Zimmerman trial closes

I am following the George Zimmerman trial to see the extent to which the President, the governor, the attorney general, and other govt authorities will prosecute an innocent man to avoid race riots.

Geraldo Rivera said:

I see those six ladies in the jury putting themselves on that rainy night, in that housing complex that has just been burglarized by three or four different groups of black youngsters from the adjacent community. So it's a dark night, a 6-foot-2-inch hoodie-wearing stranger is in the immediate housing complex. How would the ladies of that jury have reacted? I submit that if they were armed, they would have shot and killed Trayvon Martin a lot sooner than George Zimmerman did. This is self-defense.

If you were getting beaten up by Trayvon, how many times would you let him pound your head into the sidewalk while you were crying for help, before pulling the trigger. 1? 2? 10? 20? Different people would give different answers, I guess, but I say most people would have pulled the trigger.

CNN keeps lying about the case:

This murder trial, in and out of the courtroom, has been boiled down to one question: Was Zimmerman in fear for his life and thus justified in defending himself by shooting and killing Martin?

No, the question is whether Zimmerman had a reasonable fear of great bodily injury. He was likely to be only brain-damaged, not killed.

Some people have forgotten that Zimmerman was not even arrested initially. It took more than a month for the special prosecutor to bring the second-degree murder charge.

Not true. Immediately after the shooting, Zimmerman was arrested, handcuffed, and taken to the police station (while not given medical treatment) for thorough questioning. He cooperated fully, without asking for a lawyer.

At the same time, we are told that Martin, who had far greater reason to fear Zimmerman, practically and for reasons of American history, did not have the right to confront his stalker, stand his ground and defend himself, including by using his fists.

No, Martin does not have the right to sneak up on a stalker and use him for a punching bag. And certainly not "for reasons of American history", whatever that means. Is he trying to say that blacks have a right to beat up non-blacks as payback for slavery 160 years ago?

Years after the movie came out, Lee told an interviewer, "White people still ask me why Mookie threw the can through the window. ...Twenty years later, they're still asking me that."

"No black person ever, in 20 years, no person of color has ever asked me why," he said.

Okay, I guess he is saying that random black violence against innocent bystanders is completely reasonable.

Let's look at the actual evidence. To me, the most convincing evidence is:

* Zimmerman cooperated fully with a plausible story, and all subsequent evidence corroborated him.

* The many wounds to Zimmerman's head, and none to Trayvon. Zimmerman was getting beat up badly.

* 911 tapes show Zimmerman crying many times for help.

* The state gunshot experts conclusively proved that the gun was up against the hoodie, and 3 inches from the skin. That means that Martin was on top of Zimmerman, with the hoodie hanging loose.

* Martin had 4 minutes to go home after Zimmerman lost him, and must have come back deliberately for a fight.

So what is the prosecution evidence? It is very thin:

But prosecutors said that Mr. Zimmerman profiled Mr. Martin as he was headed home in the rain to the house where he was a guest. Mr. Zimmerman got out of the car with a gun concealed in his waistband and chased him so he would not get away. He was the aggressor in the fight, they said.

Contradictions in Mr. Zimmerman’s story abound, they said, citing these assertions from the defendant:

How could Mr. Martin have grabbed for the gun and not left DNA on it? How could he have even seen that tiny gun in Mr. Zimmerman’s waistband in the dark? Why would Mr. Zimmerman get out of the car and follow Mr. Martin if he was scared of him? How could Mr. Martin have been punching Mr. Zimmerman, covering his mouth and reaching for his gun at the same time? And wouldn’t Mr. Zimmerman have suffered more grievous wounds to his head if Mr. Martin had slammed it against the pavement 25 times?

“Is he exaggerating what happened?” asked Mr. de la Rionda, calling the statements lies, a ploy to pad his self-defense case.

Yes, Zimmerman did profile Martin in the sense of sizing him up as a suspicious character and calling 911. Even the prosecutors concede that is what good neighbors are supposed to do, and there is nothing wrong with it.

The defense made the excellent point that the minor contradictions indicate that Zimmerman is telling the truth, not lying. When someone lies, he often has a rehearsed story, and sticks to it to the letter. It is when people are honestly trying to tell the truth that there are minor discrepancies. They might tell the story several times, and some retelling may leave out details. If Zimmerman kept telling the story over and over with the exact same number of punches, I would be suspicious. No one counts punches during a street fight.

The above questions have obvious answers. If I were on the jury, I would conclude that the prosecution has an incredibly weak case.

Here is another prosecution summary:

“He went over the line,” Mr. de la Rionda told the jury. “He assumed things that weren’t true and, instead of waiting for the police to come and do their job, he did not. He, the defendant, wanted to make sure that Trayvon Martin didn’t get out of the neighborhood.”

“In this defendant’s mind he automatically assumed that Trayvon Martin was a criminal,” Mr. de la Rionda added. “And that’s why we’re here.”

Maybe I missed it, but I did not see where the prosecutor ever described the line that Zimmerman crossed, or showed that Zimmerman assumed anything that was not true, or that he did not wait for police to do their job.

Zimmerman reported Martin as a suspect, not a criminal. Even if it were true that Zimmerman assumed that Martin was a criminal, he would be exactly right. As the defense said in closing, if Martin had lived, he surely would have been charged with aggravated battery, a serious crime. Martin was indeed up to no good that night.

Even if Zimmerman falsely assumed that Martin was a criminal, it would not help the prosecution case. The jury decision hinges on Zimmerman's perception of the danger to himself. If Zimmerman was convinced that Martin was a criminal, then that is all the more reason to have a justified fear of what might happen.

Update: The former police chief said:

Bill Lee, who testified Monday in Zimmerman's second-degree murder trial, told CNN's George Howell in an exclusive interview that he felt pressure from city officials to arrest Zimmerman to placate the public rather than as a matter of justice.

"It was (relayed) to me that they just wanted an arrest. They didn't care if it got dismissed later," he said. "You don't do that." ...

I'm happy that at the end of the day I can walk away with my integrity.

He was apparently fired for not agreeing to a scheme to frame Zimmerman for murder. The driving force behind all this is leftist race-baiters on MSNBC and the President saying, "If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon." [Mar23, 2012]

Update: The prosecution final argument was:

"A teenager is dead," Florida state prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda told the jury in closing arguments of the murder trial. "He is dead through no fault of his own. He is dead because another man made assumptions. Because his assumptions were wrong, Trayvon Benjamin Martin will no longer walk on this Earth."

No, that teenager beat up Zimmermon instead of going to the house that his dad was visiting. It is false to say that Martin was without fault.

Update: Zimmerman was acquitted. He can think the jury system, because the fix was in against him. Without a jury, an innocent man would have gone to prison.

Update: MSNBC still has blacks and leftists arguing that Trayvon Martin had a right to beat up someone who was following him.