As more and more evidence leaks out in the George Zimmerman case, I am beginning to wonder why he was charged with second-degree murder and how the state hopes to prove their case. On a very basic level, there is no doubt that Zimmerman took actions and failed to take others that would have prevented a violent confrontation. He’s clearly at fault. A boy is dead and Zimmerman is responsible for that.
It’s also clear that Zimmerman is a badly flawed individual who bullied a middle-eastern co-worker, made anti-Mexican remarks on his MySpace page, was arrested for confronting an off-duty police officer, and once had a restraining order put on him by an ex-girlfriend. The story he told the cops wasn’t believable in several respects, although I’m not sure any of those discrepancies matter legally.
It seems to me that Zimmerman only has to do one thing to win acquittal. He has to raise a reasonable doubt that his story is true about having his head bashed into the sidewalk and him feeling as though his life was in danger. I don’t see any of the other facts in the case to be relevant to the second-degree murder charge. It doesn’t matter why he suspected Trayvon Martin or why he followed him or who initiated the fight or why they initiated the fight.
From what I’ve seen, witness testimony conflicts about who was on top during the scuffle, but the best witness will testify that it was Martin who was on top, and the others are uncertain or are on record as being less certain that they appear to be now. The voice analysis appears to be inconclusive about who was screaming for help, although several witnesses will testify that they think it was Martin.
Zimmerman did sustain significant injuries but it’s hard to conclude anything from them. I can picture a scenario where Martin punches Zimmerman in the nose and then is tackled in response, pinned down, and uses his fingernails to scrape the back of Zimmerman’s head in an effort to fight back. As the police noted, if Zimmerman’s head had been slammed into the sidewalk, he probably would have sustained skull fractures, not minor lacerations. I don’t think the witness testimony will support the placement of the final confrontation on or near the sidewalk.
The prosecutors will not have much trouble impugning Zimmerman’s credibility. He claims to know the face of every resident of his community but not the names of its three streets. The prosecutors will easily establish that Zimmerman ignored the dispatcher’s instruction not to follow Trayvon Martin and initiated an unnecessary confrontation by not identifying himself as a neighborhood watchman. But I don’t see how they can remove all reasonable doubt that Zimmerman was not fearful for his life when he fired the shot that killed Martin.
Maybe that’s a problem with the law, but I think it’s more a problem with the charges. Unless they can come up with voice analysis proving that Martin was the one crying for help, I think Zimmerman will be acquitted.
Although the facts would remain challenging, I think a manslaughter charge would be easier to prove.
In any case, all I wanted was for Zimmerman to have to prove his innocence in court. If the trial is fair and the jury follows its instructions, I have no problem with either a conviction or an acquittal. I just wonder if the prosecution is being a little too ambitious.
As a retired Florida court reporter I believe the jury will be given the instructions on lesser included charges which would include voluntary and involuntary manslaughter. If there’s a Florida attorney around here maybe they could comment.
Does this help?
I think you are right. Florida does things a little differently than I am used to.
You wanted him to have to prove his innocence?
How un-American of you.
And remember this.
That he was charged at all was a cave-in not only to public pressure but to pressure from Washington and even the White House.
It had nothing to do with dispassionate evaluation of the situation and the law.
He was charged only because so many people wanted him charged.
People who knew nothing of the law or the details of the case and cared less than they knew.
People who were enraged because a white man shot a black teenager.
People for whom that was crime enough.
Help me out, now.
Is that racism, by any chance?
Uhm, dude, the guy stalked an unarmed kid with a gun, provoked a confrontation (we know that he was ordered to back off, and did not) and killed said unarmed kid. Killed him. As in dead.
And you want him to walk?
Seriously, a child is dead, and you want no charges at all? What, it’s just an “oopsie”?
I still don’t get the apologists for this guy. Not at all.
I’m all for legalizing pot, but I’ll have to draw the line at legalizing murder.
First of all, that a 17 year-old kid was killed while walking home from a trip to the 7-11 is a tragedy. That is the most important piece of this.
Zimmerman confronted him and killed him.
He ought to answer for that. And he ought to answer for it in court.
If he can convince a jury of his peers that he was justified in using force to save himself from severe injury or death, then he will be a free man, and I will not complain.
Based on the evidence I have seen so far, I think he will probably succeed, but I haven’t seen all the evidence and cannot evaluate the credibility of the witnesses.
What is not acceptable is for a man to take someone’s life with impunity. The facts in this case do not vindicate Zimmerman to a degree that he should not face any charges. The facts may leave enough reasonable doubt that he will be acquitted of murder and even manslaughter. We shall see.
I don’t believe it is racist for people to demand he be charged with causing a wrongful death. I do think it’s racist to blame the victim for wearing a hoodie or being a “thug” or to in any way justify his death based on the facts we know right now.
And if Zimmerman is proven innocent in a legal sense, that still doesn’t absolve him of behaving irresponsibly.
the point is, that Zimmerman does not have to prove his innocence. He is presumed innocent. The burden is on the prosecutor to show that Zimmerman committed a crime. Zimmerman can sit silently in the court room, answer to nothing, and still be found not guilty. I think you know this, but your choice of words is less than clear.
It gets confusing because I assume that Stand Your Ground is an affirmative defense, meaning Zimmerman has the burden of production, i.e., there has to be some evidence that that is what he was doing. But he does not have to use that defense. And he may or may not have the burden of persuasion on that issue: that is, maybe all he has to do is introduce some evidence, and then the prosecutor has to show proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the defense is bogus. Or maybe Zimmerman just has to show that the defense is valid based on a preponderance of the evidence. So it is not clear he has to convince the jury of even the SYG defense. A FL defense lawyer would know.
Regardless, he does not have to answer to anything and he does not have to prove anything.
Well, if you want to get nitpicky, let’s just use plain language.
He’s on trial. We know he killed Trayvon Martin, so that doesn’t need to be proved.
His defense team must convince the jury that there is at least a reasonable argument that he used justifiable self-defense. If they don’t, he will be convicted of murder.
I’d say he has to prove his innocence, wouldn’t you? Okay, technically, his lawyers have to prove it and “proving” it really only means raising a reasonable doubt.
But, in a real sense, he (or his lawyers) must convince the jurors that his actions were justified.
I think the objection wasn’t about how careful I was with language but with the idea that a jury rather than the police should decide his guilt or innocence. In a case like this, with this set of facts, I think the police have an obligation to let a jury decide. I don’t, however, think the prosecutor had to charge him with 2nd degree murder if the facts on that are impossible to prove. That’s why I raised the question that he might have been overcharged.
To get maybe more nit picky, as this played out, I wasn’t so much interested in seeing him charged and needing to defend himself in court as I wanted to see a sanitary investigation, including proper interview of witnesses, analysis of the “crime” scene, Zimmerman’s wounds, autopsy, etc., and an informed decision by the prosecutor of whether a crime had been committed and if charges were justified.
We can argue FL law another time, but as is it isn’t and never will be clear, if the law on the books was applied correctly.
And any outcome from the trial will be dubious.
That said, given the FUBAR I guess a trial is still the best course of action now to give whatever transparency that is still possible a chance.
BooMan,
You basically have it correct. Self-defense and insanity are affirmative defenses to murder, and the burden on the defendant to provide the evidence of self-defense or insanity.
Actually, I am with Barbara.
And it may yet come out that the circumstances were such that it was clear the self-defense claim would stick, or anyway should stick.
And maybe that’s what the Fla authorities thought, in the first place.
And that holds even if self-defense is “an affirmative defense.”
If the authorities are convinced from the start that only a bigotted or confused jury, or one not interested in sticking to the law, could refuse such a defense they do right to not bring charges in the first place.
I think you need get real about this case.
The prosecutor decided he didn’t want to press charges before any kind of real investigation was done in this case.
First you do the investigation and then you press charges unless it’s completely obvious that it’s case of self-defense.
You give your evidence to the prosecutor and the prosecutor decides what charges will stick and which ones won’t. Maybe the case can’t be proven and the charges are then dropped.
But you don’t just shrug off the whole thing like nothing happened.
And. I’m sorry, but getting your ass kicked for following someone around between buildings in the dark is not an excuse to kill anyone. Unless he was literally being beaten to death, he’s guilty.
“What is not acceptable is for a man to take someone’s life with impunity.”
But that is the point of the right to self-defense.
And any sort of justifiable homicide, for that matter.
One is not punished.
Impunity.
You may be right that the facts are such that he should have been charged with something to begin with.
But they might not be and I see no reason to just assume they are.
And as I understand it (I could certainly be wrong) people do kill others, from time to time, under such circumstances that they are not even charged with any crime at all.
And this is right, under the law.
People don’t generally kill other people when they know the police will be arriving in about 30 seconds. There are no reliable witnesses who can or will corroborate the key elements of his story. He’s on the phone one minute, told to stay in his car. He killed the guy a few minutes later. Trayvo’s on the phone the whole time with his girlfriend who says he was trying to get away.
You let a person go when it’s obvious that they acted in self-defense. In this case, that’s not obvious at all.
People who knew nothing of the law…
An example of “people who know nothing of the law” would be someone who is outraged to discover that a killer who raises a self-defense claim needs to demonstrate his claim in court.
No doubt. Or one who cannot bring himself to admit that sometimes that is not called for and even wrong.
Yes, people who say “But I have a good reason for killing that guy” should be taken at their word, and to make them demonstrate that claim in court is wrong. It’s just plain wrong.
wrong, wrong wrong.
He will be acquitted because in Florida it is legal to shoot people.
That’s cynical, although a little too accurate.
But I don’t think this case turns on Stand Your Ground at all.
It comes down to one thing. Can the prosecution prove that Zimmerman was not in fear of great bodily harm or death when he pulled the trigger. That’s it. Everything else is a distraction.
Now, how would they prove that? Most obviously, if the voice crying for help was proved to be Trayvon’s then it would indicate that he was executed, not on top of Zimmerman beating the crap out of him. But the tapes were inconclusive. If three were witnesses that place Zimmerman on top, that could do it. But the strongest witness says the opposite and the remaining ones have changed their story from unsure to maybe, which isn’t good enough. An examination of the wounds on Zimmerman’s head is the only remaining piece that really matters. Were those wounds caused by fingernails (a defensive act) or by getting whacked into the pavement as Zimmerman claims?
I haven’t seen any evidence either way on that, although the witnesses all placed the final confrontation on the grass. So, I think the trial may turn on this last issue.
That’s the wrong one thing. The one thing that matters is whether the jury wants to put Zimmerman in prison – if they do then the prosecutor will give them plenty of reasons to do so, and if not then the defense will give them plenty of reasonable doubt. This case will be won or lost on jury selection…
I seem to recall some legal commentary after the aquittal of Casey Anthony that Prosecutors over-charged and that led to the aquittal. That led me to believe that lesser-included offenses aren’t an option for jurors in Florida. But, not practicing in FL, I don’t know.
I think the Prosecution’s only hook for showing Malice is the fact that he got out of his car to pursue after the 911 operator expressly told him not to. They may try to argue that, once he took that step, whatever happens afterwards is irrelevant.
My tin-foil hat self thinks they may have over-charged because they think a conviction will be tough under any circumstances and they just want to look like they pursued the case aggressively.
What I don’t get is why “stand your ground” does not apply to Trayvon. He was being followed by an armed man.
It does apply to him, but it’s irrelevant. He isn’t being charged with a crime.
If there is a lesser included offense, then they may have overcharged as a way of allowing the jurors split the baby.
What you seem to be saying is that as far as the law is concerned it does not make any difference what either man was doing up to, say 2 seconds before the gun went off.
The “law” does not care that Zimmerman ignored the dispatcher, The “law” does not care that Zimmerman pursued an unarmed man, carrying a bag of Skittles, for 13 minutes.
But, the members of the jury might care.
Basically.
I mean, this is a self-defense case. That’s all it is.
And the only thing that matters under the law is what Zimmerman was thinking or experiencing when he pulled the trigger. Did he act with depraved indifference to whether Trayvon lived or died, or did he act to save himself from grave bodily harm or death?
Everything else is irrelevant.
I see it as you do. For all that’s worth.
Significant injuries? Never seen by a physician? Never treated in a hospital? Only tended to by his wife who has some health care training but is not an RN or MD?
Please.
.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."If he was standing on his neighbor’s property, then he was standing their ground, not his. Even if he was on his own property, he provoked the incident by appearing armed after calling 911, much like Zimmerman.
I saw Zimmerman’s video on TV. So, he provoked a fight, then killed the man he assailed in “self-defense”? I disagree with Booman. He should have been charged with felony murder because he killed Trayvon in the course of a felonious assault.
I don’t know about Florida, but in Illinois, stalking itself is a felony.