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

trial by ILX before anyone's even suggest bannedflag-posted

hm yeah he can still have a fair trial actually xp

fair trial more like fair game amirite

ABC’s George Will called the “Stand Your Ground” law a “bad idea” because it “confers upon citizens the illusion at least that they have something like powers exercised by highly trained police officers."

highly trained police officers?

WU, et al. v. CITY OF ROHNERT PARK, et al. 3:98-CV-00387-TEH: An Asian man holding a broom stick was shot and killed by Rohnert Park Police. Officers said he held the stick in a "martial arts" fashion. This was a highly publicized case in the Asian community. Case settled $1 million

there's also a case where an old guy shoots a young asian dude because he believes all asian people have martial arts skills (the guy survives, though)

The Miami Gardens teen who has become a national symbol of racial injustice was suspended three times, and had a spotty school record that his family’s attorneys say is irrelevant to the facts that led up to his being gunned down on Feb. 26.

fuck the miami herald. that bullshit IS legally irrelevant, and that's not an opinion that needs to be attributed to anyone. it's just simple fact. they're fucking scumbags for even reporting this shit.

miami herald article just came out: Trayvon was a known burglar and drug dealer at school with a history of anti social aggressive behavior

i'm just going to turn my back on humanity for the next six months

http://savingtherepublic.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/trayvon-recent-thug-zimmerman.jpg

^^ don't click if you just ate dinner

Wow. Go fuck yourself, whoever made that jpeg. Because nothing says fair like murdering an unarmed teenager.

how about some pics from the last month or so? just want to make sure we get rid of the bias here.

I like that URL tho

"You saw him. He had a screwdriver."

Josh you took the same line with DSK iirc. "Hang on, wait a minute, let's consider what we absolutely know to be true".. Am I remembering that right?

Totally, and I totally cop to that. And you know what? I'm still not totally clear about what happened with DSK, though clearly subsequent sleaze has eroded much extant ambiguity.

I should stress with this case, absolutely, there is no reason this kid should be dead. My devil's advocating has more to do with degrees of manslaughter than it does debating whether the shooting was justified. Point is, whomever above said Zimmerman lost the high ground (as such) when he left his property is totally right. But all this other stuff coming out might walk it down from first degree to something lesser, especially given the looseness of the ridiculous Stand Your Ground law and whether it can be proved Trayvon jumped the dude or not. It's not totally analogous, but you're not allowed to beat a guy up for following you, either, and if that can be construed as assault, then it invokes the stupid Stand Your Ground law.

Like I said, it's just a clusterfuck at this point, rife with paradoxes and legal contradictions.

nothing says "unbiased" like a photo of some dude who by all accounts isn't even treyvon, but w/e they all look alike amirite.

i mean oh man it took a few days for the foaming-at-the-mouth types to settle on a story, but now they're really on that. (thx, no doubt, to multiple "leaks" fro the pd).

Pd totally on the defensive, because aiding Zimmerman is their only hope of saving face in light of all their fuck ups.

How quickly the media has forgotten the call w/ his girlfriend that occurred moments before the shooting and us verified by the phone carrier. Y'know the one that COMPLETELY CONTRADICTS ZIMM'S STORY?

If Trayvon was a white Iraq war veteran, would he be suffering the same degree of posthumous character assassination? All signs point to "no".

i need to stop reading about this story. i don't think i can actually stomach the victim-blaming turn its taking in the right-wing media.

Like I said, it's just a clusterfuck at this point, rife with paradoxes and legal contradictions.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, March 27, 2012 12:22 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

kind of true, but like gbx said, these are existential crises to be played out in a courtroom, which is impossible as of now, because for some reason george zimmerman has not been charged with anything yet

But the police said their hands were tied! We don't want the police to break the law, do we?

Anyway, this shit will play out, eventually. Trayvon isn't getting any more dead. If there were ever a trial, such a thing is many months away.

Meanwhile, evidence disappears and eyewitness testimony gets more unreliable.

physical evidence

TS, potentially fishy witness department: Trayvon's girlfriend talking to him on the phone during the altercation (?), or witnesses who claim they saw said altercation? The law is not perfect and rife for misinterpretation, but eye-witnesses trump off-site cell phone surveillance, don't they?

What physical evidence has disappeared?

i don't think i can actually stomach the victim-blaming turn its taking in the right-wing media.

I hope you never read any media reports about sexual assault victims.

The physical evidence that wasn't collected by officers actually interested in conducting an investigation. We'll never know what it might have been. Footprints, blood stains, torn up lawn, whatever.

Also eyewitness evidence is notoriously unreliable, and the later the questioning, the worse it is.

Fashion advice from Thomas Sowell:

It is not often that I agree with Geraldo Rivera, but recently he said something very practical and potentially life-saving, when he urged black and Hispanic parents not to let their children go around wearing hoodies.

There is no point in dressing like a hoodlum when you are not a hoodlum, even though that has become a fashion for some minority youths, including the teenager who was shot and killed in a confrontation in Florida. I don’t know the whole story of that tragedy any more than those who are making loud noises in the media do, but that is something that we have trials for.

People have a right to dress any way they want to, but exercising that right is something that requires common sense, and common sense is something that parents should have, even if their children don’t always have it.

I hope you never read any media reports about sexual assault victims.

― Respectfully, Tyrese Gibson (Nicole), Tuesday, March 27, 2012 2:09 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well obv i have, and i can't stomach them either

dressing like a hoodlum has lately become a fashion for minority youths? and not, like, all youths, sine the invention of the teenager?

who are these eyewitnesses? neither CNN nor nyt is reporting zimmerman's story as anything other than zimmerman's story. nothing about any eyewitnesses seeing trayvon slamming zimmerman's head into the ground.

Do people like Geraldo and Sowell just conveniently ignore how many upper-class white women wear Victoria's Secret or Juicy hoodies? This line of argument is so infuriating.

I'm just bitter about this, because some people seem surprised about how Trayvon is being treated and the reality is victims are blamed all of the time. xxxp

i'm not surprised, just sickened

^^ otm

http://www.nationalreview.com/sites/default/files/nfs/uploaded/page_2012_200_sowell_square.jpg

the national review: your source for fashion advice

"I don’t know the whole story of that tragedy any more than those who are making loud noises in the media do, but that is something that we have trials for."

hmm, i guess you don't know anything about this tragedy because THERE IS NO FUCKING TRIAL AT ALL, THAT IS THE SUBSTANCE OF THE OUTRAGE, YOU FUCK.

late great: Any eyewitnesses, including fake ones. The ones interviewed quickly and sloppily (and in part ignored or corrected) by the police at the scene, the ones Zimmerman's defense team will produce if Zimmerman is put on trial, the ones the cops will produce if they are put on trial, etc. I simply mean from the perspective of good criminal justice, this case is already a disaster, and there is no putting that genie back in the bottle.

sowell is a world class troll

Takes one to -- no, I'll stop.

when will a conservative media outlet publish a style guide for minority youths on how to not be mistaken for criminals?

daily show had a good bit on that last night

if you want to avoid getting shot by white people you should dress nicely, like these folks

http://nicedeb.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/fruitofislam.jpg

http://www.highsnobiety.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/kanye-west-entourage-fashion-week-paris.jpg

there it is

but i suppose the right would argue that those cases could only be used to carry burglary tools

Also, why the hats? What are they trying to hide? Clearly they are up to something.

leopard print pants are clearly for camoflauge as they commit illicit crimes in urban paris

morning tv talk shows were dominated by the current Zimmerman defense arguments (Martin attacked Zimmerman, broke his nose), and the appearance of George Oliver, Zimmerman's (African-American) friend. The CNN Headline News anchor did not bother to ask Zimmerman's pal why Zimmerman did not listen to the police on the phone telling him not to follow Martin.

The police claim to have witnesses (plural) that back up much of Zimmerman's account. And yet, per the Sentinal piece: "There is about a one-minute gap during which police say they're not sure what happened." I believe this one minute, conveniently, is the point at which Trayvon allegedly hit him first.

I still want to know how long the girlfriend was supposedly listening in, at what point she signed off and missed out, because a lot of this story so far is a jumble of her account and the police/Zimmerman account, with these new "witnesses" leaning toward the cop/Zimmerman account (ie, he followed but was jumped, Zimmerman was the one yelling for help/getting beat up, etc.).

According to that same story (http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-03-26/news/os-trayvon-martin-zimmerman-account-20120326_1_miami-schools-punch-unarmed-black-teenager), Zimmerman was coming back from the store in his SUV when he saw Trayvon, then supposedly called 911, left his car and followed him on foot. So I guess he wasn't just lurking in his living room, peeking out the blinds. He was out and about, which I suppose (in vigilante logic) means keeping an eye on his fantasy perp.

Yeah, this should all serve to set race relations in this country back a couple decades or so.