so who else is watchin the zimmerman trial ??

[frenchy]

i've seen bits and pieces of it but i'm watchin these talkin heads now who are sayin that john good the last witness who actually did see zimmerman on the ground and treyvon on top whoopin him mma style ( which means mixed martial arts like ufc or ultimate fightin champinship ) has opened the door for the prosecution because he said maybe zimmerman could have wriggled free . which would mean that he didn't have to shoot trevon because he wasn't in imminent danger .. as if he could have just gotten away as easy as snappin your fingers ..but the thing is tho if you knew what zimmerman had said in his deposition when he was arrested ( yes he was arrested , a lot of people think he wasn't but he was , and he was questioned for 5 hours , and they took his clothes for evidence ) he said treyvon saw the gun in his jacket in the holster and tried to take it from him and they grappled over the gun and it went off .. so i'm not sure how zimmerman could have prevented that unless he just handed the gun over to a guy who's beatin your brains out .. but does that make sense to anyone here ?/ hey lemme give you my gun so you'll stop beatin me and you can shoot me instead ok?? ..  they should get some guys who have done their homework on this event to commentate .. 

[frenchy]

i understand p.a .. lets just agree to disagree ok .. i don't dislike you or find you an evil person .. i'm sure there are plenty of things we could agree on .. we don't have to agree on everything and if we don't i'd never hold it against you .. you have a right to feel the way you do and to express it here always .. i wish you well ..  

[frenchy]

and yeah p.a. i think if treyvon was white and wearin a polo shirt or a t shirt or a hoodie or a three piece suit with a matchin tie if he was beatin the snot outta zimmerman like that and it made him think he was gonna be killed then zimmerman could have shot him if he went for his gun .. the black thing is just a distraction from the facts .. 

[P.A.]

As usual you miss the point. Zimmerman profiled Martin and followed him. If not for that there would never have been a fight. And, as I have said before Martin also had a right to defend himself.
It is what happened before the alleged "fight" that really matters. Anyway it is over and a murderer is walking the streets and unarmed teenager is dead.
I will comment no more. It makes me angry.

[Mickchick]

This is a tragedy all the way around.  A young man is dead, another man's life has been ruined.  I was a prosecutor in Georgia, and the laws apparently ARE different there because we didn't have 1st and 2nd degree murder for starts, and things were allowed (regarding opinions that should have been solely a question for the jury, NOT the witnesses on the stand) that would not have been in Georgia.  I fully agreed that this was a case that needed to be taken to the Grand Jury and, once the Grand Jury indicted, to trial by jury because it was purely a self defense case which hinges on the defendant's state of mind - did he reasonably believe that he was in danger or death or serious bodily injury, and that is a question for the jury to decide, based on the physical evidence and credibility of the witnesses. 

I personally had some questions and reservations about Zimmerman's credibility, but I WAS a prosecutor and I don't often take a suspect/defendant's statement at face value.  I've also run into a concrete post chasing my dog into the parking lot, and it knocked me down, almost knocked me out, and I couldn't think, let alone react.  That was a single blow to the head.  IF someone had hit me, or knocked me down, and was on top of me, punching me, I wouldn't have been in a position of being able to defend myself, and I certainly couldn't say what I would have felt about my safety.  I, however, also needed stitches to close up my head wound, something Zimmerman apparently didn't, so it would appear that my one injury was more severe then his, but ... it all came down to whether the jurors, based on the evidence and the testimony of the witnesses that was legally admitted (as opposed to everything that anyone watching the television that saw the motions and arguments outside the presence of the jury), based on their determination of which witnesses, and what parts of their testimony, they believed, and what the jurors believed regarding Zimmerman's belief that he would have been seriously injured if he hadn't defended himself.  As Frenchy said, Zimmerman (and any one of us) didn't have to wait til he was injured at all, let alone seriously injured, to defend himself.  We are all granted, by law, the right to defend ourselves against injury and death.  We don't have to wait until we ARE injured to defend ourselves, and I KNOW, from personal experience that one "lucky" punch to the back of the head CAN kill.  A teenager sucker punched a younger teenager getting off the school bus where I used to live.  The younger boy died.  One blow.  One blow can make all the difference as to who is dead and who is alive.  It has nothing to do with the race of the people involved.  We all look the same inside. 

Personally, I would have slept just fine prosecuting George Zimmerman for the death of Trayvon Martin.  I can see where the State's attorney thought there was evidence of ill will based on his statements to 911 and I don't have a problem with the belief that he was biased and possibly a wannabe, BUT ... I have to admit I think that all he wanted to do was stop Martin from following through on what Zimmerman believed was burglary.  I don't think he was following him with the intent of killing him.  I think both of them took actions that were unnecessary but not initially criminal (for example, Zimmerman following Martin to keep watch on him was not illegal though ill advised, and I can also understand could have been threatening to Martin.  Martin not running for home when he realized he was being followed wasn't criminal, but it was ill advised - if he hadn't confronted Zimmerman but had run home instead all of this could have been avoided.  Neither one of those decisions was a criminal act, however.  And then, when Martin started hitting/punching/pushing Zimmerman and Zimmerman ended up on the ground, injured to whatever degree, he panicked and since he had a gun, which he legally had a right to carry, he shot Martin.  And THAT is purely a question of self defense and whether the jurors believed he acted in self defense.  The defendant didn't have to prove he did, the State had to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he didn't.  I had a sinking feeling early on in this case that the State was not going to be able to carry that burden.  And that, folks, has nothing to do with race, either.  IF this case was decided solely on race, there would have been a mistrial based on a hung jury - all it takes is ONE juror to hang a jury, and there was a black juror.  Apparently, even the black juror couldn't find enough legal evidence to support a conviction (IF you want to believe that everyone decides things based on race instead of on evidence).

The good news, to me, is that the media did not win, the threats of riots did not influence the jurors' decision making process, and whether I personally would have come to the same conclusion the jurors did or not, it certainly appears to me that they took their job just as seriously as any juror I've ever seen, and they listened, viewed, and weighed the evidence only to find that the State failed to meet it's burden of proof.  I hate it that the State wasn't able to prove it's case, but I'm glad to know that the jurors upheld their oaths. 

For what it's worth, I personally disagreed with the outcome of more than one trial I've sat through from beginning to end, as well as the Casey Anthony trial and the O.J. Simpson trial, but I still believe in the sanctity of the jury verdict.

[crestofwaves]

Interesting to read what someone in the "business" thinks about this.  Thanks, Mickchick!

[Merry]

Well, I certainly don't have the experience in front of a court that you have but I think that Zimmerman did provoke Martin in some way and perhaps he was too young to understand how to handle it better. That said, I don't agree that Martin was an "unarmed boy". The media tries to make him sound harmless BECAUSE he was 17. At the age of 17 , my first husband was in Viet Nam killing people. Like I said , I haven't been following this and don't know all there is to know about the case.( He could have been my son too. And still could even though my son was a poolie in the Marines at that age. His father flipped him off his mattress on his 17th birthday and took him to the recruiter. My second son ran away from home for his 17th birthday because he said that he didn't want to learn how to kill people. I said alright, I believe it should be your choice.) Anyway, I wish the whole thing never happened. And I'm sorry that they lost their son. If I have the time, I'm going to read more about this.

[Merry]

What if knowing that he possessed a firearm, Zimmerman set Martin up for a confrontation in order to kill someone. There was a bully calling me names in our neighborhood once and I have no idea who they are, what the problem was, ect. But I just kept my distance because I didn't know if they had a conceal and carry and whether it was in a sense , a trap.