One is never going
to know the facts on this case and it is both disturbing and wrapped
in the US gun culture which creates an additional level of danger and
uncertainty.
Either Zimmerman
cold cocked the kid, then discovered that he had bit of more than he
could chew and then went for his gun or Zimmerman confronted the kid
who cold cocked Zimmerman who then went for his gun. That is how two
men landed on the ground in mortal combat.
Whichever way,
Zimmerman was losing to a strong kid when he went for his gun.
That is not the real
problem here though. The problem is that Zimmerman mishandled the
situation from the get go. It called for getting backup and waiting
for backup while watching and reporting. There is no evidence that
it ever called for intervention with the threat of deadly force or
even a conversation. Whatever he was thinking he got seriously
unlucky. It is only a matter of time before you pick on the wrong
individual who does deck you particularly when young black males are
naturally hypersensitive to getting hassled. This led directly to
the young man's unnecessary death but could as easily have led to a
tussle over the gun that killed Zimmerman. It also might only have
led to two men been mightily scared.
Unfortunately, a
couple of severe lapses in judgment likely brought this about.
Legal
Analysts: State Never Proved Its Case Against Zimmerman
Sunday,
14 July 2013 09:52
Miami,
FL — After five weeks of trial and 56 witnesses, few legal
observers believed prosecutors came close to proving Sanford, Fla.,
neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman committed second-degree murder
when he shot and killed Trayvon Martin in February 2012.
So
for many legal analysts, it was no surprise that jurors rejected even
a lesser "compromise" verdict of manslaughter, acquitting
Zimmerman outright of all criminal charges and deciding he acted in a
reasonable way to protect his own life.
The
acquittal was a stinging blow for prosecutors and their decision to
file the second-degree murder charge against Zimmerman, who was not
initially arrested by Sanford police after claiming self-defense. And
it was a resounding embrace of the defense's strategy during closing
arguments not just to establish that prosecutors hadn't proven
Zimmerman guilty, but also to show he was "absolutely"
innocent.
"The
jury clearly believed that you have a right to defend yourself,"
said Jude M. Faccidomo, the former president of Miami's Florida
Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "Especially when cases
are so gray, like this one was, self-defense really resonates because
people can associate with being afraid."
And
while some also have questioned the state attorney's office
acceptance of a mostly white jury, a more diverse panel would have
returned the same verdict, lawyers who have watched the case believe.
"After
seeing the quality of the evidence presented by the state, the
diversity of the jury really didn't matter in the end," said
Larry Handfield, a prominent African American Miami criminal defense
lawyer. "But it would have helped the community in giving more
credibility to the decision to acquit Zimmerman."
By
now, the basic outline of the confrontation between the 29-year-old
volunteer watch coordinator and the 17-year-old Miami Gardens, Fla.,
student have become familiar through wall-to-wall television coverage
and thousands of news stories.
Prosecutors
said Zimmerman "profiled" Martin, who was returning from a
nearby convenience store and was walking through the gated Retreat at
Twin Lakes neighborhood where he was staying with his father.
Zimmerman
called a non-emergency police number to report Martin as
"suspicious." A violent struggle followed on rain-slicked
grass and a concrete walkway. During the confrontation, Zimmerman
shot and killed Martin at point-blank range.
A
look at the evidence shows why the jury rejected the state's case.
For prosecutors intent on proving the more serious charge, proving
the "ill-will," "hatred" or "spite"
needed to convict on second-degree murder hinged on painting
Zimmerman as a frustrated, would-be cop fed up with intruders in his
gated Sanford community.
To
do so, they focused on Zimmerman's past - over defense objections -
introducing evidence of his interest in law enforcement, including a
ride-along with Sanford police, a class on criminal justice, an
unsuccessful application to a Virginia police department.
Prosecutors
also played five calls to police that Zimmerman made in the several
months before the shooting, in an attempt to show a pattern of
"profiling." They also introduced evidence about his
membership at a mixed martial arts gym.
Their
most important evidence to prove "ill-will" was Zimmerman's
call to a Sanford police non-emergency dispatcher when he first
spotted Martin, saying "these assholes always get away"
and, according to prosecutors, muttering "fucking punks"
under his breath
"If
there was ever a window into that man's soul, it was that defendant's
words on that phone call," prosecutor John Guy told the jury
Friday in a poignant closing argument that appeared to have at least
one juror emotionally strained.
Guy's
closing argument was typical of a state's case that drew heavily on
emotion and emphasized the youth of the victim, as well as one of the
most important witnesses: Martin's friend, Rachel Jeantel, 18 at the
time of the shooting.
She
was speaking to him by phone moments before he died and recounted her
recollection that Martin told her someone was following him.
Jeantel
told jurors that Martin told her of a "creepy-ass cracker"
watching him as he walked home from the convenience store, and of
hearing the man angrily demand to know what Martin was doing in the
neighborhood.
Jeantel
said she then heard a bump that she assumed was Martin's cell phone
headset hitting the ground, followed by Martin's voice: "Get
off! Get off!"
Her
testimony was not polished or articulate, and she sparred for hours
with defense attorneys - at one point crying "what!" when
told she had to return for a second day of testimony. But her story
remained unchanged.
"I
thought she was a good witness. I thought the jury would be
sympathetic to her because she was an (18)-year-old kid, she was
inexperienced at testifying and that made her come across as
credible," said Miami defense lawyer Andrew Rier.
Zimmerman's
prosecution was made tougher under Florida's 2005 Stand Your Ground
law, which eliminated a citizen's "duty to retreat" before
using lethal force in the face of a deadly threat - an instruction
given to jurors on Friday. And the state's case also was filled with
blunders, legal experts say.
Many
of the witnesses called by the state seemed to benefit the defense,
including one neighbor, John Good, who claimed he saw Martin pin
Zimmerman to the ground. Another witness, Sanford Police officer Tim
Smith, told jurors that Zimmerman, just after the shooting, claimed
he was yelling for help to no avail. Both pieces of testimony seemed
to bolster the defense's version of the encounter.
Prosecutors
also called the lead Sanford police investigators, using them to
introduce each of Zimmerman's videotaped statements and a
walk-through of the crime scene Zimmerman did with police a day after
Martin's death.
During
one of the statements, lead Detective Chris Serino seemed skeptical
when Zimmerman insisted he never "followed" Martin. While
there were some inconsistencies between his accounts of what
happened, they seemed fairly small, court observers said. And defense
attorneys got Serino to agree during testimony that it's normal for
stories to vary slightly with each re-telling.
Legal
observers noted that playing the videos in court eliminated the need
for Zimmerman himself to take the stand - a tactic that may have
helped the defense by allowing Zimmerman's voice to be heard in court
without risk of cross-examination.
"I
think it was a strategic error (for the state) to allow him to
testify without getting cross-examined," Faccidomo said. "I
don't think the inconsistencies carried as a great a weight with the
jury as they thought it would."
Serino,
on defense questioning, also suggested he believed Zimmerman's
account, a statement later stricken from the record by the judge -
but nevertheless heard by jurors.
"The
state should have objected before he had a chance to answer,"
said attorney Handfield. "But it's too late. You can't unring
the bell. You can't ask the jury to not consider something they
already heard. They're human."
Prosecutors
also pinned their hopes on a chilling recording of a 911 call made by
a neighbor near the fight scene.
After
a number of hearings away from the jury, Nelson ruled against
prosecutors' request to allow audio experts to testify that Martin
was the one crying out for help on the recording before the fatal
gunshot is heard. So prosecutors turned to Sybrina Fulton, Martin's
mother, and Jahvaris Fulton, the dead teen's older brother, to
identify the voice on the recording as Martin.
They
served as powerful emotional witnesses. Sybrina Fulton, head held
high, told jurors that she wished that her son hadn't died. "My
youngest son is Trayvon Benjamin Martin," she articulated
carefully when asked his name. "He's in heaven."
And
Jahvaris Fulton recounted for jurors the shock and grief of listening
to the recording for the first time.
But
their testimony also seemed to spur the defense to call a wave of
eight witnesses, from Zimmerman's own mother to his best friend, to
make the opposite claim, that the voice crying out for help on the
tape was Zimmerman's. The testimony also served a more important
purpose: to humanize Zimmerman and show a circle of friends that
included an African American neighbor.
In
the end, neither the state nor the defense dwelled at length on the
recording in closing arguments.
"A
battle of family members, of whom you believe more, that's a big
prosecution loser," said Jean-Michel D'Escoubet, a former
Miami-Dade prosecutor. "The evidence was so conflicted that the
jury can't make heads or tails of it. It just muddied up the water
and created reasonable doubt."
The
defense case suffered some setbacks, too, especially when Nelson on
Wednesday refused to allow into evidence text messages from Martin's
phone which suggested that the teen was a brawler at home in Miami
Gardens. Nor did the judge allow the jury to consider as evidence a
high-tech computer animation showing a defense version of how the
deadly fight between Zimmerman and Martin unfolded.
But
in all, lawyers say, the defense presented a mostly confident,
methodical case that sought to pick apart the lack of evidence in the
state's case.
Lawyers
Mark O'Mara and Don West even shunned the chance to tarnish Martin
though Nelson had allowed the defense to introduce the slain teen's
toxicology report showing he had smoked marijuana.
"The
state would have argued that marijuana doesn't make someone hostile,
and the defense probably didn't want to look like they were
disparaging Trayvon Martin," Priovolos said.
Their
approach was evident at closing arguments. While prosecutor Bernardo
de la Rionda was mocking and at times shrill, O'Mara was calm and
conversational, opening with a long, professorial discussion on the
history of trial law, then dissecting the state's case.
Zimmerman's
neighborhood watch history? "Tell me one witness who said George
Zimmerman patrolled that neighborhood . . . not one," he told
jurors.
The
sound of the wind on Zimmerman's call to police, suggesting he was
chasing Martin? The weather report shows "the wind was up,"
O'Mara said.
The
belief Zimmerman was the aggressor? "One piece of evidence that
my client attacked Trayvon Martin?" O'Mara asked jurors. "Landed
one blow even?"
Miami
defense attorney David O. Markus said that the closings arguments
offered something of a role reversal for prosecutors and the defense.
"The
initial summation by the prosecution was what you see many times from
defense lawyers - passionate and trying to poke holes or raise doubts
in Zimmerman's version of events," he said. "On the other
hand, the defense accepted the burden of proof and methodically and
dispassionately went through the evidence and the elements, much like
a prosecutor would normally proceed."
The
acquittal vindicated O'Mara's strategy. He not only maintained that
the state hadn't proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt, but
riskily admitted he wanted to take on the "burden" of
proving his client's "absolute innocence." He even wished,
half-playfully, that the verdict form has a check box for "completely
innocent."
Under
the law, the defense has no burden to prove anything. Only
prosecutors must prove a case, beyond a reasonable doubt.
"I
really like the strategy," Markus said. "Many times, cases
come down to whether you can show the jury that you really believe in
your client. What better way to do that than to tell the jury that
you aren't relying on burdens of proof but instead that you believe
he is innocent?"
2 comments:
Zimmerman at 29, is a much stockier man than, the one killed, he has taken MMA lessons, and a 17 year old much lighter fellow overwhelms him?
The judge not allowing tech audio experts, calls for a mistrial, I think.
Sorry Dave, but Martin, at 17, was no kid. Young men of that age are allowed to join the military. He was a high school football player, clearly had gone through puberty, had a history of fighting (of which he bragged), was several inches taller than Zimmerman and had greater reach. He referred to Zimmerman as that "creepy ...cracker"just before the altercation. Zimmerman was pudgy, out of shape, was obviously beaten bloody with a broken nose, while Martin's only wounds (apart from the bullet), were his skinned knuckles - from pummeling Zimmerman I'd say. So yes, it is obvious Martin "overwhelmed" Zimmerman. It is also obvious the jury realized that fact.
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