Queue on 18/7/2013 at 14:27
Quote Posted by jay pettitt
You tell me. But I certainly don't think there's good reason to think Zimmerman asked Martin whether he was having a nice evening immediately followed by Martin slamming Zimmerman's head on the ground. There's a whole section of events that we're missing.
Lack of information is not a good reason to right something off as 'probably just one of those unavoidable things' when someone has shot and killed a kid. That's a scenario where you want to find out what happened.
How the hell would I know?!
So, since none of us were there, but there is blatant evidence that Zimmerman was being pummeled, and the notion that he intentionally gave Zimmerman a beat down ...well....
(edit) And you're bringing this back to the whole "kid" thing. The "kid" was beating the shit out of the "adult".
(final edit) How do you know there is a whole section of information we are missing? Isn't that just a presumption? Isn't it possible that Martin didn't take kindly to being followed and decided to go on the offense--end of story?
Jason Moyer on 18/7/2013 at 14:28
Quote Posted by jay pettitt
You tell me. But I certainly don't think there's good reason to think Zimmerman asked Martin whether he was having a nice evening immediately followed by Martin slamming Zimmerman's head on the ground. There's a whole section of events that we're missing.
And of course, if a woman starts an altercation with a man and the man hits her, the legal system treats the man like a victim right? Assuming that Zimmerman didn't hit or grab him, the only justifiable thing I can think of for the attack would be if he had pointed his gun at him. And to be honest here, that's not a possibility I find myself easily dismissing.
I mentioned it earlier in the thread, but I seriously wonder what the reaction to this case would be if either their races had been reversed or if Zimmerman were a woman. I bet the case wouldn't have even gotten to court. Hell, the only reason the case actually was prosecuted was because of the media-driven public outcry.
Edit: Queue: (
http://blog.sfgate.com/stienstra/2013/07/16/ammo-shortage-not-a-conspiracy-says-nssf/)
Queue on 18/7/2013 at 14:39
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
I've had someone "profile" me because I'm a Jeff Bridges-looking scraggly motherfucker
Jason, the Dude would never hurt anyone. The Dude abides.
jay pettitt on 18/7/2013 at 14:42
Hold up Jason. We're missing the information of what happened immediately before Martin broke Zimmerman's nose and Zimmerman shot Martin. We don't know the sequence of who was the bigger dick, who said what, who pushed who and what order the hitting happened.
Quote:
Hell, the only reason the case actually was prosecuted was because of the media-driven public outcry.
You don't think someone being shot and killed is sufficiently serious?
Quote:
Isn't it possible that Martin didn't take kindly to being followed and decided to go on the offense--end of story?
Of course it's possible. It's also not the point. The problem here is the lack of information, not a lack of speculative scenarios.
catbarf on 18/7/2013 at 15:19
Quote Posted by faetal
So are you saying that Zimmerman could see into Martin's past, or that anyone who has any connection with illegal behaviour has a certain gait or set of body language which can be identified by experts such as Zimmerman?
I'm saying that the notion that Martin couldn't possibly have been doing anything suspicious is asinine considering he has a history of relevant criminal activity. For all we know he could have been scoping out potential burglary targets along the way and this is what Zimmerman saw and reported to the 911 dispatcher. We simply don't know, but it seems ridiculous to me to assume that Zimmerman could not have any possible reason besides racial prejudice to report him.
As for the fight, people seem to keep forgetting that escalation of force is in the law. If someone starts a drunken bar fight by punching you in the face you can't legally shoot them in self-defense. If you tried and missed, you would legally be considered the aggressor and they would be able to use lethal force in self-defense. I don't know why people keep presenting Stand Your Ground as 'someone insulted me so I can now shoot him until he dies'. Your response has to be proportionate and justifiable given the circumstances, lethal force is only justified if someone is trying to kill you or you have reasonable grounds to believe they're going to try to kill you.
If you shoot someone because he calls you a name, your response is disproportionate and illegal. If you shoot someone because he punched you, still illegal. If you shoot someone because he's pinning you to the ground and bashing your skull into the pavement, causing concussion, brain injury, and eventually possible death, then shooting is proportionate because your life is threatened. Following the same concept, pinning someone to the ground and bashing their skull into the pavement isn't a rational, proportionate response to someone starting a fistfight. It's no longer self-defense if you beat someone down and try to kill them. Even if Zimmerman started the fight (which looks extremely unlikely), Martin's actions wouldn't be considered self-defense and legally that makes him the aggressor whether he started the fight or not.
Phatose on 18/7/2013 at 15:44
Quote Posted by DDL
Those aren't
good reasons, they're ....marginally less terrible reasons, at most.
If you're in a threatening situation, the ideal should be to defuse/avoid the situation, rather than shoot it.
(also, I'm not quite sure whether your example is supposed to be a pro or anti SYG situation: 'you're guilty of murder...if it weren't for SYG', or 'you're guilty of murder, period'? Also, I'm pretty sure even in a
non-SYG state, being
directly shot at is going to cut you a lot of slack, blanks or no)
It wasn't really about SYG at all, just the general rationale why reasonably feeling threatened needs to be enough. If it were "actually threatened", then defending yourself when you thought you were threatened but weren't actually could end you up with murder charges, and we don't want that.
And yeah, ideally you defuse or flee, and everybody lives to see another day. Thing is, a failed attempt to flee or defuse can get you dead. Seems kind of unreasonable to mandate that a victim has to take a course of action that might get them killed for the sole purpose of protecting their attacker.
DDL on 18/7/2013 at 15:53
Yeah, it's a grey area: I think you'd have to be a saint to honestly favour the life of an aggressor with a clearly lethal intent over your own, certainly...but the italicised bit is where the grey area lies.
Balancing up the risk of fleeing/defusing and dying as a consequence versus the risk of escalating when totally unneeded and killing as a consequence. I'd guess on balance that defusable situations occur much, much more often than situations where lethal violence is unavoidable, and I'd ideally want to live in a place where the law favours trying to achieve the former resolution rather than encouraging the latter.
Do I value my own life over that of a stranger? Well...kinda, yeah.
Would I rather run the risk of dying over running the risk of killing someone (even if they were kinda asking for it)? Also kinda yeah.
Phatose on 18/7/2013 at 16:17
Encouraging it isn't the same as mandating it though. SYG, for better or worse, allows you the options to stand your ground, but you're still quite free to flee. Non-SYG states require you to flee or defuse.
I don't think it's terrible in principle. In practice, SYG should really require at the very least a full investigation and a hearing before a judge to determine if charges need to be filed. The failure of SYG seems to be more of being a piss-poor implementation by trigger happy rootin', tootin' Texans. But idiots recreating the old west and calling it SYG is an argument against idiots, not SYG.
Azaran on 18/7/2013 at 22:25
And after this, now a 75 year old man murdered his 13 year old black neighbour because he said the kid had stolen from him. It was caught on camera, and shown in this report.
[video=youtube;T4HZJ1jXAG8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4HZJ1jXAG8[/video]
EDIT: It actually happened a while back, but the guy was just found guilty
