?

Of course.  We don't need to debate this here.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/george-zimmerman-father-speaks-defense-son-article-1.1049933?localLinksEnabled=false

This, or sent for treatment. He seems like a nutjob.

His father: “He would be the last to discriminate for any reason whatsoever"

Meaning, he's trigger-happy about white teenagers as well.

Why can't we debate it.  He is roaming free after all.

Go and catch him, then.

A 17 year old kid that looks....like a 12 year old kid attacks you after you stalk him.  You can't brush him off.  You can't subdue him?

No, you shoot him.

The shooter is nuts.  He needs to be custody.

WE GET IT BOT

WE GET THAT YOU GET IT.  A major national issue, we can't have a discussion with more than five posts?

Because you'll either have everybody agreeing or somebody making an ass of themselves (DrH?). Either boring or depressing.

Why don't you come up with a more interesting question about this topic?

For example: are neighbourhood watch programs useful? It seems to have drawn a nutjob guy to murder.

That is a slightly interesting question.  But how about this,  what happened that night?  You have a shooting, a shooter and a victim are on the scene. 

What did the cops say to the shooter.  He must have been armed and he just killed a person.  What did they say to him?      Did they show his right to carry license? Did the homicide detectives arrive?  What did they say?

Maybe he was a vigilante, didn't they think to detain him for a couple of hours?

Yes, absolutely, for man-slaughter if nothing else.

It's a mysterious case. Not the details of what happened, or that he should be arrested. The mystery is why the police are so hesitant to investigate this or arrest Mr. Zimmerman.

It seems crazy that they wouldn't arrest him.  Even if Zimmerman is completely justified in some way that should be decided at trial.

+1 Genius.  Are they so afraid of changing their mind now?  The police chief has already stepped aside because of this yet Zimmerman is still free.  It doesn't make much sense.

He will be arrested, because now Obama is promising an investigation.

the 911 call.  "are you following him sir? we don't need you to do that."

obama.  "my son would look like him"

He's said to be in hiding. Maybe they just don't have a clue where he is?

The police report says that Zimmerman got out of his car and then was attacked.

The 911 report has him talking with the guy, "Sir we don't need you to follow him"

In his own words, Zimmerman is following/pursuing Trayvon.  That means that Zimmerman is not protected by the 'stand your ground' law in Florida.

It is the fact that Zimmerman ignored the 911 operator's advice not to follow Martin that former Sen. Peaden says disqualifies him from claiming self-defense under the law.

"The guy lost his defense right then," Peaden told the Miami Herald. "When he said 'I'm following him,' he lost his defense."

Civil Rights violation. The feds stepping in again when a southern state fails.

I thought southern states were "failed states" by default.

It's not a completely standard redneck lynching scenario though. What is Zimmerman's ethnicity? He's not a white guy, looks hispanic. Is he Cuban?

His dad claims he is Hispanic.

I love how everyone is playing the race card cuz the kid that was shot is a colored.

Deducting all of the race crap, targeting and profiling, hate crime bullshit, etc. --- the guy should be charged with manslaughter at very least.

You don't think it would be different if an angry black man shot a friendly white teenager, do you?

@somebody
I hope that was a joke...if I didn't get it, my apologies.
Imho, I know FL has issues on this, but come on, 'stand your ground law', are we back in wild fucking west?

It's not a wild west thing. It's not that difficult to understand:

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/arlington/headlines/20120323-in-arlington-jeb-bush-says-stand-your-ground-invalid-in-trayvon-martin-case.ece

The asshole chased the kid and shot him. The stand your ground law applies to someone who is being confronted. It says that that person has a right to stand their ground and to use deadly force if being attacked.

I couldn't agree more with the "stand your ground" law.

But I am not sure that Zimmerman was even thinking about this doctrine. He seemed to have been juiced up on getting even with someone who had been burglarizing the area. And anyone he found would do as a target. He wasn't thinking about self defense - the 911 tapes have him saying that he's going after the kid after being told not to.

Manslaughter. It's really simple.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law
here we go, back to centuries...
You know what, lets get guns, all of us. Just shoot the fuck of ourselves and see who's left. I'm sure I won't...

Really if you want to ignore race as an issue here all you have left is a failure of gun control laws.

> Manslaughter. It's really simple.

Wait, how is that not murder?

Unpremeditated - unless he's got a disk full of hate on his PC or communicated an intent. IANAL.

Manslaughter will do to lock him up with his target demographic for a while.

Unpremeditated has nothing to do with it.  It's manslaughter if he had no malice or intent.  He followed the kid and shot him -- I think it would be hard to argue that he accidentally shot him.

First-degree murder requires premeditation so this would be second-degree murder.

I'm surprised that so many people here aren't willing to call this murder.  A kid went to the store to get skittles and somebody else shot and killed him.  Why pussy-foot around the word murder?  A kid is dead for nothing.  A kid is dead because some disturbed individual wanted to be vigilante.

it was murder.

I'm unfamiliar with the concept of degrees of murder.
But if there was the slightest chance of him walking from a murder charge, on technical or insanity grounds, I'd strive to give him the maximum for manslaughter. Seems there was a struggle. 

And yes NW carrying is vigilanteism, straight up. This needs addressing.

I've not been successful finding his side of the story other than "he claims it was self defense". It sounds an impossible claim, but it's impossible to judge on its potential merits without any specific details.

According to this article, his father is a white retired judge and his mother is latina:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-george-zimmerman-20120323,0,6326075.story

Zimmerman felt he was acting in accordance with neighborhood watch. He was trying to become a police officer. With a judge as a father and having taken classes with the goal of joining the police, it is likely he is very familiar with nuances of law, what is required to claim self defense.

I agree, based on what is thought to be known, it's second degree murder. However, in a defense, he may try to present a reasonable argument that he believed he was acting in self defense at the time. The jury may or may not go for it.

One thing not mentioned in these discussions is that what happened here happens quite regularly in various states of the US with one party being a law enforcement officer. In nearly every case, no charges are filed and any investigation, when one even takes place, rules that the shooting was justified. The only difference here is that he was not actually LEO at the time, only studying to be one.

To be serious for a moment, I think in cases like this the question should be asked if the victim brought anything worthwhile to the world.  For instance, if the kid shot was some hoodlum from the ghetto, and the shooter was from a well-to-do family and going places, then I would say who gives a fuck?  If the kid shot was also from a well-to-do family then it might give pause for concern, but seriously we need to start weighing the worth of people in judging whether taking of a life is worth the hassle of investigating/prosecuting.  Despite the lies we've been fed all people are NOT created equal.

Bot+++

murder, pure and simple.

A few people here don't know the details of the case but are still commenting.

I uttered "manslaughter" with the idea that this idiot probably, in all likelihood, didn't sit around for days before this event thinking about blowing away black kids who wear hoodies.

After reviewing this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_%28United_States_law%29

I think this guy is sitting somewhere between Second Degree Murder and Voluntary Manslaughter. You could make a good case for either. I think it tends more toward second degree murder because the shooter made a point of pursuing this kid based upon his assumption that he looked like someone in a group that he believed would commit break-ins.

In other words, he was not provoked through understandable anger and was not enticed to follow the kid.  He decided it, but he did so for reasons that were retarded and were based upon his notion of reality.

Second Degree Murder, then.

A kid was killed.  Another person had a gun and killed the kid away from his home.

There is no way in America that a murder doesn't go investigated and that person isn't detained for a short period of time.

That alone is strange.

It is a little different and several thugs are on your property.  They have guns or baseball bats. They are large, older and breaking into your house.

You shoot and someone dies.  They STILL may detain you and ask about what happened.

...

Florida's "stand your ground" law says that Zimmerman cannot be arrested, charged, nor sued civilly by the deceased's family over this case.

I expect darkies to riot because some anglo-named hispanic shot Martin.

The creator of the law says otherwise.  Zimmerman was pursuing the 17 year old.

Yes.  Zimmerman using that law as justification gets shakier and shakier, as time goes by and revelations about cell-phone calls emerge.

From a more recent Miami killing, which should give you some idea of how courts in Florida currently deal with the Stand You Ground statutes:

>Judge Beth Bloom threw out the murder charge against a man who chased a car burglar for more than a block and then stabbed him, killing him.

>The case illustrates the difficulty police and prosecutors statewide have experienced since the 2005 law eliminated a citizen’s duty to retreat in the face of danger, putting the burden on a judge, not a jury, to decide whether the accused is immune from prosecution.

>In Sanford, police have cited the Stand Your Ground law in their decision not to arrest a neighborhood watch volunteer in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, 17. A Seminole County grand jury will decide on whether the man who shot Trayvon, George Zimmerman, 28, should face homicide charges.

>The law also bestowed immunity from prosecution and civil suits on people who are deemed to have acted in self-defense. The Florida Supreme Court has said that the question of whether the immunity applies in each case should be decided by a judge, not a jury.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/21/2706789_miami-judge-stabbing-in-the-back.html#storylink=addthis

From a longer analysis:

>Numerous cases have set the precedent in Florida, with the courts arguing that the law "does not require defendant to prove self-defense to any standard measuring assurance of truth, exigency, near certainty, or even mere probability; defendant's only burden is to offer facts from which his resort to force could have been reasonable." When a defendant claims self-defense, "the State has the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did not act in self-defense." In other words the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt never shifts from the prosecution, so it's surprisingly easy to evade prosecution by claiming self-defense.

>THIS HAS LED TO SOME STUNNING VERDICTS IN THE STATE. IN TALLAHASSEE IN 2008, TWO RIVAL GANGS ENGAGED IN A NEIGHBORHOOD SHOOTOUT, AND A 15-YEAR-OLD AFRICAN AMERICAN MALE WAS KILLED IN THE CROSSFIRE. THE THREE DEFENDANTS ALL EITHER WERE ACQUITTED OR HAD THEIR CASES DISMISSED, BECAUSE THE DEFENSE SUCCESSFULLY ARGUED THEY WERE DEFENDING THEMSELVES UNDER THE "STAND YOUR GROUND" LAW. The state attorney in Tallahassee, Willie Meggs, was beside himself. "Basically this law has put us in the posture that our citizens can go out into the streets and have a gun fight and the dead person is buried and the survivor of the gun fight is immune from prosecution," he said at the time.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/what-happened-trayvon-martin-explained

Then add this to the situation:

>A man who witnessed part of the altercation contacted authorities.

>"The guy on the bottom, who had a red sweater on, was yelling to me, 'Help! Help!' and I told him to stop, and I was calling 911," said the witness, who asked to be identified only by his first name, John.

>John said he locked his patio door, ran upstairs and heard at least one gun shot.

>"And then, when I got upstairs and looked down, the guy who was on the top beating up the other guy, was the one laying in the grass, and I believe he was dead at that point."
http://www.myfoxorlando.com/dpp/news/seminole_news/022712-man-shot-and-killed-in-neighborhood-altercation 

That one witness "John" corroborates Zimmerman's point that it was self defense, and that he was in imminent danger of grave injury. The burden of proof is on the state which has to prove far beyond a reasonable doubt that it was otherwise, and they have to do so BEFORE they can arrest Zimmerman.

>The creator of the law says otherwise.

The "creator" of the law can suck his own worthless dick. Judges and prosecutors have to interpret the shit he wrote, and he wrote such a craptactular statute that it turns Florida into the fucking wild west. The way that shitstain wrote that statute enables folks to start a fight, then when the fight gets out of hand, kill their opponent.

If the "creator" of this law wanted it otherwise, he would have written it otherwise. To put it into terms your tiny pinhead brain might understand, laws are the software that our legal system operates under. That shitstain put such large showstopper bugs into his statute that gangs can engage in shootouts and walk away scot free.

From something  quoted above:
>THIS HAS LED TO SOME STUNNING VERDICTS IN THE STATE. IN TALLAHASSEE IN 2008, TWO RIVAL GANGS ENGAGED IN A NEIGHBORHOOD SHOOTOUT, AND A 15-YEAR-OLD AFRICAN AMERICAN MALE WAS KILLED IN THE CROSSFIRE. THE THREE DEFENDANTS ALL EITHER WERE ACQUITTED OR HAD THEIR CASES DISMISSED, BECAUSE THE DEFENSE SUCCESSFULLY ARGUED THEY WERE DEFENDING THEMSELVES UNDER THE "STAND YOUR GROUND" LAW.

No they don't.  They can arrest you if they perceive you are a threat.

A potentially mentally ill person just killed another person.  He could be a threat to himself or others.

PETER IS A RACIST!!!

I knew it.  First, he claims some kind of liberal affiliation but really he is just a spy for white supremacist.

Proof positive, his defense of Zimmerman.!!!!

Uh, sure.  Some United Stated of Republicans state passes a law, that basically lets any gun-toting asshole whip it out if he feels "threatened", anyplace, anytime.

And Peter gets quite pissed-off that some black kid gets blown away by a Neighborhood Watch guy, and the Neighborhood Watch guy doesn't even get arrested for it, thanks to this law.

"He who saves a single life, has saved a Universe".  I think it's quite understandable that Peter objects to a law that justifies taking so many lives.

To arrest someone, when you have not seen the crime being committed, you need "probable cause". To get an arrest warrant, the officers involved would have to go before a judge and swear under penalty of perjury that they believe some crime to have been committed. In the case of Zimmerman, they would be lying if they did so.

Whether you want some sort of "justice" or not, under Florida law, there is nothing the police can do to arrest Zimmerman for this crime - because the way the "stand your ground" law is written NO CRIME HAPPENED.

Under Florida law, it appears that Zimmerman can do everything he did and claim self defense and be immune from prosecution as long as his story isn't contradicted by physical evidence or witnesses. The state has to have evidence, testimonial or physical, to contradict him before it is allowed to move forward with a charge.

It should be enough that Zimmerman instigated the situation and then killed Martin. That should be enough for a manslaughter charge, at a minimum, no matter what happened between the instigation and the killing. But under Florida law that isn't the case.

And it is my belief that even if the Feds try to prosecute, the only thing they have a snowball's chance in hell of getting to stick would be "violating civil rights" and once "John" takes the witness stand, the trial is over for the Feds and they lose too.

Don't like it? Then change the law. Are you running for office this year? I am. Why aren't you?

"To arrest someone, when you have not seen the crime being committed, you need "probable cause"."

How do cops arrest people DUIs/DWIs/Trespassing/Looking strange.

Probable cause is that a KILLER just shot someone and they don't have the full details of the case.  Shouldn't the case be put before homicide detectives, a judge, jury, prosecutor BEFORE you just let someone go?

If a person can be put in jail and arrested because a cop thinks they smell some weed in a car.  They can certainly arrest someone because a dead person is on the ground and you happen to be holding a gun.

You go, dude.

So this is yet another example of Republican government passing laws, to make illegal actions technically legal.

Astonishing.

Interesting.  "BOT ARGUES THAT 'STAND YOUR GROUND' SHOULD BE APPLIED TO MARIJUANA USE!"  Film at 11.

'- because the way the "stand your ground" law is written NO CRIME HAPPENED. "

OK, so which person in particular makes the determination that a CRIME happened?

Do you ARREST and detain and then use the stand your ground law in a court of law.  Or are COPS at the time of the scene able to make that determination?

So Peter is giving up on the whole due process thing.  Let the cops decide, right then and there.

That sounds like what you're doing, Bot.

I want Zimmerman arrested and put before a court.  If he wants to claim self defense pursuant to the 'stand your law' act, fine.

Or just arrest him and detain him related to the murder of Martin.


Maybe he will get drunk at a bar, they should arrest him for that and then question him for murder.

>How do cops arrest people DUIs/DWIs/Trespassing/Looking strange.

They witness the behavior happening. And even afterwards, they have to get paperwork to support what happens. For a TX example, the subject was being arrested for DUI (the unlawful behavior was being witnessed by the police officer), and then the subject took off, so they still had to get a judge to sign off on the arrest warrant:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/bush-nephew-nabbed

In NJ, a judge's signature/approval is not necessary when the witness is a cop:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/idols-jermaine-jones?page=0

When the officer does NOT observe the incident, but is based on investigation, they end up getting an arrest warrant approved by a judge:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/steve-austin-arrest-warrant?page=1
this one is 5 pages long:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/mayor-mcsleaze
2 pages long:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/jena-six-member-school-arrest

In slightly different circumstances, a judge issuing a "bench warrant", the arrest warrant looks different:
http://i.cdn.turner.com/dr/teg/tsg/release/sites/default/files/assets/stolenbieberwarrant.jpg
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/tom-delay-mug-shot?page=1
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/bret-michael-edmunds-arrest-warrant

thesmokinggun.com is one of the websites affiliated with CourtTV and so it tends to have lots of mug shots (usually to laugh at) and lots of copies of court documents or contracts (like the "no brown M&Ms" rider in some band's contracts).

Based on the rather interesting articles Peter has dug up, it is now more clear to me why the prosecutor chose not to charge him.

The author of the Stand Your Ground law says it was not intended to apply to situations of active pursuit. But since it was passed, judges and juries have ruled that in their opinion, actively pursuing someone and then killing them falls under the protection of the Law, regardless of what the actual text says.

The police wanted to Zimmerman to be charged, the prosecutor said no. Thus, the police are not to blame here.

The prosecutor may have wanted to charge him, but it is up to the DA's office to determine whether they have a prosecutable case. The case law to date in Florida shows that they likely did not. Judges and juries are dismissing cases and finding defendents who engage in this form of lethal man-hunting to be innocent of wrongdoing. Therefore it was the right call for the prosecutor not to waste public resources bringing a case that could not be won.

With the public shaming of the law due to this case though, judges in the future may take a second look at their reasoning.

> The police wanted to Zimmerman to be charged, the prosecutor said no. Thus, the police are not to blame here

That's a pretty big assumption.  If the police didn't want Zimmerman to be charged, it's quite likely that would sway any prosecutors opinion on the matter.  If it even came to that -- at this point, nobody has said exactly who's to blame.

The problem with Peter's argument, he hasn't presented any information in DEFENSE of Zimmerman.

I am sure police won't let an armed gunman run loose if they think he is a danger.  So what information do we have to prove that he wasn't a danger to himself or others?

Um, he knows the "Stand Your Ground" law?  And he hadn't killed anybody using that as a justification before?

Peter?

If you defend the white man, you lose liberal cred.

So, you think Peter should defend Z, but then criticize him if he DOES defend Z, but Peter isn't defending Z, so you criticize him for that?

Best. Troll. EVER!

But for logic and discussion, it's crap.

I was just asking for arguments based on the facts in the case why Zimmerman should be let go.

We are prison nation, I am surprised that Zimmerman didn't do a little time just to make sure all of the facts in place.

Peter claims the POLICE COULDN'T possibly detain Zimmerman.

I guess the police COULDN'T possibly kill wrongly kill people either.  That never happens.

Since you don't, won't or can't read:

>A man who witnessed part of the altercation contacted authorities.

>"The guy on the bottom, who had a red sweater on, was yelling to me, 'Help! Help!' and I told him to stop, and I was calling 911," said the witness, who asked to be identified only by his first name, John.

>John said he locked his patio door, ran upstairs and heard at least one gun shot.

>"And then, when I got upstairs and looked down, the guy who was on the top beating up the other guy, was the one laying in the grass, and I believe he was dead at that point."
http://www.myfoxorlando.com/dpp/news/seminole_news/022712-man-shot-and-killed-in-neighborhood-altercation 

This witness corroborates Zimmerman's claim to be self defense.

To arrest Zimmerman for manslaughter, you'd need a lot of evidence to the contrary.

In other states, with other laws, Zimmerman would most likely have been arrested, if only for discharging a firearm inside city limits. Florida lacks a "duty to retreat" standard in their laws. Pennsylvania, for example, has a duty to retreat standard, and shooting someone inside your own home will get you arrested because you could have jumped out the window (even though it was 3 floors to the ground). England also has such a standard, and if a burglar comes to harm in your house (such as tripping over furniture and getting injured), the homeowner gets charged with a crime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_retreat

Colorado, where I live, has a "castle doctrine" standard, which means that if you're in my house, uninvited, and without legal reasons to be there (cops and firemen, for example have such legal reasons to enter homes uninvited) and I shoot you, I can't be charged.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine

Florida, has a "stand your ground" standard. Whether you consider this to be a feature or a bug in the law is up to you. I consider it a defect, but that's the way the law is written.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law

"I was just asking for arguments based on the facts in the case why Zimmerman should be let go."

Okay, but that's bullshit.  Zimmerman wasn't arrested.  Am I looking for arguments about how you've stopped beating your wife?  I assume you never beat your wife.

Do you always look for arguments about things that haven't happened?

And you really think you HAVE that many "facts on the case"?

"And you really think you HAVE that many "facts on the case"?"

What part hasn't happened?  A kid is dead?  Why wasn't the shooter detained and put in prison for a while to get the facts straight?

I assume the cops took into account the stand your ground law.  So what did they ask from Zimmerman? What did they see at the scene?  How many witnesses were there?  Was the witness connected to Zimmerman?    When did the event take place?  Why did Zimmerman get out of the car?  Why did Zimmerman shoot?

Bot is upset because of the impedance mismatch between his cherished Fox && Libertarian viewpoints when they collide with reality in an especially gut wrenching way. Perhaps he thinks that hewing to such beliefs will make him an honorary white (or something), but the culture wars don't work that way. This country is hostile towards dark skinned people, and I don't believe it can be fixed. I used to think that all we had to do was wait for the racist motherfuckers to die of old age, but alas, that shit spreads somehow.

In all this mess, folks are forgetting that Zimmerman is Hispanic, and instead the media are turning him into an (dis)honorary white person - in order to twist this situation into some inflammatory white-vs-black thing that folks like Jackson and Sharpton can use to promote their agendas.

I was just asking if there is more information in the case?

Was there a homicide detective on the scene?  Narcotics detective?  Psych on the scene?  Do they do any ballistics tests?

>put in prison

Prison is for felonies - sentences for which the punishment is more than 1 year long. You can only be placed in a prison upon conviction for a felony.
Jail is for misdemeanors - sentences for which the punishment is less than one year long.

Jail is also the place where folks are to be held pending their court hearing, such as if you get arrested Friday night and you can't get let out on bail until a court hearing, which might be Monday.

The cops did not have probable cause to arrest Zimmerman, nor even detain him. So they didn't.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probable_cause

You'd know this stuff if you ever went to a police academy. Atlanta PD has a "citizens academy" where you can learn some of what goes on. I'm not sure if it can lead to a reserve (volunteer) officer position.
http://www.facebook.com/AtlantaPolice/posts/390078377669697

Fulton county has a reserve program:
http://www.fultonsheriff.org/Sheriff_s_Reserve.html

Many community colleges offer a law enforcement program which leads to POST certification. Some departments require even their reserves to be POST certified.

http://passthepolicetest.com/police-academy-requirements/basic-police-training-academy-requirements-in-georgia
http://policelink.monster.com/content/become-a-cop-in-georgia-police-academy-directory

P.O.S.T. for GA
http://www.gapost.org/
It looks like GA does not have different tiers of POST certification like CO (where I live) and CA (where I went to a police academy) have for reserve vs full-time police officers. Generally a reserve officer needs a lot less training (because they'll do a lot less on their own) than a regular officer. The basic requirements in GA are for 404 hours, but most academies checked this afternoon require a few hundred more hours.
http://www.gwinnettcounty.com/portal/gwinnett/Departments/Police/PersonnelServices/PoliceTraining

Drudge just linked the usual and expected "whoa, just a minute, maybe the black guy should have been shot, staunch conservative apologist for all minority-directed actions" news piece:

http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/dpp/news/state/witness-martin-attacked-zimmerman-03232012

Regardless of its source from the tainted sphincter of Drudge Report and Faux News, it sounds like jury selection and holding a trial for this is going to be a fucking nightmare.

THIS is the "OJ case" of the 20-teens. Some lucky jurors are going to wind up making a career of their service on this trial.

Something else just occurred to me.

The kid could reasonably have been said to be acting under the "stand your ground" law, since he, too, was standing his ground and was approached. He was entitled to use deadly force.

Except that he died in the process.

It's gonna be an ugly summer in the US. :(

"OJ Case"?  Neither of them are in any way famous.  It's a two-week wonder, then nothing.

I don't know. I see this as equally galvanizing as the Rodney King based riots. The anger it's created just seems phenomenal.

In reality it's about one dumbass in a pseudo-authority position acting like Barney Fife channeling Jack Bauer, shooting another dumbass.

OK Peter (you fucking idiot), why is the President of the United States commenting on this case?  Why are thousands of people across the country standing in the standing in the streets?  Screaming for protests?

+1 to Rodney King.

Same dynamic - a nobody being abused/killed, mass outrage, etc etc.

As a white person I now need to go subject myself to self flagellation, as I am an asshole for letting Zimmerman do it.

I can't imagine that the police would detain anyone? Or kill anyone ever IN ERROR?  I can't imagine that the police would put anyone in jail?  Never happens.  Especially hispanics?  Never ever.

"That's a pretty big assumption."

It's not an assumption, it's been stated in artices about this event that police wanted to charge Zimmerman but it was the prosecutor's decision not to.

Some quotes from recent media coverage:

"Sanford police recommended that State Attorney Norm Wolfinger review a possible manslaughter charge against Zimmerman."

"Sanford police thought Zimmerman should have been arrested for shooting and killing 17-year-old Martin."

"Police wanted to charge Zimmerman but the prosecutors office said they didn't have enough evidence."

In is ironic that you are making an assumption that someone else's observation about facts of the case would be an assumption. It suggests an instance of the psychological phenomenon of projection. You assume, so you assume others assume.

Was his life ever in danger? Irrespective of the law or melanin content, Zimmerman took a gun to a fight that he was told to stay out of. Sad for him that he did, sad for him that he did not use it to control the situation from  the outset rather than allow himself to be beaten down.

We've just concluded a case where a volunteer fireman started bushfires that killed many people. The dimwit wanted to be a hero helping the community. I smell a little of that here.

Not to mention it's tragic for the kid he killed, both families and the wider community who may be discussing this on the street all summer.

I predict Rodney King style riots when Zimmerman is acquitted, or more likely, charges dropped.

I wonder why?

The case seems so clear cut.

Clearly Zimmerman killed that kid because the kid was dangerous and a evil thug.

He should have shot him as the kid approaches, his life was dangerous.

I don't understand why people are pissed.

That is what you are thinking Peter?

I'm sure Zimmerman got countless death threats by now and he's scared shitless. If he won't get arrested soon for his own protection, someone will get him.

I suspect that there is just enough element of "valid hold your ground" law being exercised here that it will be in the court system for months.

The real events that happened are probably an illogical mess with bad judgement from both sides.

For instance, Zimmerman may have provoked the kid while tailing him, and just before being called off by the 911 operator, but he still insisted on rebuking the kid verbally as a thug/criminal/etc. The kid then lunged for him, believing that he was being harassed and insulted unfairly, which he was, and the rest is history. In short the kid may have been set up to be killed with an alibi.

It sounds as though in a "stand your ground" state that you can figure out whom you'd enjoy murdering, and then confront them just short of physical contact. When they retaliate, which they will, you have an iron clad defense for blowing them away.

No matter what happens, Zimmerman's previous life is over, since he is now public enemy #1 and would be ripped to shreds for the next 20 years when recognized. That kind of exile is the least he deserves for this.

As I said before, there's a LOT of people on his ass as we speak (write). He has no rational judgement and was on this voluntary 'neighborhood watch' for a reason. He was just waiting for his moment. What an idiot...

btw., I've never seen a thread this long in years...

Sierra+++

The guy was using the neighborhood watch thing to settle his own grudges with certain "types".

I'm gonna get really tired of the mass black outrage over this issue in a big hurry, but the guy was an asshole and should be tried for murder.

I just wish blacks could separate an individual from the overall system, instead of using it as a reason to resent and blame 3/4 of the rest of the population once again.

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I just wish blacks could separate an individual from the overall system, instead of using it as a reason to resent and blame 3/4 of the rest of the population once again.
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There are always some nut cases on both sides. But in this here I don't think there's a case for generalizing. Look, everyone knows that there's shitload of people in this country who just plain can't stand any other then by definition 'white' or 'black' people around. But they at least keep it for themselves. They don't go around shooting people. This guy did. Face the fucking consequences.