Of course it is. When something like this happens, everybody's got to short stroke it. IMO the real crux of the issue is the "stand your ground" law, which by its very naming, does not mean "follow" or "pursue", which is what this zimmerman dude did.

Now I haven't read much of this thread beyond my last post, but i'm pretty sure someone at some point said,"but but.. this Tayvon person attacked him" or something like that. Well if he had, it's hardly surprising. Wouldn't you do something to defend yourself if some John Wayne wannabe comes around following you around sticking his nose in your beeswax where you had a completely legal right to be? (Just walking down the street as i recall) The "Stand your ground" law would apply more to Tayvon then Zimmerman i would think.

That law is too easily manipulated. Of course, one thing that's been forgotten in all of this.... this is "Floriduh" were talking about here. That state isn't exactly renown for being the sharpest tool in the shed.

A-L, not L-E. Rebuttal. ;)

Oh dear, young man you are having big problems.
Well I could just laugh and ask you to think, but I think the second part of that request is beyond you so instead lets go with.....
So that rather cutting challenge to my post does raise a question, do you wish to challenge the omnipotence and omnipresence of any god in particular?

Besides just demonstrating that you havn't got a clue what you are on about and have serious problems with basic english you are also demonstrating that you will never make it as a lawyer as you alledgedly intend to be, or alledgedly was:doh:

Bubbles your arguements have been demolished by yourself and you don't even realise. You even did CAPSLOCK to emphasise how far off the mark you are

The explanation is plausible. However, if you accept it, then you have to accept that as a end result of his tracking, Z provoked T. According to 776.041, that means Z loses his Stand Your Ground rights.

As for the witnesses, call me when you got someone that is willing to confirm T punched Z.

Morally, you could be right. In accordance to Florida's "Stand Your Ground" doctrine, not so much.

Even if that's true, T couldn't reasonably have known that. At best he could have seen Z on his phone. For all he knows, Z could be calling his fellow buds in for a joint ambush (which according to Z's story, is not far from the truth).

Which is perfectly valid thanks to Florida's Stand Your Ground rules.

Which means that Z could have further provoked T in them.

According to Z. Don't you think a little conflict of interest might be involved here?

Wrong. There was one potential and one definite provocation, undertaken at Z's own will.

Since those are objective facts, and in his favor, he had no reason to lie about them.

All they saw was a scuffle. Maybe they could see T winning over Z, but that's not very important compared to who threw the first punch or who provoked first, which they could not see.

I think it is you that does not understand the legal process. Self-defence is what they call an "affirmative" defense. You have to agree you hurt or killed the guy b/f you can claim it. Thus, probable cause is already established.

Here is Wiki's entry on Affirmative defense, referencing Oran, Daniel; Mark Tosti (2000). Oran's Dictionary of the Law. Delmar. p. 20. ISBN 0-7668-1742-3.
Quite frankly, his own testimony accounts as an assertion, and third-party testimony that can't even say T punched first is a bit thin for "clear and convincing evidence", don't you think?

The alternative, in the "lacks citation" portion of Wiki, that
is too scary. If he gets off that way, time to change the law.

Let's hope the old folks sue his butt off.

Trayvon's mother just filed trademarks so his name and slogans associated with the "cause" can be used (to make her money) on cd's and dvd's....

After all - cuz its all about justice for this kid, right? :nope:

To be fair, she'll need money for all the lawsuits

If her representatives hadn't suggested such an action then they should have been fired.
Take the McCanns portugese tragedy for example, some people might have an issue with them "trading" on thier daughters name by forming their company.
But I don't think anyone in their right mind should have a problem with them doing it or them suing the arse of any other bastard who was doing it or suing the media for slagging them for it or their other actions and those of their friends. Though of course in the former case that would also be covered as a criminal prosecution for fraud and for the latter a totally seperate financial set up was made as the limited company was not created to sue the media.

You really hit a dud note there Haplo:yep:

You know the worst part of this tragedy? It exposes that most people are arrogant and rush to judgement in a way profoundly opposed to the moral sense of justice our system is based upon.

Everyone should take a moment and step back - you're not debating theory, here. Something ACTUALLY happened, and a kid is ACTUALLY dead, and a man's life ACTUALLY hangs in the balance upon the best deduction law enforcement can interpret from sparse evidence. Anyone who sits around making statements of finality regarding the guilt OR innocence of Zimmerman are only exposing a sad sense of divisive arrogance, and while a debate on this message board is likely harmless, we should not forget that this is far-reaching nationally and such a propensity to rush to judgement is already proving dangerous.

Perhaps we should be better than that? That's really what I mean.

In any case, my opinion is such: judging by what I've HEARD, both parties are wrong is some way or another. However, the more important issue is the fundamental flaw built into a "Stand Your Ground" type of law.

That flaw is simple: the key witness is the survivor. As such, this type of law gives great leniency to the "winner" in a two-person conflict that both people are equally responsible for, and that prospect is rightfully scary.

On the other hand, it seems to me that a morally proper position for one to take is that any individual should have the right to stand their ground from an aggressor. Yet, I can't help but to worry about how this type of law results in a "he said/she said" type of investigation, but without the "she said" part of it.

Such is the burden of an imperfect system of justice.

Still, there's another side to this story that bothers me: Trayvon Martin, by many accounts, was a fairly troubled youth. We're not talking about an Eagle Scout, here. Yet, it took quite some time for that information to surface. Anytime such an obvious component of a story is clearly either overlooked or outright repressed, my BS detector goes into overdrive.

I suspect that many in the media wanted a specific story out of this case then unwittingly conspired to make it so, and we're seeing the results of the careless reporting so common in our modern day, sensationalized news cycle.

good post, aramike

it made me think that if you look at it in a game theory kind of way..

you could posit a collision with two people, and both believe both to be armed and both are able to make a stand your ground defense, and the "winner" of the confrontation is likely to be unpunished, while the loser is dead..

then both parties can immediately consider themselves to be in a life-threatening situation. The life-threatening quality of the situation is such that whoever draws first has a huge advantage over the other, and therefore if you wish to win from this situation the solution is be the first to draw.

Imagine we set up the game like this

each round you have three options:

retreat
stand
shoot

and each player must choose one option each round

at a very crude level it could be like paper/scissors/rock

stand beats retreat, shoot beats stand, retreat beats shoot(in a sense)

or you could add points to the options, as in the prisoner's dilemma , like this (varying the points can alter the probabilities of the outcomes):

retreat - retreat = +10 points/ +10 points
retreat - stand = -10 points/ +10 points
stand - shoot = -10points/ +10 points
stand - stand = 0 points/ 0 points
retreat - shoot = -10 points/-10 points
shoot - shoot = -10 points/-10 points

in any case the point i'm making here is that the flaw in the law that you describe enables "shoot beats stand", which likely changes the nature of the game substantially from a game in which the "stand-shoot" outcome was different (-10, -5 for example, in a case where any dead body from a shootout results in a prosecution for the winner)

You make some very good points. There does seem to be a mob justice mentality, and I'll admit I even had some feelings of that in the beginning. But when things get so out of hand that we have Spike Lee tweeting an address where he thinks Zimmerman might live, presumably so that a crew can go over to his house an enforce "justice" then things have gone too far.

And you make another good point about this "Stand Your Ground" law. Dead men tell no tales, and all we're left with is Zimmerman's inherently biased account, and two conflicting witness testimonies. Martin was surely standing his ground as much as Zimmerman was, and when a law pits two people against each other in fight to the death with the winner avoiding punishment....holy crap, what a barbaric law.

But where I completely disagree is that Martin's past has any relevance here. How on Earth does the fact that he was suspended from school make a lick of difference to the fact that by all accounts he was simply walking down the street when Zimmerman first chased him down? I think the transformation of Trayvon Martin from an average middle class high school student who was walking down the street into a dangerous thug who was asking for it is absolutely appalling. It allows the simple minded and those who don't have the mental capacity to overcome their "just world" biases to categorize the whole event - "a thug n**** deserving of punishment got what he deserved. Chances are Martin would have ended up in jail anyways, so better to take him out now before we pay for his time in a resort prison." But the reality is that he was a pretty average school kid who said and did the stupid things that most teenagers say and do. I guess reality is too complicated for some.

Continues here.

The police report noted he was injured as described and did in fact get attention to those wounds, so not seeing blood in the poor quality tape shown is no surprise.

With that logic I don't see him with a gun either.

How can a man shoot someone without a gun?

Had to have been someone else, maybe Martin was wounded already?

I think that's the point. Is the police report accurate? Some people have been claiming police collusion. There would be wounds the video doesn't show, but the question is there.

By "some people" are you talking about Martin's peers?

The media who still shows his picture as a 12 year old boy?

The New Black Panthers who have a bounty on Zimmerman dead or alive?

What people exactly? And on what grounds are they implying that the police report is false?