Jul 14 2013
The Effing Punk Got Away
Update: Here is a good reminder of the limitations of our legal system, and why ‘not guilty’ so many times does not mean ‘innocent’. – end update
Zimmerman’s defense team won a Pyrrhic victory yesterday. The prosecution had done its job in many respects. We all know Zimmerman chased down, confronted and – when losing the fisticuffs battle – killed an unarmed kid.
The prosecution proved Zimmerman’s statements were a series of lies. He lied where he first saw Trayvon. He lied about Martin circling his truck. He lied about not knowing the name of the street he was on . The prosecution had Zimmerman on tape with that lie:
Zimmerman’s problem came out during Officer Chris Serinos’ testimony when they played the reenactment video. It is just prior to time stamp 1:21:50 in this court video. At this point Zimmerman is in a police car talking through the incident. He and a policeman are parked in front of the club house and Zimmerman is explaining how Trayvon Martin – who he had seen back down the street a bit – had walked past his parked car and then down towards where he was staying.
The subconscious mistake Zimmerman makes is he automatically recalls the name of the street (Twin Trees Lane). I mean it just comes right out of his mouth. The same street he could not recall the night before!
Zimmerman, the effing punk, lied about how he could pull the gun from his pants and holster,all the while on his back with Trayvon on top. He lied about his injuries (clearly not all from the concrete). He lied about being jumped (Rachel Jeantell testified and ‘witnessed’ that truth there). Zimmerman lied and lied and lied.
But the jury apparently decided that they could not prove what did happen. The prosecutions one big mistake was going for Murder 2, which relied on them proving what happened absent Zimmerman’s concocted story.
A variant on negligent homicide (like what happens when a drunk or reckless driver kills someone) would have been attainable. In that kind of trial Zimmerman’s recklessness would be clear. His reckless assumptions, his carrying a gun to confront a kid, his unwillingness to wait for police. That verdict was in reach of the prosecution under those kinds of charges.
With Zimmerman’s story now shredded by the prosecution, the only way out for George was the ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ escape hatch. And that door was sadly open. Murder 2 requires more than recklessness, it requires motive.
Another problem probably was that the jury never clearly got the fact that when Martin retreats (at a full run no less), Zimmerman cannot pursue him and retain any “self defense” rights. None. It is the right of retreat. Again, Rachel Jeantell testified clearly about Trayvon’s efforts to retreat. And no, he was not required to retreat home (though the prosecution gave a good rationale for why not to lead some psycho stalker back to his 12 year old friend).
There is no doubt Zimmerman shot Martin. There is no doubt he pursued him for up to 4 minutes after getting off the phone with police. There is no doubt his story is a sham. And there is no doubt Martin had as much right to defend himself from a stalker as anyone else. The challenge is whether the incident was driven by hate and malice or just by a dumb, reckless, idiot? What I saw in court was a lot of both, but there was wiggle room on the Murder 2.
Zimmerman is not done yet. The Martins should go after him in civil court. The Fed should consider a case too.
His neighbors will mostly shun him, and they should demand he remain unarmed.
The vigilante who killed a kid is going to burn in hell. He may have side stepped justice for now, but he is damaged goods. Watching his father in court, I am pretty sure he knows his son killed Martin without justification. The killing of Trayvon will haunt ZImmerman and his family forever, and I for one hope it burns the entire time. He took a life without good cause.
More importantly, it will be hard to convince others to not become vigilantes now that Zimmerman has won his case. Zimmerman took the law into his hands and killed someone. Now he is going to find himself the target of others with a similar mindset. They will profile him, judge him, and possibly confront him. I pray to God no one does. This is not the time for an eye for an eye justice.
But those are the ramifications for not confessing, not plea bargaining, not coming clean. Sometimes you can do more damage trying to be found not guilty than doing your penance.
Zimmerman’s problems are still mounting, and rightfully so. And justice will be done in the end someway, somehow – even if it ends up being at the pearly gates of Heaven. This weekend the effing punk got away. But he cannot run forever from what he did.
And I am getting sick of hearing “an unarmed kid”. Sorry to have to burst that myth, but Trayvon Martin was armed with his fists, his body and his brain. Many people are murdered by people who use their body as their weapon. Strangling, suffocating, beating, breaking necks, all possible bare hands.
Now I think we all need to give AJ a little space so that he can figure out how to come out of his apparently self imposed Internet blog exile.
Unless AJ choses to explain we’ll never know why he is so emotionally invested in this case. I’m going by memory but I believe in his very first post he proclaimed GZ guilty and said, “I know his type.” Obviously there’s more going on here and logic won’t overcome it.
Take the street and address for instance. It was dark, raining, (no evidence porch lights were on) and Greta Van Sustern demonstrated that the walkway is pitch black at night without the lights. Could that set of conditions, combined with adrenaline, cause GZ to forget the street name? After all, don’t we all suffer the occassional brain fart – especially under stress? I’d say that is at least a possibility. AJ won’t. He knows that this is proof GZ lied.
So here’s a few questions I’d like AJ to address. If TM was scared: 1) Why didn’t he just run home? and 2) Why didn’t he hang up on his friend and call 911 on his cell phone? 3) Is it possible that this lack of action means TM chose another course of action, i.e. to confront GZ? 4) If TM, for whatever reason, chose to confront GZ then is it not possible that GZ’s story is true?
You see AJ, your judgement depends on not caring what TM did or why he did it as much as it requires that you know the actions and mind of GZ.
As I pointed out in an earlier post, on a different thread. AJ “profiled and convicted” Zimmerman while the media was fabricating their version. Stating “I know the type.”
In essence doing the very thing accused of GZ.
Not whets going on with him and this issue but he’s is usually a little more metered with his comments. Never seen him so angry. I guess it’s best to leave this alone and wish him the best. Perhaps there are some other stressors in his life that are aggravating his mood.
My money is on some incident in which AJ was confronted by some security guard or something similar who yelled “SQUEAL LIKE A PIG!” while AJ had to do a Ned Beatty imitation. That’d be some hard memories to deal with.
Redstate, the reason Zimmermann never had to take the stand was because of the incredible incompetence of the prosecutor, again. Good Prosecutors *Never* allow the defense to build a case through the prosecutions own witnesses! You force the defense to build its own case, and you don’t call witnesses that will help the other side! But that never even seemed to have occurred to the clowns running this thing, and once Zimmermann’s case was made without him having to take the stand, the Prosecutors were left with nothing at all. I suspect that they were counting on doing a really aggressive cross examination to make their case, but because they blew it and got punked by a stellar defense team, that never happened.
Ever good defense lawyer Dreams of a case where his client can make his case without having to testify himself. The worst prosecution team I have ever seen made that easy in this one.
(which made it doubly funny when AJ kept insisting that they were doing a good job.)
All good points, layman.
I don’t now whether or not you’ve noticed, but people wholeheartedly condemning Zimmerman, don’t ask such questions about Trayvon. They don’t spend much time considering the options he had, or his motivation for sticking around and apparently confronting Zimmerman. All they do is hammer away at what an awful human being this racist Zimmerman is. He’s autmatically convicted of ‘not following orders’ (insubordination, if you will) for stepping out of his vehicle. They already know that he was stocking Martin rather than looking for an address to give police a more accurate location. If a slightly different word usage is applied by Zimmerman, during the numerous interrogations he underwent, it becames a raging lie. Describing a gait as first running, and then later applying some other word, like ‘skipping,’ turns into a brouhaha of controversy, and termed another inconsistency, and thus a full fledged lie.
In the meantime how much more violence will there be, property damage, upping the already high racial amperage in the name of ‘justice for Trayvon?’
Gotta love Ted Nugent:
” …until the race-baiting industry saw an opportunity to further the racist careers of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, the Black Panthers, President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, et al, who then swept down on the Florida community refusing to admit that the 17-year-old dope smoking, racist gangsta wannabe Trayvon Martin was at all responsible for his bad decisions and standard modus operendi of always taking the violent route.
With an obvious racist chip on his shoulder, referencing the neighborhood watch guy as a “creepy ass cracker” to his fellow racist female friend who admitted under oath that that is how non-blacks are referred to normally in their circles, Trayvon had no reason not to attack, because it was the standard thug thing to do. See Chicago any day of the week.
With nearly 700 examples of this truism played out in Chicago in 2012 alone, no one can possibly dispute the recent surge in black racism increasing throughout Barack Obama’s presidency. To attempt to claim otherwise is a laughable lie.
The jury got it right, and non-racist America rejoices that there is still common sense, honesty and decency aware of identifying justice in this country. America also believes that the entire prosecutorial team should be ashamed of themselves and disbarred for ignoring the obvious and kowtowing to the pure racism that forced the politically correct lie that only black lives killed by non-blacks matter, which is why there are no headlines, no protests, no prosecutions and no Barak Obama or Eric Holder meddling in the nonstop black-on-black slaughter in their gun-free zone of Chicago.
Martin Luther King Jr. is rolling over in his grave that he sacrificed his life for the cause of judging people by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin, as so many of his own race carry in in self-destructive behavior while professional race mongers blame everything on racism. It is painful and heartbreaking to say and write this, but horrifically it is true. Blacks kill more blacks in a weekend in Chicago than the evil, vile Ku Klux Klan idiots did in 50 years. Truly earth shattering insane. And not a peep from Obama or Holder. Tragic.
The only racism on that night was perpetrated by Trayvon Martin, and everybody knows it.
Here’s the lesson from all this, America: Teach your children to not attack people for no good reason whatsoever. Conduct yourself in a responsible, civil manner, and everything will be just fine. Try to kill someone and that someone just may be exercising his or her Second Amendment rights and you could get shot. It’s called self-defense, and it is the oldest, strongest and most righteous instinct and God-given right known to man.”
WWS said;
“the reason Zimmermann never had to take the stand was because of the incredible incompetence of the prosecutor, again. Good Prosecutors *Never* allow the defense to build a case through the prosecutions own witnesses!”
So true.
The particular case I was attempting to make tho was in the original post AJ said: “The prosecution proved Zimmerman’s statements were a series of lies.” AND: “Zimmerman, the effing punk, lied about how he could pull the gun from his pants and holster,all the while on his back with Trayvon on top. He lied about his injuries (clearly not all from the concrete). He lied about being jumped (Rachel Jeantell testified and ‘witnessed’ that truth there). Zimmerman lied and lied and lied.” AND; “With Zimmerman’s story now shredded by the prosecution,”
All those references to GZ lying, the point I was making was that GZ never lied at all, he never testified. He never told any story to the jury. GZ’s story was never shredded, he never told a story in court to be shredded. The only thing that was clearly ‘shredded’ was the prosecutions attempt to railroad an innocent guy. The jury saw through it.
Where were the Skiddles and tea found? At he scene of the altercation or deposited somewhere else for later retrieval?
Can someone answer this point.
Thanks
OL
Here’s a concise overview of the injudicious criminal justice in Florida, relating to the process of indicting Zimmerman, handling of evidence, to the trial itself. If one can tear themselves away from the racial prejudice infused in this case, this was not a search for truth or justice, just a platform to incite old racial hostilities and political arm-wrestle the judicial system. It also proved to be a wonderful distraction from all those scandals plaguing the WH. When have you last heard anything about Benghazi, the IRS numerous faux pas, or seen Eric Holder addressing all the improprieties in the DOJ? Instead, Holder can now pander to his base and talk about civil rights injustices.
Good points, Redteam. You’re absolutely right, of course. The genius of the defense and the stupidity of the prosecution, in allowing the story to be presented by Prosecution witnesses, is that the ONLY way that Prosecution could attack that narrative was to attack their own witnesses. But if they do that, then they have no witnesses left, no evidence, and no case.
On the other hand, all the Defense had to do was say “Look at these great Prosecution witnesses! They’re telling the truth!” and prosecution can do nothing to attack that at all. It’s still unbelievable to me that a supposedly competent prosecutor in a high profile case let himself be put in such a trap – it destroyed his case, and he needs to spend the rest of his career arguing parking citations in traffic court.
O’Neal, I don’t know where the skittles were found, and for the purposes of GZ’s guilt or innocence it really doesn’t matter, but there IS a fascinating issue that was covered up with regard to them. Remember how there was video of Trayvon buying them at the store? The media all said he was just buying tea with them, but the video tells a different story.
from http://dailykenn.blogspot.com/2012/05/trayvons-drug-addiction-caught-on-video.html
“Take a close look at the can of ‘tea’ in Trayvon Martin’s hand.
The video captures Trayvon at a convenience store moments before his attack on neighborhood watchman, George Zimmerman. Trayvon wasn’t buying tea with his Skittles as reported by the media. Rather, he was buying a drink called Arizona Watermelon.
Skittles and Arizona Watermelon are two ingredients commonly used to make a popular street drug called “lean” or “purple drank.”
Trayvon’s Facebook posts indicate he was actively seeking other ingredients to make a batch of lean, namely Promethazine with Codeine VC, Sizzurp being the active ingredient.
The Urban Dictionary provides a recipe for lean using Sprite and Jolly Rancher candy instead of Arizona Watermelon and Skittles. Below is a copy/paste from Wikipedia that describes the danger of the drug, including notable rappers who died from its use.
Purple drank is confirmed or suspected to have caused the deaths of several prominent users. Respiratory depression is a potentially serious or fatal adverse drug reaction associated with the use of codeine, but mainly the danger lies in the much more potent and CNS-depressing phenothiazine-related antihistamine promethazine. This depression is dose-related and is the mechanism for the potentially fatal consequences of overdose: respiratory or cardiac arrest. As with most CNS depressants, mixing with alcohol greatly increases the risk of respiratory failure and other complications.
DJ Screw, who popularized the codeine-based drink, died of a codeine-promethazine-alcohol overdose on November 16, 2000, several months after the video to Three 6 Mafia’s single debuted.
Big Moe, a DJ Screw protegé whose albums City of Syrup and Purple World were based on the drink and who has been described as having “rapped obsessively about the drug,” died at age 33 on October 14, 2007, after suffering a heart attackone week earlier that left him in a coma. There was speculation that purple drank may have contributed to his death.”
oneal:
This was excerpted from a CNN report:
…couldn’t resist his one last post dealing with a “Free at last” Branco cartoon.
Wonder what AJ’s position would have been had Zimmerman been the one who died in this instance…and that Trayvon had been accused of murder.
From Moonbattery:
If Zimmerman Hadn’t Used His Gun
What would have happened to George Zimmerman had he not managed to exercise his inalienable right of self-defense on the night Trayvon Martin attacked him? A story from last fall illustrates:
An El Paso police officer allegedly knocked unconscious and then beaten violently by a 17-year-old died Friday morning at University Medical Center, police said.
Officer Jonathan Molina, 29, who did tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan with the Marine Corps, died a little more than nine days after suffering a fractured skull, internal head injuries and facial fractures.
The suspect, Juan Antonio Gonzalez, who had been arrested on suspicion of assaulting an officer, was charged with capital murder on Friday.
Here’s how it happened
The incident started on Sept. 25 at 4:53 p.m. when Molina, who was off-duty, saw a young man scratch his personal vehicle with a piece of metal. The vandal was with two other man, one of whom was Gonzalez. …
Molina got into his car and followed them a way before parking in front of a home at 4120 Trowbridge.
After getting out of his car, Molina identified himself as a police officer and confronted Gomez.
He got out of his car! He must have been hunting the poor 17-year-old child!
Gonzalez allegedly punched Molina in the face with his fist, stunning the officer.
Gonzalez then quickly grabbed Molina around his knees and jerked his legs upward, the affidavit says.
That caused Molina “to fall backwards and head first onto the concrete driveway,” the affidavit says. The blow to Molina’s head knocked him unconscious, it says.
Gonzalez then “squatted over (Molina) and began to beat (him) multiple times around the face and head,” the affidavit says.
That’s the risk you run when confronting a young hoodlum of the type glorified by the media. Unfortunately, Molina was not able to get to his gun. Fortunately, George Zimmerman was.
I finally had to log in and comment, AJ. Just could not remain silent. I’ve looked in occasionally on your Zimmerman blogs and couldn’t believe your position and your remarks. You’ve always had so many issues that I agree with you on, but this difference of opinion shocks me. Not going to dwell on it, but just had to speak up.
Legal Insurrection, an excellent site by Law Professor William Jacobson has had a guest lawyer who was present during the entire trial and blogged for LI throughout. His name is Andrew Branca. Anyway, there were daily articles, updates and summaries. Nothing I’ve read or heard leads me to conclude anything like you’ve come up with. Obviously, there is no sense arguing with you, your mind was made up a long time ago…Still it just doesn’t make sense.
BTW, did you know that the first place Trayvon’s father called in looking for his son that night was the juvenile detention center – not the hospital or the police. Trayvon was a 17 yr old who had already had numerous juvenile delinquent issues, but aside from that, the fact remains, he jumped George Zimmerman and pounded on him, and the cement sidewalk IS a lethal weapon. That gun was not pulled or used until George had been injured (and no injuries were noted on Trayvon, except for the bullet wound).
Ultimately, the race baiting and race hating involved was pushed by this administration and the media is the lynch mob.
AJ, you are too intelligent to be honestly deceived by the racist garbage spewed by Sharpton, Pres. Urkel, and Holder. I can only surmise that you are on some type of racist, anti-white tirade.
you show no sign of looking at the actual testimony shown on Legal Insurrection and the sound analysis at Talk Let. there was NO evidence presented to show that Zimmerman initiated the physical struggle. you seem to assume that anyone who dares to folow a black male deserves to be beaten to death. GZ was on a public sidewalk where he had the right to be present. GZ has properly gotten his pistol back from the city
The interview with Juror B37 tonight was fantastic – one of the best real news segments CNN has done in years, a salute to them for getting this.
The Jury believed Zimmerman, and as I thought, Detective Serino was seen as one of the key witnesses that caused them to believe George’s story. That Jeantel girl? The Jury found that she was not credible, for a variety of reasons.
One thing I found really fascinating was that juror B37 said she had “Absolutely No Doubt” that George was the man heard screaming on the phone call. Also, she said that the Jury believed that Trayvon threw the first punch.
Well that’s game, set, and match right there.
“Well that’s game, set, and match right there.”
It might be for you. But, for people with axes to grind, for people with nothing more to do than take to streets, they are not interested in putting the myriad of evidence, details about each man’s proclifities and character, facts surrounding how this whole event was processed etc. together. All they want to do is put the needle of their mind on one track of thinking, and go from there.
I so agree with a poster above that race relations has only worsened under Obama. For some reason his words and actions have been like putting blood into the water, and then inviting sharks to come by.
I am also beginning to place more accountability onto Trayvon’s parents. They were aware of their son’s travails, his propensity to get into trouble. He was on a ten day school suspension — his third — when this whole thing happened. He was sent to stay with his father’s girlfriend just to keep him away from trouble at home. How they can now propagate a storyline that he was somehow not negligent in his own choices, not complicit in having the kind of temperament causing him to throw the first punch, is beyond me. It seems they rather save his reputation, rather than salvage what is left of race relations in this country.
“How they can now propagate a storyline that he was somehow not negligent in his own choices, not complicit in having the kind of temperament causing him to throw the first punch, is beyond me.” Because you can always rely on the selfish among us to abuse yours, my and our charitable and deferential instincts. The simple fact is that I feel sorry for Trayvon Martin and I know that most people think the same way. But what his parents are doing is abusing that sympathy because, although I will show respect for Trayvon despite his obvious failings, I hold his parents responsible for some of his own travails and Trayvon ultimately attacked another person and escalated the encounter resulting in his own demise. But his parents are actually abusing our respect and our deference to their son Trayvon. I won’t condemn Trayvon, I didn’t know him. I won’t publicly ridicule his parents or Trayvon himself for the troubled, dysfunctional teenage that he was. His parents know that I won’t do that, and they also know that most upstanding citizens of conscience won’t either. Thus, they are insulting us by not being honest about their own son and by ignoring our deference for their own personal gain or vendetta against the “system”. It is wholly despicable that they would abuse our deference to them and their son. But there it is. That’s what people of that low character do. And I’ve seen that kind of thing in all parts of society, from all levels of affluence and all different cultural identities. And it galls me that they actually think that it’s a race thing. I am truly shocked at home many people in this episode have turned against the system (despite we always acknowledging the potential for failure in that system), no respect for our own limited knowledge of events (when did the Internet turn everyone into the painfully annoying “know it all”) and no respect for the deference that all of us must show at times when we witness tragedy.
Here’s the latest on that 17 year old “innocent” child who was “murdered” by that “vicious racist” GZ. Seems his autopsy revealed liver damage consistent with chronic use of the new home made drug, LEAN, which causes users to be psychotic and aggressive in addition to producing a high. LEAN is made by mixing cough syrup (such a Robitussim) with that Arizona Ice tea drink like the one Martin had just purchased at the 7/11. If this information, which was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, apparently was not given to the defense, or if it was, the judge must have ruled it inadmissible, along with other evidence favorable to the defense’s case. This was nothing more than a legal lynching organized and encouraged by the Justice department. That ugly assed judge, who would make a perfect with the other 3 female dogs on the Supreme Court, was obviously under threat or in on the lynching. She did her best and will probably be rewarded with an appointment to the US Supreme Court, but her best wasn’t enough when the prosecution, presented the evidence which had convinced local authorities that they did not have evidence to prove GZ acted in any way but self defense. GZ’s head is round. there is no way all those abrasions on his head could have been caused by one of two hits on the concrete. I counted at least 12 separate abrasions, and possibly as many as 15, on the back of his head. GZ said his head was slammed down on the concrete many times, possibly as many as 20, and TM kept hitting him in the nose, which was already broken. . Just how many times is anyone required to take that kind of blows before they figure they are being beaten to death? How many of those blows would you take, AJ, before you act in self defense? Another note. I have lived in the South most of my life and have never heard of the KKK doing any lynching or committing other crimes against blacks, as they have been reputed to have done. .It was fear of the KKK that prevented blacks from reverting to the laws of the jungle, survival of the fittest, kill the owner and take what you want, culture that they have reverted to since the KKK was infiltrated and neutered by the FBI.
@momdear1 – gee, you were doing just fine until you tried to rewrite the history of the south. It could be argued that the KKK has been exaggeratedly maligned in recent times but to argue that the KKK were not trying to control their fellow colored citizens is an outrageous lie. They did and they were and some of the earliest gun rights laws were invoked because of it. Other than that, I can agree with most of what you said and TM and GZ. http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/cramer.racism.html