<p>atomom, It is clear from the tape that the dispatcher was telling Zimmerman not to follow Trayvon. Zimmerman has said in an interview that his understanding was that the dispatcher had told him not to follow. On the stand yesterday, the dispatcher said that he always uses this kind of phraseology because they are not allowed to directly tell anyone what to do or not do.</p>
<p>In any case, the NW rules prohibit following “suspects.”</p>
<p>In Zimmerman’s written statement from the night of the shooting, he repeatedly refers to Trayvon as the “suspect.” Very telling.</p>
<p>poetsheart, It is a real shame that young black men have to modify their behavior to avoid being profiled, or worse. That is the core of this case. Zimmerman has never, once, specified exactly what Trayvon was doing that led him to consider him suspicious. And most people have not questioned this.</p>
<p>“I wonder how much Zimmerman’s views on race will be discussed in the trial?”</p>
<p>"In Zimmerman’s written statement from the night of the shooting, he repeatedly refers to Trayvon as the ‘suspect.’ "</p>
<p>I think a lot will depend on whether the prosecution and defense strategies. Clearly “depraved indifference” demands context. But it doesn’t have to be racial. It could be socio-economic (think Bill Cosby’s son), or vigilantism, or something else. Since the prosecution seated no blacks on the jury, I’d speculate that they aren’t planning to play “the race card” in this trial … but rather the “the victim was just a kid walking home from the store” card. Pure speculation of course.</p>
<p>I am a big supporter of the second amendment, the castle law and the stand your ground rule, but in Florida (as I remember from my gun licensing class), you are not allowed to shoot someone EVEN if for instance your car has been stolen and you see the guy flee with it. Stand your ground says you do not need to retrieve, not go chase after.All those details of what Zimmerman did after he saw Trevor will play a big role in the trial.I think that the 911 tape is damaging to him regardless of what the policeman said because it implies that Zimmerman left his position and went after Trevon. IMHO that goes against the Stand your ground rule.</p>
<p>The defense is not based on SYG, but on traditional self-defense. Their contention is that Zimmerman’s life was in imminent danger because Trayvon was smashing his head into cement.</p>
<p>They passed up the chance to have a self-defense hearing.</p>
<p>^ ddahwan - GZ had to get out. It’s “Stand Your Ground” not “Shoot from your patrol car.”</p>
<p>Just kidding of course. But you raise a serious point. Continuing existence of Stand Your Ground laws depend on reasonable application of deadly force. “Legal to defend your family on a city street” is way different from “Legal to follow an unarmed child into his neighborhood and shoot him in the heart at close range.” Too much of the latter will inevitably result in repeal of SYG laws.</p>
<p>tom says in post 137 that : “A 17 year old was killed walking home from the store by someone with no training because there were crimes committed in the neighborhood.”
This may turn out to be determined the truth. But unless tom somehow knows more than the rest of us, tom, and many other posters before him, are leaving out a key part of the claim. GZ claims he was heading back to his car when TM jumped him, a fight ensued and the teen was shot. The first sentence by tom on its own, would give the impression TM was walking with an armload of groceries and was shot while walking down the sidewalk. It is unfair to ignore the claim that TM is alleged to have come back to attack GZ. Following TM did not cause his death. The claim is GZ shot TM after TM circled back and hit GZ. Is that claim true?
Clearly I don’t know the true answer, but to make such a definitive claim either way, without revealing the whole claim of both sides is either uninformed or unfairly prejudicial.</p>
<p>Ok, sorry about the ignorance about the legal details, but how they justify him going after Trevon? I think his version is that he was going back to his car and Trevon attacked him, right? It will be a difficult case for people living here in Florida. Racial tensions have always been high between Hispanics and African Americans but things had quiet down during the last few years. Nothing like a media fueled case to stir things up.</p>
<p>If a 17 year old reacted to a man following him that surprises you? Bottom line a 17 year old was walking home from the store and he was shot. There is no proof he did anything to deserve to be followed or confronted. I do not know about you but I can see many reactions from any 17 year old kid to be followed by a grown man from running, to screaming at him, from getting into the guys face, to screaming for help. Each kid is different. Kids should not get shot because they walk home with a hoodie.</p>
<p>If this was a white kid with the hoodie would he have ended up shot? Would Zimmerman even called 911.</p>
<p>I have the feeling that GZ will find out just how inconvenient facts, in the form of forensic evidence, can be. Others have already pointed out that glaring inconsistencies in differing accounts told Zimmerman, and the way some fail to square with crime scene evidence, will prove to be problematic for the defense. How likely is it, really, for someone to engage in a violent and sustained barehanded assault against another, and yet be found to have little to none of his victim’s DNA transferred to his person?</p>
<p>^ ddahwan - Is there a way to keep racial overtones out of this? I don’t see how. Had TM been the white quarterback son of Sanford’s Mayor, would the police have handled this case the same way?</p>
<p>I don’t know how Zimmerman gets around being told not to follow Martin. Unless he had then been followed home or dragged out of his car, that just seems insurmountable to me. But of course, I know nothing specific, but it does seem clear that he was asked to back off.</p>
<p>Question please? Are neighborhood watch folks deputized or peace officers or anything in Florida?</p>
<p>Of course, talking heads have been speculating non-stop since the start of jury selection (as have we all), but some “expert” commentators have stated with confidence that the defense will show evidence that GZ is not racist in that he has friends of all different races, and even took an AfAm girl to the prom (which Mom and Dad were totally cool about, don’t you know), so it’s not possible that he racially profiled TM that night. Some have pointed out that some of the “suspects” concerning whom GZ placed his many 911 calls were white or some other race. Legal experts have also speculated that the prosecution will downplay the role race might have played in this case, and instead focus on all the errors of decision made by GZ that lead to TM’s death. They will, however, claim that Z used some form of profiling in assuming Martin to have been a threat that night. This is why I’m intensely curious as to what behaviors, what characteristics, TM exhibited to raise Z’s suspicions.</p>
<p>I happen to think it’s entirely possible to racially profile someone, and yet not use race as a criterion for some other forms of social thought and interaction. People have a way of compartmentalizing their thinking, because we are all very complex creatures. GZ saw TM as a “suspect” both before he shot the boy dead, and even afterward when speaking with police. I want to know why. What exactly happened that night? I’m hoping the police (as well as the FBI) were professional and careful in their investigation of this case, and that their distilling of the evidence will show as definitively as possible how a young man came to be shot dead by George Zimmerman.</p>
<p>I am on the electronic safety notification system for a public Florida university with over 40,000 students on campus. I receive text and email messages alerting me of things like tornado warnings and serious crime incidents on campus. For the past approx. four years I have been notified on average about every 4-6 weeks of crime incidents on campus for things like armed robbery, assaults, rape, etc. The crime alerts usually include a brief description of the bad guys…I can’t remember ever seeing a description other than ‘young black male(s)’ suspects. I’m not making this up. I certainly know non-blacks commit crimes too but it is just such an absolute sin that a small handful of individuals make things bad for other black males. If I’m walking home from the library late at night and after just receiving one of these alerts describing a violent crime from the night before inflicted by a "young black male’ suspect, regardless if I’m black or white, am I profiling if a caution light goes off in my head when a couple of black guys are coming from opposite direction on sidewalk? Does it make me a racist?</p>
<p>"If this was a white kid with the hoodie would he have ended up shot? Would Zimmerman even called 911. "</p>
<p>If it had been a white kid who was shot, I am sure that the shooter would have been arrested that night. Zimmerman was not arrested for weeks, and not until after the outrage and protests.</p>
<p>zm, NW people are most definitely not deputized. </p>
<p>Zimmerman’s claim is that Trayvon viciously attacked him, overpowered him, and was battering his head against concrete to the point that he was in mortal danger. I don’t know whether Zimmerman’s history will be brought into the trial, but he has quite a history of violence. And it has recently been revealed that he had been training for 18 months at a gym specializing in mixed martial arts. Trayvon did not have a history of violence (despite the defense lawyers’ efforts to demonize him). </p>
<p>The prosecution has to show that Zimmerman was not in mortal danger, or at least that no reasonable person would have believed himself to be in mortal danger. I don’t think they will have any trouble doing this. The defense strategy seems to be to attack the forensic and other evidence. This, of course, is what they are supposed to do. They have already claimed that Trayvon’s clothes and hands were mishandled. </p>
<p>The night of the shooting, the police allowed Zimmerman to go into a bathroom by himself and clean up. They did not test him for drugs and alcohol. Trayvon was tested, but not Zimmerman.</p>
<p>Going to the prom with a African American girl does not makes him less prone to racial profiling. In psychology there is a test called " Implicit Association Test". It tests for hidden (and sometimes unconscious) racial bias. Very interesting test to take and easy to find online. Many times what a person does may not be what the person really thinks (consciously or unconsciously). The test try to measures this unconscious reaction by making the subject associate words or images to opposing ideas (two races, religions, genders). It is done at very fast pace to avoid time to ponder about the decision. Repeating the test makes it less reliable.</p>
Wasn’t it Trayvon who was a practitioner of MMA?</p>
<p>Edited to add: No, It was Zimmerman who was the student of MMA, but Martin had school fights (I am clarifying my own post so as not to create confusion.)</p>