until he got a good price for it. Maybe the photographer was sympathetic to Martin, and did not want to release a photo that makes him look bad.
"Oh, that George Zimmerman .... yeah, I have pictures of him. I thought we were talking about George 'F' Zimmerman. You know, from Minnesota. My bad."
Xaquin's Manly Knitting Blog! Conquest Tactics .... a better CCG
YES. this is exactly how I feel.
That stuck with me like... Florida is about to screw this up royal.
Its only going to compound the tragedy.
People are starting to realize that this trial is pretty much the media pushing us to believe who's guilty and who's innocent. I'm not gonna jump to conclusions about guilt, but I think it's pretty obvious the media is setting it up so to make people believe Zimmerman is a terrible person.
When are we there?
Alan Dershowtiz seems to think that the defense/public was entitled to the picture of Zimmerman's bleeding head, or at least knowledge of it, at the time of the arrest - if the prosecution had it by then.
http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/04/20/dershowitz-prosecutor-in-trayvon-martin-case-not-playing-by-the-rules/
yikes. thats not cool.
It would be really helpful if NBC included what the poll question was, in their reporting on the results of the poll.
Because this isn't all that helpful.
I mean, Florida has lots of laws. Which crime was this poll about? Murder-2? Manslaughter? Assault? Committing a hate crime? Stalking? Discharge of firearm within city limits?
edit: apparently it's not a poll. It's some kind of program that quantitizes facebook posts, tweets, and posts on online message boards. I wonder if D&D is one of the boards they use...
To put this in perspective, they charged Casey Anthony with the harshest charge they could find and really didn't have a huge amount of physical evidence to back it up. They could have easily gotten her on negligent homicide or any other smaller charge but they went for Murder 1 because of public pressure. As we all know, they lost because of that. Well, that and the fact that the jury thought that CSI and Law & Order is how the world actually works. But still, we don't have the best record of doing things the right way.
When I was on a jury, some of the charges before us worked that way. The judge explained that for some of the charges, if we found not guilty, before even turning in our verdict we must also then deliberate and agree guilty/not-guilty regarding a specific lesser charge for the same offense.
There are of course a ton of practical reasons for this, but IMO one of the big problems with it is that it allows for the appearance of a compromise option. If there is any significant disagreement about the greater charge, human nature tends towards an offer of "ok how about not guilty on the greater, guilty on the lesser?" despite the fact that perhaps everyone on the room actually feels like it is either guilty on the greater or not guilty on all, and they ought to be deliberating instead of compromising.
Alan Dershowtiz isn't saying that they should have released the picture, only that the arrest affidavit does not mention it, and that it should. I read the affidavit, and it does not mention anything about Zimmerman's injuries. Only that, "Zimmerman confronted Martin, and a struggle ensued."
I dunno if they could have easily gotten Anthony on negligent homicide. The coroner couldn't even determine a cause of death. For all the state could prove in court, it's just as likely that the baby died of SIDS in the middle of the night.
Yes, that's what I meant by "knowledge of it". Dershowitz is saying that if the prosecution had the bloody head picture and failed to disclose it in the affadavit, that doing so was immoral/stupid at best, and possibly illegal.
Then they might as well charge him with Murder 1, some hate crimes, and jaywalking while they're at it.
I happen to think that he's very likely guilty of manslaughter. But I've seen absolutely zero evidence that even remotely suggests that murder is an appropriate charge. This is what is making me seriously reconsider that he's even guilty of anything at all.
Like others have said, the actual court case will tell us more than what we're all guessing. And we are all guessing.
Wasn't his claim a broken nose and a gash that required many stitches? If his medical reports show a bruised nose and mostly superficial scratches (That's a decent amount of blood on the picture, but it doesn't necessarily speak to depth/severity of wounds) it would reflect very poorly on Zimmerman.
I posit that said hobo has more credibility than Alan Dershowitz.
Setting it up? The guy is a terrible person. Full stop. Non-terrible people don't go out on neighborhood watch armed and looking for trouble.
Well, you have to understand that non-terrible people also aren't black.
"Money tends to corrupt, and lots of money corrupts lotsely" - Me.
What does your hobo say about the prosecution having (or not having) an ethical and/or legal responsibility to mention key evidence in their affidavit?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/19/new-account-zimmerman-told-cops-trayvon-s-last-words-were-okay-you-got-it.html
This is how voice ID work is actually supposed to be done, by comparing like samples. Not by comparing a scream against a calm voice, with each sample containing different words/phrases.
I agree, cops are terrible people. Always strapping guns to their hips and going out on patrol looking for trouble.
Soldiers too. Patrolling streets in Afghanistan with their M-16s and all...
Wow.
You know that cops and soldiers have killed unarmed people too, right?
God forbid there should be any nuance on a case-by-case basis. Broad brush strokes of good and evil are all anyone ever needs. Zimmerman (as well as those cops and soldiers) is a terrible person. Full stop.
But see, you're equating being a neighborhood batman to being an actual cop or soldier.
You're both being geese.
Lesser included offenses are a thing. It allows jurys to convict defendants of lesser crimes that are included in the nature of the charged offense. So if someone ran across the street illegally and then murdered someone and was charged with Murder I, the jury could find him guilty of Murder II but not jaywalking since jaywalking isnt an element of Murder I. In this case, since Zimmerman was charged with Murder II he can be found guilty of (I think) anything from Murder II to manslaughter/criminally negligent homicide, but I dont know Florida's homicide laws and Im too lazy to look them up so Im uncertain where the range of lesser included actually lays.
As for charging everything in the book and then going to trial, it doesnt really work like that. They need to have some grounds to charge him with a crime and the closest they came to a hate crime was the ambiguous 911 call and even that probably wouldnt be enough to convict him (although it would probably be enough to charge him, but again IANAL so...).
All these pictures show is that there was a scuffle, they dont indicate who attacked who.
Wow sensationalism. You should work for fox news.
Don't let the facts get in the way of a good racist argument!
what a damn shame.
It wasn't ambiguous. The word was quite obviously "punks."
Why did I check this thread? I knew it would just be depressing news.
That totally explains why a bunch of people heard otherwise and we spent like 10 pages going back and forth on what was actually said. Not that it matters since at trial its being stipulated that he said punks.
Is he saying that the police had the photograph and gave it to the prosecution and then the prosecution didnt alert the defense, or is he saying that the police botched the investigation and should have acquired/handed over information that they didnt?
From my understanding, he's saying that the prosecution knew of the photograph and didn't take it into consideration when submitting the affidavit to press charges, thus with-held evidence.
A damn shame if that's the case. I'd like everything laid on the table so the closest thing to the truth can possibly be determined, not have it thrown out just the prosecution was a group of corrupt, sleezy scum that made other lawyers look like saints. If Zimmerman goes free, it should be because he was proven not guilty (or at least because there simply isn't enough evidence to suggest otherwise), but because lawyers are pieces of shit.
I haven't been following this thread closely. What makes him think the defense didn't know of these photos?
A prosecutor charging beyond what they believe they can prove in court, in order to force a plea or convince a jury to convict on a lesser included charge, is unethical. The prosecutor is supposed to file each charge in good faith, based on what they believe they can prove in court.
But no one in America cares that overcharging happens all the time, because we're "tough on crime". And when it happens, it's usually against defendants who look like Trayvon Martin.
Actually, he's only saying that IF the prosecution knew of the photo and didn't take it into consideration when submitting the affidavit to press charges, they with-held evidence. That "if" is getting downplayed pretty heavily. (Sensationalism regarding this case? Who'd have thunk it?) As far as I can tell, ABC is claiming the prosecution did based on an unnamed "source," without an actual statement regarding it from the prosecution themselves. I can't imagine it'd be easy to prove that the prosecution knew of a photo that hadn't been mentioned anywhere until it was sold to the media a month later.
I'd bet that public opinion chart posted a while ago lines up more with some of the evidence flip-flopping (video shows Zimmerman's uninjured!/same video now shows Zimmerman injured! and the NBC audio debacle) in the media than anything else.
It's the prosecution that's being questions whether or not they knew about the photos, not the defense. I'd hope the defense would know because Zimmerman should be able to say "Oh, yeah, there was a guy at the scene three minutes afterwards who took some photos with his iPhone."
And Gaardean, I did say IF that's the case