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Why all the protests? You have a vigilante with a concealed weapon, you have a young kid looking for trouble. Not enough evidence to convict. Oj Simpson was found not guilty...i don't recall a bunch of protests of the magnitude of the zimmerman trial.

TakingArms wrote:QUOTE (TakingArms @ Jul 15 2013, 01:58 PM) But hold on, you don't know if Zimmerman started the altercation. All we know is that he followed some kid around and had some words with him. None of those things are illegal. No one knows who started the fight so you can't prove manslaughter that way.

Maybe so, but it is understandable why people are dissapointed with the verdict and the policing in general, it does seem very strange that a person who has killed someone else isn't initially charged with murder or manslaughter and isn't taken in for questioning and forensics. I feel that it doesn't matter the circumstances, if someone has killed someone else you should do forensics, tests and qeustioning asap even if it was supposed self-defence from a home invasion. I find it odd that the 4th amendment was used to not immediately arrest Zimmerman after the shooting, apparently having the weapon and being at the location and all sorts of evidence isn't probable cause...

I agree with you in regards to the police investigation, Hsharp. That is shabby police work no matter what your opinion is on the outcome.

minigun wrote:QUOTE (minigun @ Jul 15 2013, 07:26 AM) Why all the protests? You have a vigilante with a concealed weapon, you have a young kid looking for trouble. Not enough evidence to convict. Oj Simpson was found not guilty...i don't recall a bunch of protests of the magnitude of the zimmerman trial.

Protests? I saw a live stream of a crowd trying to burn a McDonald's flag at the most... In Oakland... That's about it.

minigun wrote:QUOTE (minigun @ Jul 15 2013, 09:26 AM) Why all the protests? You have a vigilante with a concealed weapon, you have a young kid looking for trouble. Not enough evidence to convict. Oj Simpson was found not guilty...i don't recall a bunch of protests of the magnitude of the zimmerman trial.

By "looking for trouble" do you mean "walking home from the store being followed by a wannabe cop with a handgun"?

Partially the protests are a reaction to the whole chain of events, starting with the initial decision not to press charges or really even investigate.

If a black man with a record of resisting arrest, assaulting police officers, domestic violence, and a restraining order shot a 17 year old white kid walking home you can be fairly certain they wouldn't just drop it.

Icky wrote:QUOTE (Icky @ Jul 15 2013, 05:06 PM) If a black man with a record of resisting arrest, assaulting police officers, domestic violence, and a restraining order shot a 17 year old white kid walking home you can be fairly certain they wouldn't just drop it.

Actually, that probably wouldn't even be news.

Of course I believe in self-defense.

I'm in the army... I've deployed mutple times. I"ve been shot at there and HERE in the states.

I conceal carry, and I live in a state that has open carry laws. (yay Washington... one thing we haven't gone hippy on from our frontier days).

But one thing the prosecutors failed to point out with the Florida Stand your ground law ( which has the ability to be a great law) ... is that if you are the initial aggressor ( which Zimmerman was) then you have to make every attempt to break contact. Which he did not. Instead of letting professionals come he followed a law abiding citizen creeper like, which prompted Martin to respond... as it would prompt me to respond.

Now we don't know what kind of verbal exchanges took place... but it is obvious that Zimmerman could have left at any time prior to confronting the boy, and prior to the boy responding to him.

Once a confrontation to place... he was obviously on the losing side of a fight. ( That which he did not expect ) ... and then... he shot an unarmed boy.



If some one was following me home in the middle of the night like that... you better believe I'm not leading him to my house... and I'm going to confront him.

Now:

That being said... ZImmerman didn't go out of his way to say , " Hey I'm going to go shoot the first black kid in a hoodie I see today ". A series of very bad choices (very negligent ones) lead him to the position that he was in that in his mind put his life in danger.

Thus ------ MANSLAUGHTER.

The boy did not have to die. No one was threatened, there was no reasonable suspicion that the boy was committing a crime or should not have been there. Thus the initial aggressor was Zimmerman.

Prosecutorial fail even under the Florida stand your ground law.

The only real tragedy is how badly the prosecution botched it by overreaching and going for 2nd degree. Should have just gone with manslaughter. A jury with three weeks to deliberate on something usually doesn't weigh the option thrown at them on the final days appropriately.

This is overshadowing the abortion fiasco in Texas anyway. That's some @#(!.

the problem with using a firearm for defense is that the difference between threat neutralized and dead, is very, very small and very easy to bridge.

So no one knows who threw the first punch, what was said ohow zimmerman got his injuries, or even who was on top beating the snt of the other?


Yeah open and shut for sure