Russ_Watters said:
No, not "damaging punches", just punches (or other physical violence). Zimmerman may have thrown a punch that didn't land, it's just that without injury to Martin, there is no evidence of a thrown punch. You're really not comprehending what I'm saying. A little tip: I'm not trying to trick you. I mean exactly what I'm saying.
While fist fights involve physical contact, they don’t always begin with it. In a boxing match for example, missed punches are not landed and feints aren't intended to land. Many punches aren't landed with enough force to leave evidence of their application. That there is evidence of one punch allegedly landed by Martin doesn’t mean it was the first one thrown.
Oy:
1. You mixed together physical and non-physical (probably on purpose). Only the physical matters here. I'll let you figure out which is which.
You don’t understand the concept of contact and non contact Interaction? How about landed punch vs. feint.
1a. There is no evidence of any physical action by Zimmerman during/starting the fight until he fired the gun.
Zimmerman the rag doll?
Mark Osterman, Zimmerman’s best friend and the author of a book defending him, testified Tuesday that Zimmerman told him on the night of the shooting that Trayvon briefly grabbed his gun as the two wrestled on the ground. Mr. Osterman said Zimmerman said to him, “somehow I broke his grip on the gun when guy grabbed between the grip and the hammer.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justic...DNA-on-George-Zimmerman-gun-expert-says-video
2. "Provocations". Again, you're trying to twist the wording. We're not talking about a "provocation", we're talking about an actual fight.
All fights begin for a reason or provocation, including this one. There are initiating factors that the jury is required to derive from reasonable inference in order to assign blame.
I see a lot of inconsistency and embellishment in your narrative, much less in Zimmerman's. No, Zimmerman's wasn't perfect but your are trying to embellish it to make it much more imperfect than it really was. There has to be some reason why you are letting your conclusion drive your logic and not the other way around (note: I did not mention racism).
Zimmerman claims to be the victim of an extensive life threatening attack, when the evidence only supports the infliction of relatively inconsequential injuries caused by a single punch to his nose. No reasonable evidence of a single head slam to the pavement, let alone the dozens reported by Zimmerman. This embellishment by Zimmerman is meat of his self defense argument, without it he has no reasonable cause to employ deadly force.
Zimmerman did not sustain the injuries by accident while playing a sport!
As I mentioned above, the injuries received by Zimmerman are not considered serious or life threatening. The sports example is relevant to show that while such injuries may be a painful annoyance, they don’t significantly compromise health or performance.
You're misdirecting again. No one is saying that the injuries Zimmerman had could have been fatal. All they say is that Martin was inflicting (not threatening) bodily harm, for which Zimmerman had a right to defend himself. And given that:
1. Zimmerman could not stop the bodily harm in any other way than with his gun.
2. Zimmerman didn't know how much more bodily harm Martin would inflict, up to and possibly including killing him.
Deadly force was justified in stopping the attack.
Again, the evidence suggests that all of Zimmerman’s injuries are consistent with the application of a single punch to the nose. There is no reasonable evidence of the sustained attack claimed by Zimmerman.
You're being ridiculous. Breaking your nose hurts and people scream when on the losing end of fights all the time, whether or not they are life threatening. In addition, 37 seconds would have been an awful long time for them to have been fighting over the gun without it going off. Zimmerman's version is consistent with the events and logic. Yours is not. And again, your implication that I said Zimmerman's injuries were life threatening (or that they needed to be) is intentionally deceptive.
I’ve had my nose broken playing basketball, it really wasn’t that painful at the time of the injury, but became more so hours later, and it didn’t stop me from continuing the contest.
Zimmerman admits to wrestling for control of the gun, so take away the single punch by Martin and the remainder of the action consists of a struggle for the gun. How long does it take to throw a single punch?
Like I stated before, it was much more likely that Zimmerman feared the harm associated with losing his weapon than that stemming from a single punch to the nose.
If you're guilty, then lying and hoping the jury buys it may be your only way out. If you are innocent, then telling the truth is definitely the better course of action, even if the truth isn't pretty. Lying to make the story prettier, if discovered, will damage your entire credibility in defending yourself. It is a big and unnecessary risk, particularly when there is little evidence on which to convict you. I suppose you're wishing Zimmerman had told big lies and been caught in them, as it would have helped gain a conviction.
So you’re saying that it would be wise for Zimmerman to lie if he could avoid discovery of those lies. Do Zimmerman’s misrepresentations of the cause and severity of his injuries amount to Lies?
You're being intentionally dense. They were not on a soccer field and there is no other reasonable explanation for Zimmerman's injuries than that they had been sustained in the fight.
Stop thinking so narrowly. Any collision of sufficient force between a nose and a solid object can cause a nasal fracture. So if Zimmerman had claimed a collision or fall into a his truck body, a tree, fence railing, or ground objects they all would've been reasonably consistent with the incidental environment.
Clearly. I use 95% as an example, not as an exact standard. It could be 97%. It could be 90%. But it isn't likely to be less than that. But what we do know is that is is much more than 51% certainty.
When quantifying certainty as it relates to a jury verdict you’re averaging the subjective application of certainty by individual jurors. Juror A holds high certainty for conviction, while juror B holds high certainty for acquittal, in this case they cancel, but since conviction requires unanimity the outcome still favors the defendant. Stack the jury with juror A types and conviction is certain.
Reasonable doubt means eliminating unreasonable possibilities, like the possibility that Zimmerman broke his nose playing soccer right before spotting Martin. Part of the prosecution's job is to try to trick the jury into thinking the burden of proof is lower while part of the judge's job is to make sure they don't succeed. We're not bound by that. We should be smart and objective enough to see through that, since we aren't being paid to try to convict him or defend him.
The prosecution’s task is to present reasonable evidence to support the associated charge and to discredit the defendant’s assertion of innocence. Ideally no need for trickery, but it’s much more likely to be used by the defense due to the fact that prosecutions are contingent on the likelihood of the evidence favoring a conviction.
) I think you're right that the SYG law will end up being an acceptable defense more often than not, for those who plot to kill someone, but stage it to look like self defense. (well, it being an 'acceptable' defense depending on who is who in a murder trial) Yikes...That's a pretty sobering idea, when you think about it.