Assholes continue to rejoice over the victory of Zimmerman v. Martin. I think that their only disappointment is that the law won't allow them to dig up Trayvon Martin's body so that Zimmerman may shoot him again. Well, there is always the post trial public lynching. Kinda odd that it's the victim who is getting lynched this time.
Well, not really. The racists really came out for this one. I'm surprised that the riots they predicted weren't victory riots like white people tend to do after Stanley Cup and NBA championships.
Of course the usual idiots in the threads are running their fingers about how guilty Trayvon was, how deserving of death his pot-smoking, class-cutting self was. We knew they would, win, lose or draw.
The death penalty for pot may seem a little strict- especially from a conservative viewpoint. It's like, HELLO- pot smokers are what privatized prisons are for!!
But, there are people out there who truly believe Trayvon Benjamin Martin needed killing. Six women in Florida actually came to that conclusion in a legal sort of way. They served as jury, after the fact, to Zimmerman's judge and executioner.
I'm so fucking tired of hearing how this wasn't about race. It so clearly was. Not too deep inside, conservatives are sad that George Zimmerman isn't 100% white. Trayvon fit the black-bill quite nicely but, Zimmerman is part Peruvian. Really that helps the NOT about race bullshit but, you know they wanted John Wayne to do this. They just did.
The only way it couldn't be about race was if Zimmerman had been black or Martin and him had both been white. See, if you are really all about self defense and standing your ground you need to be good with killing a white child. You need to be good with someone killing your own kid under the same circumstances. You need to go on Topix or elsewhere on the 'net and praise your child's killer for defending himself.
The Stand Your Ground laws do not specify only the standing of ground against and killing of blacks. So far, our laws don't work that way. They may be interpreted that way but, they don't literally SAY that. Yet...
With the likes of the American Legislative Exchange Counsel (ALEC) and the NRA writing many of our laws at the state level these days, it might be a matter of time before they get race specific. We'll see. They wrote the SYG laws. They wrote them with an unwritten agenda. That agenda became clear this past week, in Florida. The good people of America (and the world!) are outraged by this. The assholes of America are thrilled. They just haven't thought this all the way through. They'll think again when some white guy shoots Johnny Appleby because he feared for his life. Legally, that could happen... Legally, that hero should walk...
We will see about that, doncha know?
21 comments:
I'll be the first to say it wasn't "quite" murder, but it was darn close. Someone on the heated Topix thread posted a piece from the USA Today. When the judge said to the jury they can consider it self defense if George Z felt he was defending himself, it was over right then and there. Of course he was, he was defending himself in a fight he started, stalked, trumped up and ended. The bad guys won this round for sure. Had this been white on white, the gun toter would have been convicted.
Let me rephrase what I said earlier, here is the quote from the USA Today:
" The judge told the jurors they could set Zimmerman free if they believed he feared for his life when the black youngster he pursued got the better of him."
It was over and done right here. Free pass.
There is a common misconception that jurors just make up their minds based on emotion and their gut. Nothing could be further from the truth. You are instructed to ignore what you know, because that messes everything up.
I served on a jury over a fairly minor case involving police brutality. The defendant was a young black woman driving home from work with her toddler, without a license. I remember knowing full well the angry little cop yawning in the courtroom Tasered her because she dared to be both black and sassy. I was instructed by the judge that I had to find her guilty if she did, indeed, refuse to get out of her car. I'll never forget that case, and my racist, fellow jurors who were more interested in talking about her parenting skills and getting home in time for dinner, rather than the Taser burns all over her body.
Read an article this a.m. that the jury actually came close to deadlock.
So, they got off to a fair start, but had to follow the letter of the law.
I saw a clip last night ( on The Daily Show ) of George Zimmerman's brother declaring that George is in hiding because--are you ready for this--he's afraid that some crazy vigilante will take the law into their own hands and kill him!
I swear to God.
*shakes head*
I saw that!
Irony is a dish best served cold.
@Barbi: Thus the *need* for "Stand Your Ground" as it was written by ALEC with assists from the NRA and (I heard) Walmart. It isn't so much what you say but, how you say it.
We have always been able to defend ourselves, using deadly force. SYG is supposed to eliminate the pesky questions and trials. Oh, and *suspects*...
What you're yammering about?
Nope.
Very simply, an armed man was allowed to stalk a tenn who was unarmed, a recipe for tragedy. No amount of spinning the story by Zimmerman's supporters will change the fact that Trayvon Martin's death was completely unnecessary. He may have had poorly written Florida law helping him, but there was nothing else on his side to justify the end result, an unnecessarily dead teen. The whole episode could have been prevented if Zimmerman did not try to take the law into his own hands in the first place.
George Zimmerman is afraid somebody will take the law into his own hands and possibly kill him? How ironic after he did the same to Trayvon Martin.
byline: Deer Whisperer/Luke
These "Castle" and SYG laws vary, and self-defense laws have before, by state. Duty to retreat was applied, and still is to some degree in some states, rather than lawful deadly force without retreat at all.
As we've seen TWICE in Florida, SYG can be as problematic as "duty to retreat".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine#State-by-state_positions
Be that as it may:
One of these days ... there will be a black person with a gun involved in an encounter of similar circumstances with a non-black person with a result much the same as the Zimmerman/Martin case. You betcha there will be a cyber lynch mob as is known in historic context.
Someone started a discussion about this case on the main forum yesterday and it's gone this morning. I wonder why?
It was fairly polite. Except I called someone a racist, because the verdict wasn't enough for him. Noooo. The guy suggested Zimmerman sue Martin's parents.
I saw some other internet shit where someone was reporting that Zimmerman was suing the parents. I doubt that! But, what idiot would sue a Ferrerman and a Hegel either? I've heard that too. I also read he was suing NBC because one of the affiliates allegedly doctored a tape to make him appear racist. Now, who would believe Zimmerman was racist? His attorneys said him murdering that child was NOT about race! Why would they lie? The truth is, GZ would kill any person of any color that he was stalking.
I think there had been 47 instances of Zimmerman calling 911. There was no emergency but, he was calling the emergency number- AGAIN- just as he had a few dozen times in the past. I wonder if the cops knew that Chicken Little was calling again and maybe took their time answering the call. Forty seven other calls had been fruitless, why would this one be different? Who knew that #48 would be GZ executing a suspect?
This story came out today, which I am paraphrasing due to length:
"The U.S. Department of Justice has placed a hold on all evidence related to the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin by former neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman. The hold includes the gun Zimmerman used to shoot Martin, which Zimmerman would otherwise be legally entitled to reclaim. Since the verdict, the Justice Department said it would investigate whether Zimmerman violated Trayvon Martin's civil rights by racially profiling him. The investigation is expected to take months.
Legal experts have said the FBI and prosecutors will go back through interviews done before the state case began; look at all the forensics such as crime scene records and medical reports; and review the state's witnesses to see if any who did not testify might have important information. Federal investigators are not limited to existing evidence."
So, thankfully, it's not over.
Though separate, the Feds need to look at SYG too. People may say that this wasn't about SYG but, the jury was given verbatim, the verbiage of SYG as their instruction.
Thanks, Ferrerman. The story also said Florida did not use its own hate crime laws against Zimmerman, implying it should have.
Does that law differ from the SYG law?
byline: Deer Whisperer/Luke
@ Barbi: Thanks for the info. Yes, SYG and hate crimes addressed by different statutes and addressed by different case law.
I think we'll 'hear' "when will it end" forever --- i.e.;
'Mississippi Burning'
Selma AL
Birmingham AL -- little girls killed in church bombing
March on Washington, D.C. in 1963
Emmitt Till
James Meredith
Little Rock school integration
Y'all fill in the gaps and add as desired.
And at each juncture, 'they' lament: "when will it end"
We are going backwards socially and it's by design. SYG and other laws written by ALEC for corporations that deal with women's health, work, etc, are meant to legislate corporate morality into our lives. On the threads, we deal with some of the stupidest people ever to slobber on a keyboard. Fucking morons like sam, the clown, Denny, et al see that a black got legally killed and they are ready to sign anything in support of that. Or they hear that Lib's want people to have healthcare and fair wages. "Well, fuck that!!! Where can I sign on to bust Unions and pay the House to vote against Obummercare???"
They'll sign anything. They won't read it. And then, in the future, when it happens to them, they'll say: "But, but, the salesman said this was only for niggers....I'm white!!" That's when they find out SYG is not just for killing blacks and eliminating Unions and minimum wage doesn't make you free to negotiate a better deal and- yep- XX years later, NOT taxing rich folks STILL doesn't mean more jobs....
Gotta read the TOS in life, folks. Pretty soon our Bill Of Rights will be like the Topix TOS: "Just try and be nice..." That's it.
byline Deer Whisperer/Luke
Many et al for sure! The et all certainly are aligned to the " *grab* all the good " mantra which is not far removed from the "greed is good" paradigm of the character Gordon Grecko.
And to allay any misinterpretation of my previous contribution: 'when will it end' refers to the mantra of the et al pertaining to *lawful* reaction and expression to "the color of justice" as listed. Obviously, I didn't list some obvious ones:
M.L. King's assassination
Lunch counter sit-ins
Rosa Parks' bus sit-in
Freedom Riders -- which was a fine, fine documentary
and much, much more.
From any of you informative, intelligent contributors, please compare/contrast/rate sites like Flickr, Imagebin, Photobucket, and others for me.
I'll appreciate it. Thanks.
Actually only three of the jurors initially voted to acquit Zimmerman. Then as the case was deliberated futher, they realized their hands were tied by Florida law which gave them no alternative but to acquit him. I believe it was faulty Florida law more so than any fault of the jurors that resulted in Zimmerman's acquittal. Some of the jurors were actually in tears over having to let Zimmerman walk. Even though Zimmerman walked free, he will still have to be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life which I suppose is a punishment in its own right.
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