SubJeff on 19/7/2013 at 14:56
It's equally ridiculous to say the opposite. We don't know. Only he knew and he is dead now.
More importantly - it doesn't matter.
He might have been looking into windows and drawing up maps whilst ordering a stealth kit on his mobile. So what? All that matters is who started the fight imho. If it was Martin then Zimmerman was justified, if Zimmerman started it he's not.
catbarf on 19/7/2013 at 16:11
Quote Posted by faetal
It's ridiculously tenuous.
But the idea that it had to be racial profiling in spite of alternative explanations simply because the kid was black isn't tenuous at all.
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
All that matters is who started the fight imho. If it was Martin then Zimmerman was justified, if Zimmerman started it he's not.
Even if Zimmerman started the fight that wouldn't justify Martin pinning him to the ground and bashing his skull into the pavement. That goes way beyond self-defense. If you haven't already you should see the medical expert's testimony.
DDL on 19/7/2013 at 16:43
"Even if he was bashing his head on the pavement it doesn't justify fucking shooting a 17 year old to death."
We could go back and forth like this all day. Where do you draw the line? A guy punches you, are you allowed to shoot him then? No? Ok, so...punch him back, maybe? Maybe push him to the floor to stop him punching you? Ok, you've now shoved him. Is he allowed to shoot you yet? No? Ok, so he kicks your legs out and you fall to the floor. Can you shoot him now?
And so on.
It's a ludicrous situation with a ludicrously defined level of legal acceptability.
SubJeff on 19/7/2013 at 16:52
Quote Posted by catbarf
.
Even if Zimmerman started the fight that wouldn't justify Martin pinning him to the ground and bashing his skull into the pavement. That goes way beyond self-defense. If you haven't already you should see the medical expert's testimony.
Don't be silly. If a random guy drives up and gets out of a car, says you're for it now and starts hitting you disabling him in any way you can is perfectly justified. If he's not stopping fighting despite you pinning him and punching him what's are you expected to do?
Pfffft.
catbarf on 19/7/2013 at 17:52
Quote Posted by DDL
"Even if he was bashing his head on the pavement it doesn't justify
fucking shooting a 17 year old to death."
We could go back and forth like this all day. Where do you draw the line? A guy punches you, are you allowed to shoot him then? No? Ok, so...punch him back, maybe? Maybe push him to the floor to stop him punching you? Ok, you've now shoved him. Is he allowed to shoot you yet? No? Ok, so he kicks your legs out and you fall to the floor. Can you shoot him now?
The law hinges on what is considered
reasonable. Most people agree that pinning someone to the ground, breaking their nose, and smashing their head into the pavement is not a
reasonable act of self-defense. Most people agree that using a gun when someone is threatening your life (as the medical expert testified), conversely, is.
Few people believe that shooting someone because they punch you is reasonable in any way. As I said before the law is about meeting force or the threat of force with an appropriate response. You can only shoot someone if you have justifiable reason to believe your life is in immediate danger. Lethal force is only a last resort when you have no other means of escaping the situation (that's 'escaping the situation', not 'not getting into the situation in the first place'), and you have a good reason to fear for your life.
Zimmerman's life was in danger. He was armed. He was pinned and had no way to escape or defuse the situation. What should he have done? Stop fighting and hope he doesn't die of brain trauma before the police show up?
DDL on 19/7/2013 at 18:42
Push the guy off? He weighs as much as I do and he's a good half a foot shorter, whereas the other dude was a 17 year old kid. The fact that he was able to stand around afterward waiting for the cops, make 5 hours worth of statements and never actually went to a hospital tends to suggest his injuries were not approaching life-threatening. If you can fire a gun into someone's chest while pinned to the floor, you can do a hell of a lot of other things to remedy your situation that do not also involve killing teenagers.
Plus, we could dissect your statement: is breaking someone's nose grounds for shooting someone? I'd hope...no? So we can drop that element.
Is pinning someone to the ground reasonable cause to shoot someone? I'd hope also no. So again, bye to that element.
So we're left with "hitting someones' head on the pavement". Ok, maaaybe grounds to be life threatening eventually, but dude: the human head can take a hell of a pounding, and zimmerman did not look terribly thoroughly pounded. Mind you, if he actually had been pounded to a point where it could be life threatening, it's plausible he'd no longer have the wherewithal to shoot someone.
So we're kinda left with "is a pre-emptive lethal strike acceptable"?
This strikes me as horrible legal territory.
Plus of course it's fairly....unlikely (to my mind) that any 17 year old kid, less that 70 yards from the house he's staying in, would leap out at someone and genuinely attempt to kill them by smashing their head against a pavement.
Ahh..fuck. It's basically just horrible. It doesn't really matter whether it was zimmerman's fault or martin's. I just hate that these things can happen.
My main gripe, I guess, is with a system that allows (and arguably encourages) such a situation to arise in the first place.
catbarf on 19/7/2013 at 18:52
Quote Posted by DDL
So we're kinda left with "is a
pre-emptive lethal strike acceptable"?
As opposed to shooting them
after they kill you? All self-defense when dealing with lethal force is pre-emptive to some degree.
The injuries may not look severe but seriously, watch the testimony. The fact that he was bleeding from his head (even severe head injuries can have no visible wounds) shows that he was beaten pretty severely, and he was concussed during his interviews afterwards.
As for pushing him off, don't you think he probably tried (and failed) to do that sometime between getting pinned and drawing his gun, considering he was being beaten and was screaming for help?
I agree entirely that it's a horrible situation that never should have happened in the first place, and both parties were stupid in their own ways. I just don't think the law is as broken as some are making it out to be. If you oversimplify the whole case to 'guy shoots an unarmed kid and court says it's good' then of course it's going to sound ludicrous, but it's leaving out a lot of important details. Zimmerman shooting Martin was the culmination of a long series of bad decisions on both sides, not an out-of-the-blue occurrence.
DDL on 19/7/2013 at 19:03
Quote Posted by catbarf
As opposed to shooting them
after they kill you?
Well, no: after you are no longer in a position to do anything about it. If someone disarms me but does not actually threaten my life, but THEN threatens my life once I'm disarmed, is it justifiable to shoot them before they disarm me? Coz hey, you never know rite?
As for head injuries, generally speaking while it's certainly true that serious head trauma can show very little external signs, very mild head trauma can show incredibly impressive external signs. I regularly shave my head, and when I accidentally nick myself it's like the elevator scene from the shining.
As for pushing him off, perhaps he was hampered in his abilities to push the dude off because his hands were full of gun? Come to that, how was he able to draw his gun and fire it, yet not do literally anything else less lethal?
Finally, there's basically just not enough evidence to say that
either party was being stupid and violent. We have literally zero concrete evidence other than "testimony of the guy who shot a kid", which I hope you'd agree is ....suspect by definition? I'm finding the assumption that "Martin definitely attacked him and was probably trying to kill him" a bit far-reaching, given that it's based on very little. The assumption that "Zimmerman shot a kid" is slightly easier to find evidence for. "Leaving out a lot of important details" is basically all we can do, since we don't HAVE any of the important details.
Overall, I don't want to argue the point too much, since we both agree it's fucked up, and I can feel ANGRY INTERNAUT RAGE building, which'd just be a pointlessly unnecessary aggressive approach. And would probably involve lots of caps and hyperbole.
I just wish they'd use this case (and the other, seriously even more fucked up examples this thread has provided) to really think about the implementation of laws like this. If you can go out, with a gun, deliberately provoke a situation in which you can claim to be threatened, shoot some peeps, and then get a pat on the back and a "working as intended", then something is clearly wrong.
SubJeff on 19/7/2013 at 19:37
Isn't Zimmerman 5'7”? Martin 6'2"? Weights?
And if someone is hitting your head on the ground I think that's a pretty good sign that they mean to do you serious harm.
nickie on 19/7/2013 at 20:05
:) I did try and google the difference in weight as Martin looked skinny and Zimmerman rather large in the pictures I've seen, but I couldn't find anything exact although apparently their height and weight were mentioned in the trial - according to Wikipedia.
