George Zimmerman was found not guilty

Remove all ads!

A jury of George Zimmerman's unbiased peers, weighing all the evidence, found him innocent. It shouldn't have to go any further than that. Anyone who watched the trial should have seen this coming. One of the closest witnesses to the scene said he saw Trayvon on him. The prosecutions witnesses were easily discredited, and the recording of the fight clearly shows Zimmerman screaming, imo. According to the law he was certain to get off. There simply wasn't complete and irrefutable evidence that he didn't do it in self-defense. The burden was on the prosecution to prove it and they failed, plain and simple.

 

Interesting. Not that I care too much about the case but there were people here who were fairly certain he'd get convicted. I guess it goes to show that trial by the press is not always enough for conviction which is probably a good thing.

I also see to remember someone mentioning the strong possibility of race riots in case of acquittal. Are there any indications of these riots happening?

 

I agree with Damedog. In my opinion it was a travesty that this poor bastard was even charged with a crime and he clearly has had his life ruined for political reasons. I was watching the interviews post verdict and the defense team was a little on the vicious side with their comments. One that was very telling was a reporter asked "If the races were reversed would the verdict be the same?" The response was "If the races had been reversed the case would have never been prosecuted as it was such an obvious case of self defense". The defense lawyers went on to lay blame without naming names on the entire thing on outsiders with an agenda that had nothing to do with the law.

I was one of those who was convinced that this guy was going to get railroaded for political reasons and am very glad that the jury did the correct thing. At the end when the prosecution got permission to have the jury consider manslaughter I figured that would be the jury's way to convict.

 

There was too much media whipping involved, and the temper frayed way before the trial began.

My Google+ feed exploded with comments from both sides of the fence after the verdict.
Hard to keep up deleting them.

Those that were baying blood and got only water in their turn do not go gentle into the good night.

 

I wouldn't quite go that far -- a jury found him innocent is really as far as you can accurately go. That said, I was surprised at the verdict; I thought the jury would go for manslaughter.

If this belief was also held by the jury then the prosecution was inept. "Beyond reasonable doubt" was never meant to mean "complete and irrefutable."

 

The simple rule for a jury is 'if there is doubt, you must acquit', the defendant is innocent until proven guilty, if the prosecution fail to do this, then it is noone's fault but their own.

 

I give a resounding bravo to the way the Martin family attorney (can't recall his name atm) handled himself at the post-trial news conference I saw. Despite some really silly baiting type questions from reporters, he never bit. That may have had a significant impact on the lack of problems thus far.

 

IMHO, Zimmerman is a douche who could have de-escalated the situation at many points that evening. I wouldn't want him as a neighbor.

That said, his account of what transpired when he approached Martin was and is plausible. Therefore, there existed in the minds of the jurors a reasonable doubt as to murder or even manslaughter. So Z was found not guilty. People may disagree, and understandably be ticked, but no one wants to live in a society that has a presumption of guilt going into a trial.

 

I thought this article was mostly on target with my overall opinions.

 

That's twice today that I've agreed with LKD.

 

I also want to go on record and say that bigotry played a role in this tragedy, but not the kind that everyone automatically thinks. People say that Zimmerman followed Martin because Martin was Black. I would argue that he followed the kid because Martin was a teenager.

Modern teens can be nasty pieces of work. They are not taught respect, cooperation, or anything resembling decent behaviour in schools. They think only of their own rights and not for one second about the rights of others or of their responsibility to society. They never face consequences for their thuggery.

I may be overstating things here, but you wouldn't believe the $*** that I've seen teenagers get away with in schools. It boggles the mind.

So Zimmerman saw Martin, an unknown teen. Did that give him the right to kill the kid? Of course, I'm not saying that. But teens do commit lots of crimes, and I think paying attention to strangers in the neighbourhood is just good citizenship -- police departments often tell us to be alert and aware of what is going on in our neighbourhoods. So calling the cops to report suspicious activity and following the kid is also reasonable, IMHO.

Now, if Trayvon saw he was being followed, he should have called 911 as well, and it would have turned into a funny story. He could have headed for home. But the story told by Zimmerman, and the one ultimately believed by 12 intelligent, vetted jurors, is that Martin decided to commit an assault on Zimmerman. At that point (and not before) he became an aggressive criminal -- one who inflicted significant damage on Zimmerman despite the efforts of the prosecution to minimize his assault. Therefore, he was the aggressor and deserved to face the penalty for such behaviour. Under Florida law, citizens are allowed to defend themselves, and Zimmerman did.

Now there are those who think differently and believe that Zimmerman was the aggressor. Fair enough -- as I mentioned earlier, the evidence is not conclusive one way or another. From what I know of modern youth, though, when people say that Zimmerman's story is implausible, I have to disagree. The possibility exists, though, that both Zimmerman and I are wrong, and that by following Martin he acted with anti-youth bigotry, engaging not in Racial profiling but in Age-ist profiling.

 

LOL

 

I agree that based on the evidence presented, there was no way that Zimmerman was going to be found guilty. There is a problem when there are only two people who know exactly what happened - Zimmerman and Martin - and when one of them is dead, you don't really get both sides of the story. There were only partial witnesses in this trial. Only Zimmerman and Martin would have known exactly the sequence of events that took place. Add to the fact that the few people who testified on Martin's behalf were, shall we say, not the best people to put on the stand, but you have to work with what you have.

I did find one bit of post-trial irony though. Zimmerman's brother stated that George was going into hiding for a while because he felt that he may be "unfairly targeted for violence simply based on who he is." I suppose he feels that's a rather uncomfortable position to be in.