Let's talk about Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, and how unbelievably fucked up this all is

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/img/ba9/ba9057fff37097cb30f543005e3decda_l.jpg

Let's see some Senators wearing Mountain Dew shirts in protest.

they already teabagged, ho ho

why isn't this a clusterfuck yet, get on the ball here guys

knowing dude was wearing a Mountain Dew t-shirt is somehow simultaneously the most inconsequential and the most crucial detail of this story

Most luxury watched come with free Mountain Dew shirts.

watches

most luxury
watched
come with
free Mountain
Dew shirts

otm

Lol

great spam subject

but no really the teabagging thing makes it more horrifying not more funny

nothing about that is funny

Prettymuch fuck anyone who thinks this is funny, but much less so than the assholes who think this relates to Trayvon.

^judging you whilst drunk and smoking

http://blogs.denverpost.com/artmosphere/files/2012/04/ZimSkittles.jpg

http://blogs.denverpost.com/artmosphere/2012/04/13/george-zimmerman-rendered-skittles-denver-artist-points-candy-pointillism/4114/

y'all think zimmerman is a juggalo?

when are they gonna paint the REAL VICTIM out of Mountain Dew?!?!?!

ftr having been assaulted while drunk for my iphone by a group of masked up teenagers i wouldn't say anybody is asking for it

radley balko rounds up summaries/reactions to the affidavit (lots of left-legal bods herein):

http://www.theagitator.com/2012/04/16/the-zimmerman-indictment-reactions/

general attitude among those selected is it looks really thin

I'm no lawyer, but what do her claims in the charge matter before she gets into the court to prove them? I read all those take-aways, and the implication is mostly just that she's made claims that will be hard to back up. To which I say: so? Isn't that why we have trials? Between her claims and Zimmerman's, I think I'd at least give her's the benefit of the doubt. Which isn't to say, full credence. Just perhaps the benefit of the doubt, give the alternative is the neighborhood vigilante who killed a guy.

I don't see how the defense gets around the "Zimmerman pursued a guy in direct defiance of the police" angle

like the whole pursuit invalidates the self-defense claim

i have been thinking about that exchange a lot. from memory it is:

Dispatcher: Are you following him?

Zimmerman: Yeah.

Dispatcher: Yeah, we don't need you to do that.

Zimmerman: OK.

The dispatcher is speaking in this diplomatic/ironic kind of way. It's the way your manager would talk to you. Read literally -- and I'm going to make the assumption that GZ is a rather literal-minded person -- the dispatcher's words contain no elements of command at all. So GZ just saying "OK" may only mean he heard what was just said, not that he is agreeing to the implicit command not to follow TM.

the pursuit itself is kind of more damning than any perceived disobedience tho... no?

following someone is sort of the opposite of self-defense

"Affidavit = FAIL."

except that he's claiming he went back to his car, when trayvon randomly attacked him

xp

The parse is: was he explicitly told not to pursue? That's a legal distinctive, of course, to be debated. But then, I assume they also have recordings of the other 40 times he called the cops on people, and I imagine they will be fair game. Hell, for all we know he's killed someone before but was never arrested, given how this went down. Total conjecture, obviously, but who knows, considering we're dealing with exactly that scenario.

One of the elements of this case is GZ's persistent and regular calls to the police. Knowing that, here's some conjecture: that police dispatch generally or even this individual dispatcher knew who they were on the phone with at the time? And so were speaking with kid gloves, so to speak?

Kinda wonder how this dispatcher feels about all this. Had he just said "Sir, please stop following him," who knows...

xps I guess I'm taking it for granted that GZ's story of going back to his car and then being attacked is a lie. But I don't know that either.

it's about as ridiculous as the other assault defenses I've heard in court, tbh

(my favorite being "I was asleep, and then I was startled awake and flailed my arms a bit and that's how she got all the bruises on her face, the split lip, and her hair pulled out")

I'm tentatively assuming that the legal experts quoted in the Agitator piece goole linked know enough about the typical structure of such indictments and the evidence outlined in this one to speak with some authority, especially given what seems to be (?) their consensus on its deficiencies. Their collective suggestion that the indictment is surprisingly fact-light is at least somewhat convincing to me.

"Tentatively" is crucial here, though. Some of those quotations read more like politicized spin than credible "expert legal opinion". This ridiculous piece of trolling, for instance:

Last week saw the arrest of George Zimmerman for second-degree murder in the killing of Trayvon Martin. How far we’ve come since 1963: here the protesters, rather than being willing to go to jail for their principles, wanted the government to put a man in jail for their principles.

yeah no one wanted to put Lester Maddox in jail amirite

well it is radley balko so there are some libertarians in the mix there

The parse is: was he explicitly told not to pursue?

you'd have to be a total idiot (=much of the jury pool, likely) to think that he wasn't.

disagree. you'd merely have to make a distinction between advice and instruction. and even as advice, the dispatcher's phrasing pretty mild. zimmerman was never told directly/explicitly not to pursue martin, only that the police didn't "need" him to do that.

i guess now 9-1-1 operators are going to have to remember to say "DO NOT FOLLOW HIM"

Z's lawyer would, naturally, emphasize these tiny distinctions so the jury would be given every opportunity to let Z off the hook, if they were emotionally inclined to. This is what constitutes 'the law', as she is practised in real life.

you'd have to be a total idiot (=much of the jury pool, likely) to think that he wasn't.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, April 17, 2012 12:02 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

o_O

"you don't have to do that" = explicit command to all but the most complete of idiots huh

are you familiar with these people called "lawyers"?

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9F5RAk30cJ0/TNn-uWrs04I/AAAAAAAAAeM/BmCfnSVoels/s320/Unfrozen%2BCaveman%2BLawyer

"you don't have to do that" = explicit command to all but the most complete of idiots huh

no. it is, quite literally, an implicit suggestion. and that's all it is. if the dispatcher didn't want zimmerman to follow martin, they fucked up.

"Did you tell him to stay in his car?"

"No, but ..."

"So you did not tell him to stay in his car?"

"Any idiot would know what I meant."

"But you did not tell him?"

"No, sir, I did not tell him to stay in his car."

"What did you tell him, then?"

"That 'you do not need to do that'"

"You said 'Need to do that." But you did not explicitly tell him not to do that?"

"No, sir."

"So is it possible that he understood pursuit as an option, having not been explicitly told to stay in his car?'

"I suppose so."

"You suppose so? How about a yes or no."

"I guess yes."

"You guess?"

"Yes, he may not have understood he should have stayed in the car."

"Because you did not explicitly tell him to stay in the car? Is that possible?"

"Yes, it is possible."

"Thank you. Your honor, I rest my case."

(Please send Emmy c/o Josh in Chicago)

So if a 911 Dispatcher DOESN'T tell you not to follow somebody, then yeah, you can literally get away with murder.

I'm really hoping that isn't the case. This fucking law. If more states start to adopt it, we should just rename the country to USA: BEYOND THUNDERDOME.

This case is unwinnable for the prosecution because of the botched (which is to say complete lack of) police investigation and late arrest. No number of righteous dudes screaming about what any idiot would know can change that. The prosecution's actions, including the filing of an affidavit that doesn't amount to 2d degree murder prima facie, are not about getting a conviction -- it's too late for it, and Florida never wanted one -- but about preventing riots and Federal action against Florida authorities. We'll see if that works when the acquittal or dismissal happen.

If the system works correctly, there will be an acquittal; people should still think that Zimmerman is an asshole, fight to change the Kill Your Neighbor law, and held the police accountable for garbage like this (and keep challenging Police Worship wherever you see it.)

So if a 911 Dispatcher DOESN'T tell you not to follow somebody, then yeah, you can literally get away with murder.
― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, April 17, 2012 3:56 AM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh dear

disagree. you'd merely have to make a distinction between advice and instruction. and even as advice, the dispatcher's phrasing pretty mild. zimmerman was never told directly/explicitly not to pursue martin, only that the police didn't "need" him to do that.

this is almost worse than your Manson defense