What obvious horseshit. You've been here playing defense attorney for Zimmerman for pages now.
Not the same as defending his actions though.
From my first post I've been looking at the case based on how it would be presented/prosecuted to see if the State of Florida has the evidence to charge/convict.
Like Tiassa I understand the difference between not guilty and innocent and have never claimed that Zimmerman was innocent.
My conclusion so far is that the testimony of just one witness is the key that is preventing the State from making it's burden of "beyond a reasonable doubt" that it was not self defense.
Indeed, there is no other witness statements but this one that provides any substantial support for Zimmerman.
If you want to dispute the validity of anything specific in the Wikipedia accounts, by all means do so. Or, go ahead and use any other source to your liking - I recommended google at the outset, you may recall.
Or, better yet, go on making a total asshat out of yourself by beating your chest at me instead of learning basic, widely-reported facts of the issue.
It's "won't," and you can go ahead and demand that the powers that be sanction me for my violation of the rules, if you think that's the situation.
But I've always seen that rule interpretted as proportional to the extraordinarity of the claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Statements of obvious, well-known fact are just that. You can go ahead and insist that basic, widely-known facts are claims in dispute, but I'm not going to go along, and so it's going to be obvious that you're trying to gin up a pretext to dismiss inconvenient facts. And so it is, and so you are getting zero traction here. All of which I'm quite happy with - so what makes you think you can browbeat me into going along? You have that much faith in your own petulance?
So since you WON'T try to prove your claim since you rest it on the fact that your claim is NOT extraordinary and have suggested I go to Wiki I have done so and guess what, no surprise, it doesn't support your claim at all.
Of course this agrees with my experience that this is almost ALWAYS the case on the internet when you run into someone who refuses to support their case with a link and simply claims it's "beyond dispute" or other similar BS.
From Wiki:
Zimmerman told police at the scene that he was the one crying out for help.
The statement was corroborated by an eyewitness who said that Martin was on top of Zimmerman, beating him, as Zimmerman called for help.
One witness, who had only heard but not seen the events, believed Martin was the one calling for help, and said that the police tried to get her to change her testimony to their assertion that it was Zimmerman calling for help.
Another witness who also heard but did not see the events, Mary Cutcher, said that she believed the cry was from Martin and said that she did not believe that Zimmerman acted in self-defense, contending that she and her roommate heard Martin cry out, followed by a gunshot, whereupon they saw Zimmerman standing over his body.
So only one witnes SAW the event and the testimony of the one that actually saw who was calling out for help can't be impeached by the two who didn't actually see the fight and only "believed" it was Martin.
We have gone over both of these statements in this thread (Bell brought them up and I already showed, by using actual quotes from them, that they didn't impeach that key witness)
Another section of Wiki tells the same story.
Witness accounts
An eyewitness to the physical altercation just prior to the shooting stated that Martin was on top of Zimmerman and beating him up, while the older man yelled for help. This witness, who identified himself as "John", stated to Fox News Orlando WOFL that "the guy on the bottom, who had a red sweater on, was yelling to me, 'Help! Help!' and I told him to stop, and I was calling 911...And then, when I got upstairs and looked down, the guy who was on the top beating up the other guy, was the one laying in the grass, and I believe he was dead at that point."
Martin’s mother has identified the shouting for help as her son Trayvon's voice, although Zimmerman claims he was the one calling out.
A 13-year old boy walking his dog saw a man on the ground shortly before the shooting and identified him as wearing red. His mother later disputed the testimony and claimed that the police pressured him into arbitrarily choosing what color the man was wearing, and that her son couldn't see any details in the dark.
Another witness, Mary Cutcher, believes "there was no punching, no hitting going on at the time, no wrestling" just prior to the shooting, though she neither saw the shooting nor the preceding altercation. The police say she gave an official account to them that agreed with Zimmerman's story. However Cutcher and her roommate told CNN journalist Anderson Cooper that their own account of the incident to the police did not agree with Zimmerman's, and that they had demanded that the police retract that incorrect statement. They also said, about the police's attitude at the scene, that "they were siding with him [Zimmerman] from the start" and that they heard the pair in their backyard and a "very young voice" whining, with no sounds of a fight. They heard a gunshot; the crying stopped immediately, and they saw Zimmerman on his knees pinning Martin down on the ground.
So again, none of those other statements contain any observations that actually contradict his statements.
The Mother's claim, based on a poor recording, isn't sufficient to contradict the testimony of someone who was actually there and was even talking to the people during the struggle:
I told him to stop, and I was calling 911
Yes, they say what they believe, but still only ONE person actually SAW the fight, and it's his testimony that has not been actually contradicted by people who now say what "they believe".
