All these articles and radio segments where they falsely talk about Trayvon standing his ground with his fists make the same unproven and likely untrue story basis based on the evidence; they all keep saying Zimmerman "accosted" or "attacked" Trayvon giving him the right to defend himself.
I'm just sitting here in disbelief at the ignorance that's out there. 1) STAND YOUR GROUND WASN'T EVEN USED IN THIS TRIAL 2) The jury believes Trayvon threw the first punch
I meant as a major talking point throughout the case, it was a throw away statement in front of the jury that couldn't be rebutted. The thing is he was on the phone and he did get in to a fight with GZ while he was on the phone. Yeah, they were idiots to use it because it didn't matter what the case boiled down to was what happened during the fight. There was no way to prove that GZ wasn't in fear of his life from the beating he was taking. That's why the kept trying to get people to say TM was on the bottom at the critical point and they failed miserably. You need to come to grips with that instead of all this other crap that doesn't matter. The Prosecution did a lot of stupid things in this trial. Starting with not putting the case in front of a Grand Jury. They withheld evidence until the last minute. They actually fired the employee who brought this to light. They put witnesses on the stand who they knew had given depositions incorrectly or had listened to audio evidence as a group instead of individually. If GZ had lost, the verdict would likely have been tossed later.
It doesn't make sense though. Let's pretend all the facts of the case stayed the same but SYG doesn't exist and Zimmerman has a duty to retreat. The narrative that was obviously accepted is still accepted and it involves Trayvon surprising Zimmerman with a sucker punch that breaks his nose and sends him to the ground shortly after. Martin is now on top of Zimmerman beating him up. What does Zimmerman need to do in order to satisfy the "duty to retreat" aspect of self defense that exists without SYG? If says he tried to wiggle free but couldn't is that enough?
Some of the things Floyd said were more general and his comments are just a microcosm of the underlying mindset of the "us against them" mentality. E.g. "The black man always has it the hardest way" I'm glad Rude Jude called him out on it: "When in doubt play the race card. When you're losing, play the race card. 'I'm in trouble', play the race card. Whatever you had to do, play the race card." The system worked perfectly fine for the black community when OJ was acquitted...no riots, no protests. When it doesn’t work the way they want it to turn out then they are the victims of a hate crime and the system is to blame.
I think the statement was that SYG is much more broad based. If Zimmerman could get away with SYG, then self defense would be a no brainer.
Right. Given how often I've seen TV lawyers botch the Stand Your Ground defense, I suppose it's not surprising the juror (B37?) botched it. Also, the jury instructions did include the whole self-defense statute was included. But the key issue, as you correctly pinpoint, is that there was no opportunity for Zimmerman to retreat. It's a classic self defense fact pattern.
That's cool. It's always going to work for OJs because OJ had money and was famous. In fact it's always going to work for those people too. But if you think it works perfectly fine for the everyday black person. You're just nuts. You even have conservatives like Gingrich saying it doesn't work, you have Zimmer's own attorney's saying it, you have stats that back all of this up so to pretend there is nothing there and it's just people complaining about nothing is dishonest, naive, or dangerous. If you want to continue to ignore it fine. But that doesn't mean everyone else should.
I guess they think if they say it enough and get a bunch of misinformed parrots repeating it ,then that makes it true .. evidence ...what evidence ..we don't need no stinkin evidence
I absolutely believe the justice system has issues that make it perform in a bias manner against blacks. That is not always because a judge, jury or cop is racist but those also can be a part of it. When you look at the drug usage statistics among races vs incarceration for drugs across races you see the bias at work. Now, some of that is system issues but some is also community issues. White drug users are less likely to be involved in violent crimes than black drug users for example. But, a white teenager is also less likely to get arrested for drug use than a black drug user, more likely to get probation, etc.
If Stevie Wonder is now boycotting Stand Your Ground states, he's going to have some very short tours - no San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver, Phoenix, Seattle, Chicago, Detroit, Oklahoma City, Louisville, New Orleans, Tampa Bay, Miami, Orlando, Atlanta, Charlotte, and Richmond
A classic self-defense pattern is when an armed intruder breaks into your home and you shoot them. There's nothing classic about instigating an altercation with a teenager (against the advice of a 911 operator)that indisputably did not involve a weapon, losing the altercation and then killing him. That's why there was so much controversy about the case. Do you think there would be any uproar if Martin broke into Zimmerman's home and tried to rob him but Zimmerman shot him dead? I think not... In that scenario, Zimmerman had no reasonable opportunity to retreat or diffuse the situation. In the actual scenario, Zimmerman had multiple, no-brainer types of opportunities to avoid or deescalate the situation and voluntarily passed on each and every single one of them.
