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

GZ created a situation where a situation wasn't, and that situation resulted in the discharge of a sidearm that fatally injured an unarmed person. He was negligent from the get-go and a manslaughter conviction should've been a slam dunk.

otm. I don't think there was enough evidence to convict him of murder but my god there should've been enough for SOMETHING. so sad/angry that someone can do what GZ did in this country and not be punished whatsoever. the fact that some people are gloating/cheering over the decision is truly sickening.

Well, it's official, folks: murder is legal in the state of Florida.

― del griffith, Sunday, July 14, 2013 1:20 AM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

basically. if you start a confrontation that escalates into a brawl, and then you shoot the other person dead, you should be alright. provided said other person is the only witness and you have demonstrable injuries (however minor) to attest to the brawl.

reminder to self: don't patronize any bars in florida.

i'd like to read a lawyer's, or someone smart at the NYer or something, take on the manslaughter charge

yeah when they introduced it (or rather when the judge allowed it), maybe it was too late? was the jury given instructions on what manslaughter entails?

http://abcnews.go.com/US/george-zimmerman-jury-asks-manslaughter-clarification/story?id=19657201

"May we please have clarification on the instructions regarding manslaughter," the jury wrote to Judge Debra Nelson this evening.

After consulting with the lawyers for both sides, the judge sent the jurors a reply that said the court cannot engage in "general discussions" on the charge, and added, "If you have a specific question please submit it."

i have nothing valuable to say about this but i'm sad tonight.

this is not bad i guess

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/law-and-justice-and-george-zimmerman/277772/

"May we please have clarification on the instructions regarding manslaughter," the jury wrote to Judge Debra Nelson this evening.
After consulting with the lawyers for both sides, the judge sent the jurors a reply that said the court cannot engage in "general discussions" on the charge, and added, "If you have a specific question please submit it."

isn't it a judge's job to clarify the description of a law or charge? at least to provide the statutory language?

was the reasonable doubt wrt to manslaughter GZ alleging that he was walking back to his car and Trayvon attacked him w/o provocation?

i think most lawyers agree that pressing for second degree murder was overreaching from the very beginning, done moreso for the sake of appearing to listen to public discourse rather than for legal feasibility

i think GZ murdered this kid. i also think TM was perfectly within his rights to start pummeling GZ in self-defense. i wouldn't have done that, but I'm a wuss that couldn't win a fistfight.

but as soon as TM did that, he effectively muddied the story. and that's probably why GZ was acquitted.

that's not to "blame" TM for his own death. but just to suggest the limitations of justice in a legal setting.

it's great that you think those things.

:/

"limitations of justice"

not a strike on you, but still a phrase worth emphasizing. fucking hell, tonight.

it's great that you think those things.

― circa1916, Sunday, July 14, 2013 2:47 AM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't know who you are but you seem to be determined to be an ass tonight. brava.

o

i don't know who you are but you seem to be determined to be an ass tonight. brava.

i'm a lurker non-entity, but i've been drinking and you delivered some weirdly hysterical posts tonight that i couldn't resist jumping on. cheap. honestly nothing personal.

For whatever its worth the usual suspects organized a thing in DC that became 200+ drawn from bars etc stress testing cop car windows

We didn't seek out white folks to mess with even as they yelled HE WAS FUCKIN INNOCENT at us, so I suspect you won't hear much on it.

To be angry at this jury is to miss the point. Zimmerman moved relatively logically in a white supremacist system that marks all POC as suspect. The jury moved logically on a case built on circumstantial evidence operating in a society where otherness is criminalized. The question to my mind is whether this is a logic we continue to accept.

i don't know who you are but you seem to be determined to be an ass tonight. brava.

i'm a lurker non-entity, but i've been drinking and you delivered some weirdly hysterical posts tonight that i couldn't resist jumping on. cheap. honestly nothing personal.

― circa1916, Sunday, July 14, 2013 1:32 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also drinking and i'm not scrolling up but for reasons i've reflected on when inebriated and not inebriated i can't resist joining an f u amateurist greek chorus.

xp HOOS so so so so so otm

Never been less happy to be OTM in a thread than in this case -- but the most important part of my most OTM post here: "h(o)ld the police accountable for garbage like this (and keep challenging Police Worship wherever you see it.)" has gotten lost in the initial reactions, and I hope (but kinda doubt) that that will change in the days to come.

agree w that

you can dance you can die having the time of your life see that girl watch that scene digging the dancing queen.

To be angry at this jury is to miss the point. Zimmerman moved relatively logically in a white supremacist system that marks all POC as suspect. The jury moved logically on a case built on circumstantial evidence operating in a society where otherness is criminalized. The question to my mind is whether this is a logic we continue to accept.

― BIG HOOS aka the denigrated boogeyman (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Sunday, July 14, 2013 3:42 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is essentially what i was saying. the case was narrowed in the courtroom to a few particulars that no one except the accused was in a place to verify. hence reasonable doubt. but "justice" was served only if you don't take into account the wider facts not just of the case but of american life.

no idea why i incensed anyone OTT. apparently there is a contingent here that enjoys hating me (or rather the ILX version of me)--for something i've posted in the past year, or for something from years ago, who knows? oh well...

the leaves are falling all around. time i was on my way. thanks to you, i'm much obliged. such a pleasant stay. but now it's time for me to go, the autumn moon lights my way. now i smell the rain, and with it pain, and it's heading my way.

sometimes i grow so tired. but i know one thing i got to do

Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Yeah, Coates is where I am at, but stops short of calling for pressure on the police, which I find frustrating.

i'd like to read a lawyer's, or someone smart at the NYer or something, take on the manslaughter charge

― k3vin k., Sunday, 14 July 2013 08:16 (4 hours ago)

http://gawker.com/the-zimmerman-jury-told-young-black-men-what-we-already-770650992

i agree with TNC too

The jury didn't like the Manslaughter charge, period, nothing more to say. It may have been winnable, particularly if it wasn't thrown in at the end of the trial looking like an afterthought -- but the prosecution was half-assedly pursuing murder charges for political reasons from the beginning. To the extent that angry people are calling for Zimmerman's and the jury's heads and not for the heads of the investigating police or the prosecutor or the Florida executive in any way, the prosecution did their job.

i agree with TNC too

there were def several of us that were calling for the prosecutor's heads last night! I hate people who take their anger out on a jury every time it delivers a verdict they don't like. they're civilians like you!

racist civilians like you

Well, we're talking about a state in which half the civilians think it's ok to act like Jack Palance in Shane, so..........

and the other half whine like Brandon de Wilde.

What the verdict says, to the astonishment of tens of millions of us, is that you can go looking for trouble in Florida, with a gun and a great deal of racial bias, and you can find that trouble, and you can act upon that trouble in a way that leaves a young man dead, and none of it guarantees that you will be convicted of a crime. But this curious result says as much about Florida's judicial and legislative sensibilities as it does about Zimmerman's conduct that night. This verdict would not have occurred in every state. It might not even have occurred in any other state. But it occurred here, a tragic confluence that leaves a young man's untimely death unrequited under state law. Don't like it? Lobby to change Florida's laws.

ALEC needs to be a household name, recognized and repulsive. not just for their influence on Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, but for the multitudes of other awful things they do every single day.

NPR drone asks GZ's brother how GZ is "feeling"

DEFUND NPR

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/1012001_686863228006994_1671977587_n.jpg

i'm mad about the decision too but that's in bad taste

so Facebook Purity, so glad to meet you today.

also took the opportunity to ban all instances of Macklemore just cuz

ALEC needs to be a household name, recognized and repulsive. not just for their influence on Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, but for the multitudes of other awful things they do every single day.
--Z S

thisthisthisthisthisthjsthis

they were ultimately behind the Texas anti-choice law too--Rep that introduced the bill is Texas ALEC chair

Interesting if predictable to me that the general liberal reaction I'm seeing (eg TNC) is along the lines of, "We can't really blame the jury, the law is what the law is, but this is obviously still wrong on its face." Whereas the right-wing reaction is just, vindication! No shades of, maybe there's something fundamentally sad about a situation that leaves an innocent kid dead and no one accountable. The narrative on the right is just that Trayvon deserved to die, period. That says a lot more than the actual legal outcome.

There is a bit of a defeatist response from the left, but I can't tell how much of that is due to feelings of helplessness due to the difficulty and unlikeliness of seeing this SYG repealed, or an actual view that the status quo is 'fine' and that this was an aberration.

What makes me sadder is that we, as humans, can't even all agree that the situation is a tragedy. At least with the Casey Anthony case, circus trial aside, at the end of the day, we could all agree that Caylee Anthony dying was a tragedy, at least.

While the story is murkier here, one would think at its core that a story about a pair of upstanding, loving parents that lost their 17-year old son would be seen as tragic by us all...regardless of our opinions of what led to it. But it isn't the case. The reported celebrations of Zimmerman's "not guilty" verdict are more than a shade creepy. What is there to celebrate? Had Zimmerman been prosecuted, this wouldn't have been a day of fireworks and parades, but more a feeling of peace that Trayvon got justice..which wouldn't at all nullify the sadness of the situation.

Trayvon was dehumanized throughout the last 1.5 years, called a 'thug', painted as a subhuman monster, all in a method to legitimize the shooting and suspend remorse. Many didn't even feel empathy for Trayvon's surviving parents, some folks even dragging their names into the muck. To these folk, this not only 'wasn't a tragedy', but for some, something to celebrate; like some kind of 'victory' was won in legitimizing a vigilante's actions.

In the aftermath, there's always a scramble to preserve the status quo. We shouldn't attack those who supported Zimmerman's innocence, for merely having a "difference of opinion". To that I say "fuck that". I don't mean folks who thought the evidence didn't support a Guilty verdict, but those who firmly believed Zimmerman was in the right. I will think those folks are stupid and tell them they are. Likewise, it would be unfair to indicate that all who supported Zimmerman are racist, but it would be equally ignorant to deny that this was a driving subconscious force with many of them. Those folks that want to trod out "we didn't have all of the facts the jury did", ignoring that the trial was televised and that many folks were very well educated on the same facts should equal an instant gasface.

While I don't condone violence (or riots), I think the time for "civility" has ended.

The other sad line item is just how easy it was to swing public opinion. In the earliest reports of the Trayvon case, the sentiments were much more "pro-Trayvon" in that the majority all felt it was an injustice, and only a vocal minority sided with Zimmerman.

As soon as pictures of Zimmerman's "bruises" showed up, that's when Zimmerman began winning more supporters in droves, when it really was merely an unimpressive piece of evidence that confirmed something that we already knew; that there was a conflict, at some point, prior to the shooting. It shouldn't be that easy.

I think one thing that has to some degree been overlooked in the (understandable) focus on race is how much this entire scenario resonates with the 2nd Amendment brigades. The idea of living in society teetering on lawlessness in which bold individuals must take action against interlopers in order to protect themselves and their community, with lethal force if necessary (and it will often be necessary) ... this is basically the dystopian/apocalyptic fantasy of the modern suburban right wing. And it's a fantasy unfortunately undermined in recent decades by the facts of declining crime rates, rejuvenated urban centers, all of the things that make life in housing-tract compounds seem ever more preposterous. So a case like this was not just a matter of protecting racial territory, it was more broadly (to them) about the right -- and more to the point, the necessity -- of taking the law into their own hands, of living outside the bounds of the corrupt coddling state and defining their own reality.

the evolution of the right wing stance on this case from a year ago has been interesting and horrifying to me - when the story first finally went 'viral' (for lack of a better term, but as w/ any initially local news story the first few stories i read about zimmerman/martin were of a 'why isn't this a huge national story?' nature, and then it was) there was some consensus that at the very least a tragedy had happened here and the defensiveness surrounded the usual 'this is gonna be an excuse to take our guns' wailing that arises any time something occurs that points out how fucked our gun laws are and the usual 'why they gotta bring race into it'. the criticism of police handling of this was so minor that rightwing talking points didn't even waste much time defending it. i can remember the week of erickson arguing that this case didn't have any bearing on stand yr ground debate cuz zimmerman wasn't acting in self defense, trayvon was (in retrospect amazing that he didn't go the extra mile into 'if he had had a gun he'd still be alive today'), hannity hadn't gone full 'zimmerman is a national hero' but he knew a white guy might be railroaded into a murder charge just for killing a black kid and he knew that's not right i thought this was america, by that friday the right realized that is obama had a son he would've looked like trayvon so obv he deserved to die. the year since has seen it blown up into part of obama's war on white ppl - obama using the doj to stage fake protests at taxpayer expense, that 'son' quote being routinely described as incredibly hateful and proof that obama is the most racist president america has ever had, etc. this is par for the course, what's disgusted me more are the smear jobs on trayvon and his family and the increasing glee the right has taken that this kid died and more 'hilariously' some ppl think that's a bad thing
(this from an nro guy - https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BPHRv5ECQAAuHP5.png:large).
the parallels w/ the emmett till case on this particular front are uncanny.

A friend wrote this:

Bad Liberal
July 14, 2013 at 12:25pm
I'm a bad Liberal.

By now, my sainted mother would have forgiven Zimmerman. MLK noted that only light can overcome darkness, that only love can overcome hate. Gandhi would have had and encouraged a peaceful response. The Christ of the bible would turn the other cheek and exhort us to love our enemies. The Dalai Lama might note that what is is and cannot be undone. Various other Liberal icons would counsel near infinite variations on those themes.

I know that GZ is himself a mother's child. I know that I do not actually want to watch the light go out in his eyes, up close and personal. I know that Zimmerman's life has not been enhanced in any way by his actions - as such, I would be quite surprised if he did not regret what he did from the beginning. I know that Trayvon was a seventeen year old urban American male, not an angel in isolation. I know that nothing is going to bring Trayvon Martin back. I know that my Mother's greatest fear, bigger than any fear she had of spiders, rodents, snakes, or white people with ropes, was the fear of having to bury one of her children. I strongly suspect that no amount of prison time for Zimmerman, no number of millions of dollars a civil suit might award, would make Martin's parents sleep better at night, would stop them from questioning the advice and teaching that they gave their son, would make them feel better about their son being tragically dead.

Though I am actively trying to not be bound by these limitations, I am an imperfect product of my environment. I am an urban American male. I am ex-military. I have been a seventeen year old. And so, I still have fantasies of justice achieved through violence. The teachings of those Liberal icons that I genuinely admire and aspire to emulate are relegated to the the academic. My gut says that somebody's ass needs kicking. The strange thing is that I am neither angry nor surprised. While I wanted a different outcome, I recognized acquittal as a very likely possibility. It is a cold and insincere dream that those hypocritical parents that I know, those cheering the acquittal as though GZ were some sort of hero, get to face a situation like Trayvon's parents are facing so I could know what they really believe.

I am a bad Liberal. I am quite aware of the teachings that I should treat others as I would want to be treated, that I should value others as I value myself, that I should value other's children as I would value my own. But I truly believe that if I had a child who was not engaged in any illegal, immoral, or nefarious behavior that was stalked, accosted, and killed by an armed adult, I would want to stalk, and kill that mother's child in such a way that he understood why he was dying, that I would indeed watch the light go out in his eyes up close and personal. I THINK the teachings of those Liberal icons would eventually win out but I really do not know and hope against hope that I never have to find out what I would really do.

I did not closely follow the trial. I do not pretend that this case will have any more impact on my life than any of the other recent media circuses. I know that an unarmed minor child who was minding his own business was stalked, if not hunted, and eventually killed by the semi-automatic handgun armed stalker who had been told by authorities to not stalk the child. Those facts are not disputed. Did the child actually physically attack first? We can only know what GZ says about that. Did the child gain the upper hand and try to kill his stalker? We can only know what GZ says about that. What would I do if I had a child and he was killed in this manner? I really do not know.

I know that as it is, I am a bad Liberal. It might be that given sufficient motivation, I would be worse, a lot worse.