well he’s guilty of killing Martin. That is not being disputed. Is it 2nd degree murder? Doubtful.
I disagree. Only stupid defendants testify.
^ do tell. If you’re 100% innocent, be 100% truthful. When you have the dream legal team defending Barry Bonds whom doesn’t testify, it screams guilt. More lawyers you have, more guilty you look.
^ I should amend that to say that only stupid or arrogant defendants testify. A good prosecutor can make almost anyone look guilty when they get them in cross. Unless the prosecution presents a spectacular case that makes it pretty much certain you are going down, it’s almost always best to keep your mouth shut. If the prosecution does present a slam dunk case, which I don’t think they’ve done in this trial from what I’ve seen, the only benefit to testifying is to try to gain some sympathy from the jury.
Innocent until proven guilty beyond a resonable doubt. This is going to be tough to nail him based off the fact he has a slew of people who respect him and no witnesses. The media has turned this story into a circus and regardless of the outcome people are going to be upset. There are a lot of people on both sides who believe one or the other is innocent based not on evidence but hunches/headlines. This is an issue.
I’m betting on not guilty on 2nd degree murder, guilty of manslaughter.
^Is he being tried on manslaughter? I thought it was just murder. And I don’t think you can be tried on both murder AND manslaughter (can you?). That seems to be a violation of the “double jeopardy” rule.
If he gets a “not guilty” on the murder, can he be tried again for manslaughter? This is most certainly a violation of “double jeopardy”.
Rioters must be preparing their torches and pitchforks. Deep down they want to see Zimmerman walk.
I think he gets off. I don’t know the facts well enough, but listening to the experts, it seems as though the prosecution has done a pretty poor job all around and have not done near enough to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Zimmerman committed 2nd murder. The defense attorneys seem like they have done a pretty good job of defending Zimmerman. When Zimmerman gets off, he better leave the country FAST.
You’re way off. Yes, you can most certainly be convicted of a lesser crime, but the judge has to outline what the jury’s options are. For this particular case the judge said they cannot consider 3rd degree murder but could consider manslaughter.
Double jeopardy only applies to the specific crime he’s being tried for. But, it’s very unlikely someone, say OJ, gets off on 1st degree then gets convicted of manslaughter. They’re two wildly different crimes. You can’t very well make the case the crime was premeditated then go back and say it was an accident. Doesn’t work like that.
In this case it happens to work pretty well. If the jury believes Zimmerman wasn’t necessarily acting in self defense, but wasn’t really trying to kill Martin either, manslaughter is more appropriate than 2nd degree murder.
CFAvsMBA, you planning on rioting when the verdict comes back not-guility? If I were Best Buy in Harlem I’d be boarding up my windows right now.
I’ve watched a good part of the trial (had it on in the background while working on research). The burden of proof is on the Prosecution to make their case “beyond a reasonable doubt”. It’s been a bit of a bizarro-world case. Usually the prosecution puts forward a well-defined theory of what happened and tacks everything down with facts, while the defence tries to poke holes in things and raise doubt. Here, the speculation is coming mostly from the prosecution, and all the hard facts seem to be coming from the defense.
My take is that he (Zimmerman) was doing the watch thing, saw something suspicious, and called it in. He’d gone back to his car, and went out to look for a house number. FOUR minutes after the inital encounter, Martin confronted him (and this while he lived all of 100 yards away. Martin commenced to put a beat-down on Zimmerman (had him mounted and was doing some ground and pound). Zimmerman’s gun became visible, and Martin said “you’re going to die”. So Zimmerman shot him.
There’s enough doubt about whether that happened or whether Zimmerman stalked an innicent kid. But in this country, the prosecution has to meet a very high standard of proof before they can deprive someone of their freedom and put them in jail. IMO, the prosecution has nowhere near met that standard. OTOH, the defense has done a sterling job of putting forward their case.
Yeah, also what kind of bothers me is that they were allowed to exclude the evidence like test messages and such that would have shown that this kid wasn’t the sweet angel they painted him as, but was really just like any other kid dealing with drugs and the like.
Not to mention, if either Zimmerman was black or Martin was white, this incident probably would have made page 7 of the local newspaper once and never heard about again. The media just knew the race card was just too sensational to ignore.
Rumor has it the 2nd is already being ruled out and the jury is asking for clarification on manslaugthter. Board up your houses. Get ready for some smash and grab style justice.
Hide your kids, hide your wife, the verdict is not guilty…
That’s real retarded, Sir.
Might just need to avoid Facebook and Florida for a little while here…
Haha, yeah all my friends on facebook are more angry than when Bush got re-elected. Everyone blaming white people for this. What do white people have to do with this case?
I still think Zimmerman is a pussy wannabe cop who probably pressed up against someone who wasn’t willing to be treated like a punk and when things got heated he could neither scrap it out or take a beating like a man.
As for the law, all I know is if this happened in Canada, he’d get ten on a manslaughter charge and probably do less then four. Florida seems to be alot nicer to tough guy civilians who think they have the right to act like cops.