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

If reasonableness isn't factored in, you're basically allowing people to use lethal force based on their own definition of what constitutes a "threat" (which is precisely what's wrong with SYG). are you willing to do that? I strongly recommend reading the case history (should be able to find via a google search, a Tampa newspaper put it together) of all cases that fell under SYG. In some cases, the initial aggressor was the one who felt 'threatened' and killed or shot the other party, and were not charged or convicted as a result of this interpretation. In some cases, these claims were dismissed by the judge. There's been no consistency.

I'm not even necessarily of the opinion that Trayvon initiated contact first 'validates' the shooting. Despite being taller, he weighed significantly less, and I doubt he could have killed him with his bare hands. If Zimmermann was having his airway cut off and in some imminent danger, than perhaps it wouldn't matter if Trayvon was armed, but the evidence (to me) doesn't support that. All we've ever had is Zimmermann's word. And even that's changed - their original story was that he did not pursue Trayvon at any time, until the audio came out confirming that he did exactly that.

which is to say, yes, most of us are of the opinion that George did profile and pursue Trayvon, either due to his own paranoia or other motivations, and killed him without proper provocation. That doesn't mean we believe that there's enough evidence to prove this in court, which barring some late development, there appears not to be.

i haven't ever had to shoot a stranger to stop him from killing me with his bare hands, but I have been in weird scrapes once or twice. can't imagine ever talking like this after.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/trayvon-martin-trial-quote-police-interview

“It’s continuous screaming,” another officer asks, “how can you be smothered?”

Damn good question.

“You think he might have seen you had a gun before he punched you?” the first officer asks.

Another damn good question.

The police at this trial have lots of motivation not to get a conviction and to obscure the truth. I think the best criminal law system is generally one in which police fucking about = defendant walks, but I acknowledge that's a hard line to hold when police fucking about is designed to let a bad guy walk, and I also think a good prosecutor who wanted a conviction (and I have no reason to think these aren't good prosecutors, although I have strong doubts that conviction is the goal of anyone paid by the State of Florida) would take a much harder line with the police witnesses than has been the case so far. Let's see.

At least one cop had a fucking clue:

Sanford Police Detective Doris Singleton: Did you, at that time, ever say to him “I’m neighborhood watch”?

Zimmerman: No.

Officer Singleton: Did it not occur to you?

Zimmerman: No, I said, I don’t have a problem. And I started backing away from him

Officer Singleton: But you kinda did have a problem, that’s why you were following him, you had a concern with him.

Zimmerman: I was scared …

Officer Singleton: Too scared to tell him … that you were neighborhood watch? You were afraid to tell him that?

Zimmerman: Uh, … yes ma’am.

Officer Singleton: Look, I’m not trying to put you on the spot, but these are the questions people are going to ask and will seek out an answer. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to say “Look I’m neighborhood watch, I don’t recognize you, are you staying here?”

Zimmerman: Like I said, he came up out of nowhere … so when he popped up, he just caught me off guard, and …

Officer Singleton: But can you see how that would frighten him? That you had been following him now through the whole park…?

which is to say, yes, most of us are of the opinion that George did profile and pursue Trayvon, either due to his own paranoia or other motivations, and killed him without proper provocation. That doesn't mean we believe that there's enough evidence to prove this in court, which barring some late development, there appears not to be.

― Neanderthal, Monday, July 1, 2013 5:33 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah it's a tough call. The more I read of his story and the more I re-read his story, it really does read like complete bullshit. It would be a tough call if I were on the jury -- he's pretty obviously lying about at least some details of the story, so is that enough to feel comfortable deciding that the real story is very likely 2nd degree murder.

not really, but yes

ok fine. fry the fucker.

I don't think I could convict based on the evidence given the burden of proof.

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Monday, July 1, 2013 10:06 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Wait are you inside the courtroom right now? Have you heard all the evidence?

hurting is george zimmerman

fuckin' punk

waterface there's this thing called 'television' see....

All I keep thinking about through this trial is how my parents bought vacation property in Florida and how they want us to come down and visit and in the back of my mind I keep thinking "is someone going to shoot me if I decide to go out to get Cheetos?" (nb I would never go out to get Cheetos because they're gross but you get what I mean)

I am not just happy with a trial. I will be pissed when this dude is acquitted, unless someone appears with some compelling evidence no one has yet seen that shows Trayvon tackling and strangling Zimmerman after Z gave up and started walking back towards his house. This is an emotional, revenge- and fear-based reaction that our judicial system is specifically designed to counteract and, right now, I honestly don't give a flying fuck. I believe dude is guilty and I believe he should be in jail. This is why I could never be on this jury.

waterface, I haven't literally looked at every single piece of evidence, but I think it's pretty clear what's out there. There's Zimmerman's statements to police, there's various conflicting witness testimony of varying reliability, none of which involves a clear contemporaneous view of what happened, there's whatever ballstics people can figure out from the gunshot, zimmerman's injuries, trayvon's injuries or lack thereof. There's the dispatcher call, which only gives a sense of the events leading to the events leading to the shooting. Unless I'm missing something it seems like the main things to go on are the physical evidence and the veracity or lack of veracity of his testimony. And it doesn't sound like the physical evidence is that conclusive but if I'm wrong someone point me the right way. So what's left as far as I see it is basically does Zimmerman's story make sense, and if not, is that enough to decide that he committed second degree murder. And his story doesn't make sense, so I think it's a close call. And a lot of the other stuff, as damning as it is, is kind of peripheral, e.g whether Zimmerman was racist, whether he was generally a little bit paranoid or quick to call the cops, etc. -- as much as that stuff makes it seem more likely to me that he's guilty, it's harder to get that stuff considered in court under most states' evidence rules, although I don't know Florida law specifically. But yeah, obviously I'm not in court and I don't know the case backwards and forwards and I could be talking out of my ass here.

All I keep thinking about through this trial is how my parents bought vacation property in Florida and how they want us to come down and visit and in the back of my mind I keep thinking "is someone going to shoot me if I decide to go out to get Cheetos?" (nb I would never go out to get Cheetos because they're gross but you get what I mean)

to be somewhat reassuring, Sanford is v much diff than the part of Florida you'd likely be going to.

if Zimmermann gets off IMO someone should intentionally commit a faux-mob execution at a restaurant he's eating at so that he has to waste the rest of his life in Witness Protection under the name "Perry Theroux-Peterman".

fuckin' punk
― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Can anyone explain to me how it went from "fuckin' coon" to "fuckin' punk"? Or was that confirmation bias or some such thing? sure sounded like "coon" to me but maybe I was listening for that word.

yeah I agree. He claimed it was "punk," and then somehow the media decided that was true, and I don't get it because it sounds nothing at all like "punk" to me and exactly like "coon." I mean if he claimed "goon" that would at least be plausible, although kind of anachronistic.

I vaguely remember back when that audio came out they had some "audio experts" on various news stations examining it and saying that he could have been saying "punk."

it was analyzed by voice experts and the like iirc. I never heard "coon", though I didn't hear "punk" either - it was unintelligible to me for the most part. But it definitely didn't sound like "coon" to me. I have to think George wouldn't be that transparently dumb, similar to Trayvon jumping out of the bushes and screaming "I KILL YOU!", I think it was more wishful thinking by those seeking his prosecution.

not that "fucking punks" is really any better, as it still is categorizing folk and evidence of his profiling, it just isn't as specific.

also I think the instance of "punk" tha twas described within the last few days was from his police interview 3 days later, not the initial 911 call (hwere he also allegedly said this)

"fucking punks" makes Zimmerman sound like he jerks off to Dirty Harry DVDs

As it happens I just finished reading Sarah Burns's book The Central Park Five this weekend, and thinking about that and this case and how our culture treats black and Latino youth, it makes it clear that nothing has changed since then. If anything, it's gotten worse, as evidenced by the Bloomberg administration's magical thinking about stop-and-frisk.

The documentary about the Central Park 5 is excellent

I cannot believe Linda Fairstein is allowed to practice after seeing that. The whole doc made me sick to my stomach (and I was here in NYC when that all went down)

yeah - i should have said excellent, and entirely, profoundly enraging.

I need to see the doc now. Every single page of the book made me angrier and angrier.

I'd like to read that too. Did they address the counter-claims by the detectives that they still believe the Five were involved? Granted, such a claim isn't surprising given that they are doing damage control, but just curious as I've only heard about the sentence vacation bit.

It's only addressed briefly in the book, but yeah, it's the standard, "This just proves that Matias Reyes, who never ever ever had accomplices in any of his other rapes, participated in this rape with them." Also a particularly toxic pile of mouth shit from Ann Coulter.

Meanwhile, LOL Florida: Cop Testifying At Zimmerman Trial Wore Military Ribbons She Didn't Earn

Combat veteran Jeremiah Workman couldn't believe what he was seeing: a police officer testifying at the George Zimmerman murder trial was wearing military ribbons.
“Am I going blind or is this police officer in the Zimmerman-Martin trial wearing ribbons that she doesn’t rate?” He wrote beside a picture he posted to Facebook.

Gina Harkins of The Military Times saw his posting and reached out to Workman, who fought as a Marine in the second battle of Fallujah and was awarded the Navy Cross for valor.

She reports that Workman noticed two ribbons in particular — the World War II Army of Occupation Medal and the Defense Distinguished Service Medal.

Harkins writes "Workman got a hold of [The Sanford Police Department] and said they told him they didn’t have their own awards system, so they went to the Army-Navy store around the corner and picked out Defense Department military ribbons to fit their own format. The WWII was selected, the police department official told Workman, because they knew there weren’t many veterans from that period alive so they didn’t think people would notice."

lol Sanford

I can reassure you, Dan, that no one in my condo eats Cheetos.

The New Republic ‏@tnr 11m
Is Trayvon Martin's use of "cracker" the equivalent of a white person using the N-word? John McWhorter responds. http://on.tnr.com/14L5Ciy

jesus fucking christ i hate that angle of inquiry

admittedly I've never lived in Sanford, but my grandparents did when I was a kid, and I used to do theatre out there. I don't know much about their police dept other than they seem very much like the Keystone Kops.

One time I accidentally set off the theatre's alarm downtown (an area typically swarming with police). I was surprised that it took them pretty long to arrive, and when they did, they basically took my word that "oh lol it was just a mistake" and drove off. Even though I was in civilian clothes and they had no reason to believe I was affiliated with the theatre. I would have expected them to be more curious, given that the one time I set my home alarm off by mistake as a kid, the police came to the house and asked for some proof of it being my place (which being a kid, I could just show the pictures hanging on the walls).

On another instance, a cop hit our stage manager's SUV (apparently a stop sign was obscured by construction), and knocked her wheel clean off. Naturally, they managed to pin it all on her, despite her perfectly valid argument that a combination of said obstruction and irresponsible driving on the cop's part lead to the accident. (I didn't even like this stage manager, either!)

yes, analogizing someone to a slavemaster with a whip is directly equivalent to implying they are subhuman

The New Republic

...and moving on.

I mean it's actually hard to think of a better way to demonstrate the difference between white and black "racism" than just to point out the difference between being called a slur that means a person who whips and a slur that means a person who should be whipped.

yes, analogizing someone to a slavemaster with a whip is directly equivalent to implying they are subhuman

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Tuesday, July 2, 2013 12:15 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

These kinds of thoughts are common-place in older folk, as they use a form of circular reasoning. My parents use it. They begin by asking a loaded rhetorical question - "Isn't all racism bad?", or the 'equal-playing field' approach. Then, if you introduce context, or pointing out that the n-word carries a loaded meaning given the country's history that the word "cracker" doesn't, the argument spins to "white guilt"; or 'slavery/Jim Crow was in the past, why can't they move on from that? It's their insistence on dredging up the past that's causing all of this!'.

Nevermind, of course, that the word's history gives it its context, regardless as to whether said person was alive when it was used in such a way, and such context can't be stripped from the word when we live in a society in which racism is still very present. So then if you point that out, they hop to the "b-b-but they use it themselves" argument (which I won't get into as nabisco summed this up quite hilariously and otm years ago).

And then they jump to the false equivalencies. "Well, a customer told me she wanted to give her business to a hispanic employee. THAT'S racist!". No, it isn't - minorities wanting to band together is understandable, much more so than a majority wanting to do so as that is exclusionary.

It's pointless arguing with these folk as they don't have the faculties to see beyond "doesn't A=B".

I have always associated "cracker" with saltines; slavemasters/whips never once crossed my mind

there's also too many Cap'n Save-a-Crackers out there who, for some reason, feel like it is a crime to admit that some of their own race are assholes. these are the folks that, when you point out a hideous example of racism against a minority, will always reply not by addressing the racism, but by going "WELL MY FRIEND BUBBA TOLD ME THAT A BLACK GUY WAS ORNERY TO HIM LAST WEEK, WHERE WAS THE OUTRAGE WHEN THAT HAPPENED?"

xpost lol

Before the Milwaukee Braves baseball team moved to Atlanta, Georgia, the Atlanta minor league baseball team was known as the "Atlanta Crackers". The team existed under this name from 1901 until 1965. They were members of the Southern Association from their inception until 1961, and members of the International League from 1961 until they were moved to Richmond, Virginia in 1965. However, it is suggested the name was derived from players "cracking" the baseball bat and this origin makes sense[citation needed] when considering the Atlanta Negro League Baseball team was known as the "Atlanta Black Crackers".

I mean

Black Crackers, y'all

I feel like my world has been turned upside-down

blackened crackers would be awesome

a nice salad bar appetizer perhaps

but yeah crackers are white, white people are white, the insult seemed pretty straightforward to me

IDK I always thought it was pretty clear it originated from whip cracker, even if that meaning has gotten buried.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_%28pejorative%29

this is fascinating, apparently "cracker" has been around since the early 19th century (I had no idea, I thought someone made it up in the 70s)

otoh we could both be wrong:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=cracker

I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas and Georgia, who often change their places of abode. [1766, G. Cochrane]