There’s a lot of idiocy going around these days, starting with the President’s reaction via Michelle Malkin:
There’s a lot there. Some of it is uncontroversial. The assertion that this is a tragedy seems pretty safe. As I said yesterday, it seems extremely safe to believe that Martin was innocent in all this. I say that even though I noted evidence that Martin attacked Zimmerman. As I noted in the comments it was very possible for us to have seen a scenario of cascading errors. Zimmerman erroneously believed that Martin was “up to something” so he followed him. Martin saw this man following and got scared and reasonably attacked Zimmerman believing he was defending himself. Zimmerman reasonably got scared that Martin was pulling a gun on him and drew first and fired. That is pure speculation, but it is very easy to imagine that kind of cascading reasonable errors that led to this death. In any case, a young man who by all indications was doing absolutely nothing wrong is dead and even if it is not a crime, it is a tragedy.
I am faintly irritated by the President’s assertion that this is an occasion to re-examine the law. As I pointed out yesterday, this really had little to do with the no-retreat rule in Florida. Incidentally I will take this moment to point out that I was trivially wrong on one point. If Zimmerman threw the first punch the law in Florida apparently would impose on him a duty to retreat (remembering that it only applies if one can reasonably do so in safety—you don’t have a duty to run when you know you are likely to be shot trying to escape). Which means that far from being a radical jurisdiction, Florida is solidly in the mainstream of most states. Most states only impose a duty to retreat on aggressors outside their own homes. But as I showed when discussing the Bobbitt case (not the famous Bobbitt case), the Florida courts radically imposed a duty to retreat even on a battered wife in defending her own life in her own bedroom. That seems to be a bit much.
Every state in the union recognizes a right to self-defense that goes by whether one reasonably believes they are in danger. No matter how robust or stingy the right of self-defense is, it always has that core where you have a right, under the right circumstances, to kill another based on a reasonable fear of death, serious bodily injury and so on. And since it goes on your perception of the danger, rather than the reality of it, mistakes like this are inevitable. That is, it is inevitable that sooner or later an innocent man will be mistakenly thought to pose a threat.
Would we really want any other rule? Imagine that you face a situation where you believe that your life is in danger. If you sincerely believed you were in danger, would hesitate to use whatever force is necessary to save your own life? And remember the same rule applies to the defense of others. So if you really believe someone has a gun to the head of a loved one, would you hesitate to do everything necessary to protect that person’s life? Outside of military conscription, the law cannot and should not expect you to risk your own life, period. That is why, while I think Roe v. Wade was generally wrongly decided, I do believe a woman has an absolute right to abort a fetus if her life is in danger—because it is just self-defense.
And most people get that. For instance, I think it is safe to assume that everyone has watched the movie Die Hard. For the five people who haven’t, the set up is that terrorists take over an office building and off-duty cop John McClane is trapped in the building and doing what he can to stop the bad guys. And one of the best parts of the movie is the relationship between McClane and Al Powell, another cop on the outside. They only talk on the radio for much of the movie, only meeting in person at the end, and by then they are friends for life. In one powerful scene, John asks why Al chose a desk job. Al replies:
I shot a kid. He was 13 years old. Ohhh, it was dark, I couldn't see him. He had a ray gun, looked real enough. You know, when you're a rookie, they can teach you everything about being a cop except how to live with a mistake. Anyway, I just couldn't bring myself to draw my gun on anybody again.
He’s not saying he was demoted or imprisoned for it. Just that he felt so horrible about the thing that he couldn’t bring himself to draw his gun any more (which makes it that much more powerful at the end when he does use his gun to save his new friend). I don’t think a single person watching that movie thinks that Al did the wrong thing, and certainly no one thought he should go to prison. If you thought that, then I start to think there is something wrong with you.
What all of this is, is the worst example of “there oughta be a law” syndrome, which was classically lampooned by this bit from the Onion:
There is no realistic and just way to avoid every failure—to prevent every innocent person from being killed. And saying this means we need to reform the law only ensures that injustice will occur.
But I am burying the lede here, because here is the absolute worst part of what Obama said:
“My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Obama said. “All of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves.”
At the beginning of the statements Obama notes that as head of the executive branch that might very well prosecute George Zimmerman for a crime, he is limited in what he can say. He rightly recognizes that if he makes statements indicating any kind of prejudice in the case he could harm the ability of the government to prosecute it. And please note when I say “prejudice” I don’t mean merely if he expresses any bias based on race, sex, etc. but any pre-judgment, any kind of judgment before the facts are in.
But ironically that very statement exposed himself to charges of prejudice—the kind of prejudice you think of first when you think of the word, bias based on race. He just implied that because of racial affinity he feels particularly bad about the Trayvon killing. So then since a hypothetical son of Barrack and Michelle Obama would not look like George Zimmerman, does that mean he feels less sympathy for him?
One does have to wonder how this will play in the Hispanic community, too. While the President didn’t indict Zimmerman, his racially charged remarks might play badly. The President should have made no reference to the race of anyone involved; and indeed all good people feel sympathy for the Martin family, regardless of skin color. If you don’t feel bad for them, yeah, I think there is something wrong with you. Which is the second time I said something like that in this piece, but I think I am right both times.
The fact is my heart goes out to the Martin family even as I defend Zimmerman’s right to be considered innocent until proven guilty. And bear in mind, I am not saying that we have to wait for a jury to make the call, or that we are held to the same proof beyond a reasonable doubt standard that our criminal courts are required to adhere to. But right now the people pronouncing him guilty are doing so with reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of the charges and that is wrong. Indeed if Zimmerman can prove he is affirmatively innocent he might have one hell of a defamation suit. That is, assuming he doesn’t get lynched first—and more on that in a moment.
A prime example of this, via Sissy Willis, is Karen Finny blaming Rush Limbaugh for the shooting, on MSNBC, saying:
"Rush Limbaugh calls a presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama, a magic negro...In the case of Trayvon, those festering stereotypes had lethal consequences."
Well, first Limbaugh was parodying a comment by a black man who said Obama was a “magic negro” as noted at the Newsbusters link above. But even assuming that Rush did stereotype black people it could only have caused Trayvon’s death if George Zimmerman was wrong to shoot him. So in attacking Limbaugh, Finny is implicitly declaring that Zimmerman is guilty—because if Zimmerman was acting lawfully, then the only causation is the conduct of the deceased (remembering that Trayvon could have innocently created a situation where Zimmerman reasonably feared for his life). So she has declared him guilty, which is wrong.
Much more disturbingly, Nation of Islam head Louis Farrakhan has been tweeting that “Where there is no justice, there will be no peace. Soon the law of retaliation may very well be applied.” It’s hard not to interpret that as a threat—indeed as an incitement to violence—although it is hard to be sure if he is calling on his followers to riot or to lynch Zimmerman.
Equally ugly is this Black Star News editorial that calls Zimmerman a “one man lynch mob” and accused him of planning to kill Martin all along. Also oddly they write “a young Black man on the run was justifiable moving target for shooting, in the eyes of many White folk.” Which would be relevant if Zimmerman was white, but in fact he is half-Hispanic. But really the editorial is plainly filled with prejudice about the whole matter, overcoming reason.
Less dark, but still troubling is the New Black Liberation Militia’s assertion that they will perform a citizen’s arrest on Zimmerman. Oh yeah, brilliant idea. You know by all accounts, Zimmerman has gun he used that night and if you guys come at him, he will almost certainly have every justification for using deadly force. So this is very likely to end badly. To be blunt, given that threat, the police have now an affirmative moral, if not legal, duty to protect Zimmerman’s life if only because if they come at him there is likely to be a full on shootout.
On the other hand, to the credit of the Martin family, they have officially stated that they don’t want any justice except at the hands of authorities. It would have been wrong to endorse the words or proposed actions of Farrakhan or the New Black Liberation Militia, but it would have been very human if they did, so it’s to their credit that they didn’t.
In other news via the Blaze we learn that Cnn has greatly enhanced the audio clip where Zimmerman may or may not have said “f—king coons.” Listen for yourself, here:
And it is really to the credit of CNN to take a “decide for yourself” attitude about it all, in contrast to ABC news which didn’t even provide the clip.
But for my money it seems like he did, which is a change from when I wrote yesterday. If that is a fair enhancement (feel free to correct me, tech heads), it sounds more like “coons.” I don’t feel 100%, but there you go. And since it is unlikely that he was talking about wildlife... that looks kind of bad for him. But what I said yesterday holds. Even if he was a Grand Wizard of the KKK he had a right to defend himself if his belief that he was in danger was reasonable. And I will add that if it was based on racism, then it is not reasonable.
On the other hand, if the Feds decide he did say “Coons” or otherwise singled out Trayvon because of his race, then the chances of a Federal hate crime case go up. If this happens, then I believe this article outlines the current state of the law on self-defense of the federal level. I say that cautiously because I don’t use things like Lexis or Westlaw for recreational legal research, so I can’t check the viability of those precedents. If anyone out there checks it for me and wants to email the results, that would be appreciated.
It is indeed worth taking a moment to discuss what lawyers mean when they say “reasonable.” It’s a code word. Nine times out of ten what we mean is an “objective” standard—that is one judged outside of the individual’s perception. Rather than asking whether Zimmerman believed he was in danger or not (although that is a necessary element of self-defense, too), the jury is supposed to ask “whether a reasonable person in his position would believe it.” And racism is considered (rightly) an unreasonable mindset.
Meanwhile this news report fills in a lot more details about one eye witness report:
That jibes with what Cheryl Brown's teenage son witnessed while walking his dog that night. Thirteen-year-old Austin stepped out his front door and heard people fighting, he told the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday.
"I heard screaming and crying for help," he said. "I heard, 'Help me.' "
It was dark, and the boy did not see how the fight started, in fact, he only saw one person, a man in a red shirt — Zimmerman — who was on the ground.
The boy said he is not sure who called for help. After a moment, his dog escaped, and he turned to catch it and a few seconds later heard a gunshot, he said.
"When I heard the shot, the screaming stopped," he said.
He then rushed inside and told his sister to call police.
It’s very frustrating that the young man turned away when he did. It might give us finally a witness, besides Zimmerman, to that crucial moment. Anyway, read the whole thing.
Then we get this piece by the Coalition to Stop Gun violence, which is written by people who either don’t understand the law, or are lying about it. You decide:
The "Stand Your Ground" law …also allows an individual to meet force with lethal force—thereby escalating a simple fistfight into a firefight. Finally, it grants immunity from both criminal prosecution and civil action to those deemed to have acted in "self-defense" under its liberal terms.
No, the law does not allow you to escalate the situation. Florida law only allows you to use deadly force either 1) if you reasonably fear that deadly force is about to be applied to you, or 2) they are breaking into your home or your occupied car.
And there is nothing unusual about saying that self-defense protects you from civil or criminal consequences. Because if you are defending yourself, you have done nothing wrong.
Sadly, they go on:
The Stand Your Ground defense has been used in at least 93 cases in the past five years in Florida (these are just the confrontations that made the newspapers). In 57 of them, those who used force were either not charged with a crime or the charges were dropped by prosecutors or dismissed by a judge before trial. Seven other defendants were acquitted.
Well, since the authors of the law believed you should not be forced to retreat, isn’t that pretty much what the law was intended to do. It is indeed disturbing that they think people being acquitted of a crime is automatically a bad thing. And indeed they did exactly that to attack past President of the NRA Harlon Carter. If one trusts their account (and I don’t), he was convicted of murder but an appeals court overturned the conviction because they did not give the jury a self-defense instruction. They are unclear if the case was therefore dismissed or we was simply acquitted. But either way, this should have meant that he would be treated as innocent, but instead these people complain that “the NRA has made sure the Harlon Carters of America are still getting away with it far too often.” Lovely.
At the same time Jamie Chandler weighs in writing:
“Stand Your Ground,” however, increases the potential for vigilante justice. The home is a sacred place, but outside, a civilian who isn’t trained as a police officer may act without impunity. It gives too broad immunity protections and negates the long-standing tradition that individuals under threat have a duty to retreat.
Well, assuming he meant to say that civilians may act “with impunity” that isn’t true. They only may use deadly force if they reasonably fear deadly force. And likewise it is not a long-standing trend that citizens have a duty to retreat. It may have been in Florida but in most states the non-aggressor does not have a duty to retreat; the broader retreat doctrine is a minority view, although one that law professors consider the growing modern one. (I don’t but they do.) Chandler also says this:
Protecting gun-rights is an important part of civil liberties and an American tradition, but should not come at the expense of jeopardizing the sanctity of life.
Except there is no way to avoid it. Even if you say that self-defense is only justified if one is actually in danger, then that will still mean that innocent people will be killed, because they were too afraid of the legal consequences of defending themselves from the use of deadly force.
Meanwhile Zachary Weaver weighs in, writing that the NRA has sinister motives for encouraging a robust law of self-defense:
One cannot entirely fault the NRA for supporting the bill. Simply put, it's good for business. As people are encouraged to purchase and use firearms to protect themselves, presumably more guns are purchased and more individuals join the association.
First, it is a silly ad hominem fallacy in the first place. I don’t care how evil the NRA’s intent is, it doesn’t follow that if the NRA has bad intent that the law is bad. And indeed I wonder if he ever would allege a similar comment about the ACLU—that they encourage free speech in order to encourage newspapers to give money to them. I don’t believe the ACLU is insincere, and I don’t believe the NRA is, either. Alas he goes on:
For police and prosecutors, the law causes confusion as to when prosecution is appropriate. The statute has led to many nonprosecutions after investigations -- it is hard to find that a person did not act in self-defense when the person that was being defended against cannot refute the allegations, i.e., dead men don't talk.
First, I find it interesting that suddenly so many liberal voices think that the purpose of the criminal law is to make it easy to prosecute people, especially since they are often the same people who claim that African Americans are disproportionately prosecuted.
Second, the concern that Martin can’t speak for himself has nothing to do with retreat laws. As long as you allow for self-defense at all, and allow them for reasonably perceived threats—and not just actual threats—then this is always going to be a problem. The dead can’t tell their side of the story, so there is the danger that the only living witness is the person who shot him and that he or she is, well… self-interested. Of course there are limits to that—it also depends on it being a situation where there are no other witnesses. When Zimmerman shot Martin on in a suburb, did he have any idea whether anyone was watching? Indeed, you will find out in a moment, someone was watching only seconds before. He goes on:
More cases result in no prosecution because of the law, and the law has led to a variety of wins for defendants on motions to dismiss before a trial by jury. Potential defendants and their attorneys undoubtedly see this as a positive change and certainly there are instances where the use of force in self-defense is warranted. But this expanded right to self-defense comes at a price -- more individuals are likely to use deadly force because they feel protected by the law, and more innocent people who may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time are likely to die or be seriously injured as a result.
Actually that doesn’t follow. If people are afraid to defend themselves, then criminals may be emboldened, and therefore the homicide rate might go up over all. It’s not just the George Zimmermans of the world who remain at the scene after the shooting occurs and attempts to justify it that you have to worry about, but the outright murderers who run away and are never caught.
And then it ends with a call to reconsider these laws, and the fact that our laws do not prevent trucks from falling on rafts.
Meanwhile this editorial at the Washington post doesn’t quite say Zimmerman is guilty, but it all but does it and features a lot of others who do, too. For instance they write:
It feels like an echo from another era — when there was racial injustice in the headlines, when federal troops were dispatched to comb Southern swamps to look for blacks who had vanished.
Well, except we have not established that there has been an injustice, let alone a racial one. I mean there is that slight difference. And the police didn’t have to comb the swamps because Trayvon hadn’t vanished, and indeed his killer remained at the scene to defend his actions, which we all know is grossly inconsistent with innocence (note: sarcasm). Oh and also those racially motivated murders of black people in that era were generally not done by Hispanics or half-Hispanic people. But other than the lack of established injustice, the fact the body wasn’t missing, and the fact that this was not a white supremacist, the similarities are eerie.
“It reminds you of Emmett Till,” said Bernadette Pruitt, an associate professor of history at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Tex., who has written about Southern racial history and can’t stop thinking of Trayvon Martin and his family. “This so-called post-racialism is a figment of our imagination. Race, unfortunately, is still the barometer by which everyone is measured.”
Right. Emmett Till was a young black man murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman. A few nights later her husband and his half-brother grabbed the fourteen year old boy, tortured and murdered him in cold blood, and then disposed his body in a nearby river. Which again, gosh, is stunning in the similarities to the present case, isn’t it?
We also get this news about the alleged “f—king coons” line:
One focus of the FBI’s inquiry is whether Zimmerman muttered a racial slur seconds before shooting Martin on Feb. 26, as has been alleged. The FBI is trying to determine whether the audiotape of a 911 dispatch call between Sanford police and Zimmerman can be enhanced with sophisticated equipment that has been used in other cases. If it can, the tape will be transferred to the FBI laboratory at Quantico, one official said.
Enhancing the tape could be crucial to determining whether the shooting is considered a “hate crime” under federal hate-crime laws, according to law enforcement officials.
Top Justice officials were scheduled to meet Thursday in Florida with the Martin family and the family’s attorney. And Holder on Friday is scheduled to meet with black ministers at the White House, where the Martin case is expected to come up, according to a government official.
Oh good and they are going to meet with Zimmerman’s family and get his side of the story, right? Right?
Mmm, maybe, but not feeling confident on that point.
Taaffe said that if Zimmerman deserves punishment, it should come through the legal system rather than in the court of public opinion. But the court of public opinion is roiling.
Yes, and you are contributing to it. Seriously, if he gets lynched, who are you going to blame for it? Sarah Palin, Sissy Willis told me when I asked that question on twitter. It’s sad and funny and probably true.
Alas, the editorial goes on:
“There is the brutal nature of this,” said former Washington Post reporter Nathan McCall, a lecturer at Emory University who served time in prison himself and has spoken often about young black men and the criminal justice system. (Martin did not have a criminal record; he earned A’s and B’s in school.) “This sounds like a narrative out of the 1950s, where yet another black man gets randomly killed and the institutions in society that are supposed to respond, don’t respond accordingly. They blame the victim.”
Um, that is what happens in every self-defense case. You “blame” the “victim.” Duh. The very concept of a justification of self-defense requires you to argue that the conduct of the victim justified the use of force—be in deadly or otherwise. Now in this case, the victim really appears to be an innocent, so in this case I wouldn’t put the word “victim” in quotes. And likewise, it’s not necessarily “blame” so much as saying that intentionally or otherwise Zimmerman asserts that Martin’s conduct placed him in fear of his life.
And Pruitt, who brought up the highly relevant example of Emmett Till before, appears again toward the end of the piece:
“We forget about Southerners,” Pruitt said. “We so often associate black progress with a movement of African Americans out of the South. It isn’t shocking to me that the people in Florida said, ‘We’ve got to do something.’ ”
Yes, yes, we forget that all Southerners are knuckle dragging racists with membership cards in the Klan! *rolls eyes* Let me say as a man who sounds Southern but was born in the North and considers myself essentially a Yankee, that I do not believe today that racism is any more common in the South than the North. Which is not purely a defense of the South but equally an indictment of the North which frankly does get too much of a free pass on racism.
And yes, I am aware of the way that Geraldo Rivera has worked tirelessly to bring us all together. Liberal, conservative, black, white, Asian and hispanic, he has brought us all together to agree that he is a complete imbecile for suggesting that the kid’s hoodie is to blame. I’ll leave it to Angry Black Lady who I clashed with and made up with before, to school Geraldo. Now let’s enjoy the national togetherness brought on by Geralda’s stupidity and sing Kumbaya.
(Kumbaya incidentally is a song depicting “slave talk” for “come by here.” I like the more respectful versions that change it to “come by here.” Listen to the song with the words replaced by “come by here” and know that it is supposed to be a slave singing it. It brings new power and meaning to a song you probably thought was just cheesy Christian fare, doesn’t it?)
But back to the division. Does it surprise you that Little Green morons has made up his mind? For instance, he stated here that “Zimmerman, meanwhile, has still not been arrested.” Yes, yes, Charles the police have the crazy idea that you should not arrest a man until you have probable cause. And we get this gem, here:
The more I learn about Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, the worse it looks: Opponents of Florida’s 2005 ‘Stand Your Ground’ Law Predicted ‘Racially Motivated Killings’.
Which is only relevant if it was an unjust and racially motivated killing. So he’s not quite saying Zimmerman is guilty, but it is clearly his premise. And I find it interesting that apparently these legislators believe that the police should be the only ones using force. I mean see if you follow the logic here. They think there are tons of racists out there who would just kill black people if they thought they could get away with it.
And none of them are cops? Because if some of those people are cops, then how safe do you feel if you are then wholly dependent on the cops for your personal safety and you belong to a historically discriminated against racial or ethnic group?
And then while correctly excoriating a Blaze article for its factual inaccuracies makes this factually inaccurate statement:
Zimmerman was not on his own property when he shot Trayvon Martin — he chased the boy down, and shot him in the street.
We can be fair to both side, Chuckie boy.
He also amazingly says that there is no such thing as Hispanics. Yes, really:
because “Hispanic,” as we pointed out on Monday, is NOT a racial classification.
According to the US Census:
Since the 1970 Census, the questionnaire has asked U.S. residents whether they are of Hispanic origin, and if so, which broad Hispanic group they identify with. Hispanic origin is considered separately from race in the Census—and Hispanics may identify with any race.
What they’re really saying here is that Latinos and Hispanics are not and cannot be “white.” Lovely.
Ah, well, don’t tell the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, the Hispanic College Fund, the Hispanic Leadership Network... Indeed someone needs to tell the KKK that they are attacking white people when they attack “Hispanics!” In fact, someone needs to tell the news because apparently they think Hispanics exist, too.
What he is kind-of, sort-of hitting on is the reality is that Hispanic or Latino is very mixed and arbitrary classification—or I should say more arbitrary than most. After all, you can be Hispanic and be mostly white, black or Native American. And indeed many Filipinos are mistaken for Hispanic. So there is a lot of fuzziness around the edges. You might even reasonably question whether Zimmerman is Hispanic, given that his father depicts him as half-Hispanic, while his family will say in a moment that he is just "Hispanic." Those are all fair questions.
But the reality is that there is no reality to any race. Obama is supposedly black even though his mother is of European stock and his father was from Africa. Indeed you could be pretty darned light skinned and still be called “black” because it is not about anything scientific. It is about how it serves various social purposes. Sometimes it is the racist figuring out who to hate—and you can bet that person calls Zimmerman Hispanic. And sometimes it is the school looking to practice affirmative action, and there things get trickier. And sometimes it is just a guy looking to decide what “his culture” is. So it is silly to think that any one person or institution—even the Census Bureau—could be the final arbiter on this sort of thing.
So is Zimmerman a white guy or Hispanic?... How can I say this? I kind of don’t care enough to work it out. But has anyone bothered to ask how he sees himself? But instead we get this white guy telling this arguably Hispanic dude about what his racial identity is based on the behavior of the Census Bureau. Which is when my head starts to hurt.
And indeed, for extra comedy, let's note that Chaz himself never objected to the term being used when it was being used to attack Gingrich, or the Tea party. The latter example deserves to be teased out a little more. In that post, entitled "What Tea Party Racism" he discussed an incident where "[a] group of Tea Party activists in Washington D.C. recently told two Hispanic Texas border congressmen to 'Go back to Mexico' as they were on their way to vote on the House floor." Now, who knows if that actually happened--there have been too many fabricated incidents of Tea Party bigotry to trust it--but isn't it interesting that Johnson depicts anti-Hispanic sentiment as racism, there, but denies that is a Hispanic racial identity today. I guess it exists if it serves his purpose.
And of course Johnson’s cluelessness continues on this post:
Trayvon Martin was gunned down by a vigilante who ignored 911 instructions not to follow the young man, while he was simply walking home from the store.
Actually, Chaz, he was not ordered to stand down, he was only told it was not necessary for him to pursue him. Which is a huge difference. And gunned down gives an impression that doesn’t line up with known facts. Is it “gunning a guy down” when there is fight first and wrestling on the ground?
And sadly Johnson opines on the law:
“stand your ground” laws, which make it incredibly easy to claim self-defense in cases like this; all the shooter has to say is that he felt threatened — whether there was really a threat or not.
You already know by now he is simply wrong on this point. He is complaining about the reasonable feare of death or serious bodily injury standard that is in existence in literally every state.
Stick to what you know, Chuckie. You know, like hating conservatives.
Meanwhile Fast Eddie Schultz blames (Jeb) Bush for the killing, because he signed the stand your ground law, even though it is not altogether clear whether it made a difference in this case or not. Ed, you are a big fat idiot.
Meanwhile, this article in the Examiner sheds a lot of additional light on the case, in criticizing the media:
Literally thousands of articles contain at least one false statement in the first couple of lines. They usually read "George Zimmerman, a white man," or "shoot by a white man." Zimmerman is described by family as a multiracial Hispanic. His appearance is clearly that of a Latino/Mestizo individual. However, the media wants him to be white because that better fits the political narrative they are trying to artificially create. Many news articles have also claimed the neighborhood is "mostly white." This is also a lie. The neighborhood is only 49% white. It is over half non-white.
And then he lists several statements in witness reports that tend to back up Zimmerman:
1. The witness reports that George Zimmerman was on the ground and Trayvon is on top of him punching him.
2. The witness says that George Zimmerman was screaming and yelling for help.
3. Police arrive and find Zimmerman bleeding on his face and the back of his head. He also has had grass stains on his back. All this confirms the story told by Zimmerman and the witness.
4. Police play the 911 tape for Trayvon Martin's father, who tells police that the voice screaming is not the voice of his son.
Which if verified is pretty powerful stuff although the author's weird emphasis on the fact that there had been a lot of robberies in the neighborhood performed by black people harms his credibility.
Meanwhile the former Governor Granhom declares that Zimmerman’s Stand Your Ground Defense Won’t Work including the brilliant argument that Zimmerman couldn’t possibly have feared for his life because he is bigger than Martin. Oy.
Finally as a palate clenser, we get Walter Olson’s typically wonderful defense of stand your ground laws.
Look the bottom line is this. Right now as far as I know, there is only one person who witnessed what happened at the crucial moment when the righteousness of the use of force is determined and that is George Zimmerman. Until and unless we have evidence proving his statements false, it is an abuse of process to even arrest him. And he deserves our benefit of the doubt.
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>> And since it goes on your perception of the danger, rather than the reality of it, mistakes like this are inevitable.
ReplyDeleteWrong. There is both a subjective and objective component. Yes, you must perceive a danger (the subjective component), but the preception must be reasonable (the objective component). That's where reality comes in.