The Outhouse - The Greatest Comic Book Forum

[habitual]

Don't dispatcher's have a badge?

The ones in San Jose do.

Hab

[achilles]

An angry, grieving mother saying something that can be inferred as (reverse) racist is the only thing about this that concerns you?

I don't know, if my kid had been killed, getting his name in a couple of phrases trademarked probably wouldn't be my first concern. Just saying, it's a bit weird.

[achilles]

So with Zimmerman claiming it was him screaming and other people claiming it was Trayvon, is there any to heighten the audio?

And now with this witness saying he saw the thing, why didn't he come forward when all this begin.

I think the one thing everyone could agree on is this death was preventable if Zimmerman followed the police directions about not following.

It's true according to all accounts that he didn't follow the dispatcher's directions there, and he should have. That would have put a scotch to it right there. It's equally true that if the kid hadn't attacked Zimmerman as the evidence and testimony suggests, nothing would have happened either.

[e_galston]

there's more than one set of witnesses saying different things... the police are just leaking the stuff they want to. two witnesses were on Anderson Cooper saying the opposite of what the witness the police released said

[syxxpakk]

So Zimmerman goes after the kid for no reason, the kid tries to defend himself against someone who is going after him, gets killed by the person who was told specifically not to go after him, but the racists and bigots ITT still want to say that Zimmerman wasn't at fault.

BTW, turns out the other black kid in Jude's picture isn't Trayvon Martin.

[Cat-Scratch]

CS: you don't have to continuously tell me the political leanings of every link you post. It's just that one article you posted made many jumps in logic about Obama's comments.

I haven't really made any assumptions about this story and this is not my fight.

Well, the thing is, you did sort of bring a point. The media can be bias and drop facts from their articles to make, or try to make, their arguments. So in some sense, noting the leanings of the media can help make a judgement on the info it's giving up. Right or left.

[dairydead]

So Zimmerman goes after the kid for no reason, the kid tries to defend himself against someone who is going after him, gets killed by the person who was told specifically not to go after him, but the racists and bigots ITT still want to say that Zimmerman wasn't at fault.

BTW, turns out the other black kid in Jude's picture isn't Trayvon Martin.

it depends on what "going after him" really means. If he just confronted him....he didn't do anything wrong. Hard to say with what we know.

[Cat-Scratch]

Two reasons he's not.

First off, he's dead. It's s defense, and he no longer needs one.

Secondly, and perhaps more important, I doubt that law was intended to justify using force to attack someone. And since he was the apparent attacker, (pending a final determination by the courts), he doesn't get to use the law, but rather is exactly who the law was directed against.

Obviously, the law in this case works for the shooter. And, if you buy the law's logic, society.

Of course, this seems destined for some sort of determination in the courts, even if only to say that it doesn't warrant prosecution. But the shooter in this case made two obvious mistakes, both mistakes that could be made in the heat of the moment by someone without training, (which IMO any person with a CCW permit should have, (and AFAIK in most cases does). The first obviously is that he followed the guy to see where he was going and what he was up to. This was not his job. He should have called it in to the police and gone home.

The second IMO, was to refuse hospital care, where he might have had more evidence to collaborate his story. As it was, he still has the evidence, but it isn't as legally tight as it might have been with a full on hospital evaluation. I can see him turning that down in the heat of an adrenaline rush and full of machismo, as many guys might be after such an incident.

This is the thing for me. This all still comes off to me as Zimmerman's motives to confront Martin. Based on his 911 call, he came across as determined to go after the kid. This makes it hard to see him an innocent whom was swept up with the moment.

I also think the law should stand for Martin, dead or not. He was confronted by Zimmerman while Zimmerman was armed. Zimmerman clearly showed an aggressive attitude in the 911 call.

[Cat-Scratch]

Who are you kidding? I'm living forever.

I'll be your friend still. But then, I live up here in Canada.

I think it's a good law but is quite vague in it's interpretation/perception.

It's a bad law because of the vagueness in it's writing. Intentions mean nothing in a law that is badly written and flawed to the point that it fails.

[Cat-Scratch]

No, I'm a reverse, reverse, reverse racist!!

When this gets into factors or reverse....

[Cat-Scratch]

So Zimmerman goes after the kid for no reason, the kid tries to defend himself against someone who is going after him, gets killed by the person who was told specifically not to go after him, but the racists and bigots ITT still want to say that Zimmerman wasn't at fault.

BTW, turns out the other black kid in Jude's picture isn't Trayvon Martin.

There's a joke in there... not touching it...

[habitual]

Two new things:

1) The head homicide detective of the Sanford Police Department wanted to bring manslaughter charges against Zimmerman, he didn't believe Zimmerman's account of events at all and he signed an affadavit to that fact. He was overruled by the state investigator. This was reported by the Washington Post

2) The new Federal Investigator is having the audio that was isolated on other 911 calls analyzed to determine whom exactly was shouting on the tapes.

Hab

[S.F. Jude Terror]

There's a joke in there... not touching it...

That's what she said!



(Also, the joke is "They all look alike.")

[achilles]

This is the thing for me. This all still comes off to me as Zimmerman's motives to confront Martin. Based on his 911 call, he came across as determined to go after the kid. This makes it hard to see him an innocent whom was swept up with the moment.

I also think the law should stand for Martin, dead or not. He was confronted by Zimmerman while Zimmerman was armed. Zimmerman clearly showed an aggressive attitude in the 911 call.

Well Cat, what can I say, the physical evidence and most eyewitness testimony says that Zimmerman didn't confront the kid, the kid confronted, and then attacked Zimmerman. And the eyewitness testimony that says otherwise is either suspect for bias, (the girlfriend, who also didn't actually see anything), or for ambiguity, (those folks who claim to have heard something and then provided their own interpretation, both of which were contradicted by others who also heard the whole thing. And the entire thing is clouded by the immediate and ferocious reaction of the press and sundry demagogues, not to mention the efforts of the family of the victim.

The "law" as a whole does stand for Martin. That particular law doesn't apply to him, except as it pertains to and excuse for Zimmerman's shooting him

As far as Zimmerman's motives, who can tell what another person's motives are for anything? That's one problem I have with hate crime laws, (and I have others). I could reasonably suggest that he simply was doing what he likely had done before, looking out for suspicious characters. In this case, he saw someone he didn't recognize, and did something stupid, followed him. It's hardly the first time someone thought with their balls instead of their brain, or simply made a mistake.

[achilles]

I'll be your friend still. But then, I live up here in Canada.



It's a bad law because of the vagueness in it's writing. Intentions mean nothing in a law that is badly written and flawed to the point that it fails.

First of all, I'd suggest that any law dealing with self defense is going to be vague to some degree, since that is always subjective, and is always to some degree subject to further review by the justice system.

Secondly, not living here, I can see you don't know the history of these laws. The fact is, self defense laws in the US are a hodgepodge of differing tests and assumptions. But for quite a long time, they entirely favored the criminal. We had cases of homeowners being sent to prison for shooting armed intruders in the middle of the night into their homes. Cases of carjacking victims being sent to prison for shooting their jackers, who were also armed.

These cases had in common laws favoring the criminal, (self defense was either not allowed, or allowed only under very specific conditions with very specific responses), and prosecutors hoping to make a name for themselves by showing that they wouldn't tolerate "this sort of thing", though evidently they had no problem with the original criminal's intended crime.

We also of course had cases of civil law where a home burglar would sue the homeowner because he tripped over something in the person's home while trying to rob it. Successfully sued, I might add.

The final point I have is that everyone speculating one way or another on the law does so it seems without having actually read the thing, relying on someone else saying it was bad or good. Even if you do read the law, determining it's relative effects can be tricky.

For example, the main arguments against this law seem to be that more people have been shot under it. Well duh, if people know they can defend themselves, they are. Then the argument branches out by saying that some of those people shot must have been shot wrongly---without citing anything at all. Just their own opinion presented as fact. Here is a solid fact---overall violent crime has dropped since the introduction of that law. Whether there is a correlation or not is something I can't say.

It's the same thing we saw every time a jurisdiction introduced a "Shall issue" CCW, (concealed carry law). You had one side proclaiming that as soon as the law took effect, it would be the "Wild West", with shootouts everywhere, and blood in the streets. These people included many police chiefs BTW. You know what? It never happened, not in a single place that they were introduced. You know what did? Violent crime stats plummeted.

So it seems that based on available evidence, empowering ordinary people to defend themselves isn't necessarily a bad thing, except for criminals, police who lose power, and criminal advocates. Was Martin a bad shooting? Don't know, it doesn't seem so right now, but an investigation will help determine that. If it isn't undermined by the sort of intimidation tactics we see being brought to bear now.