George Zimmerman Acquitted on All Charges!

[jordan179]

A great moment for American criminal justice today, as George Zimmerman was acquitted on all charges in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, despite the obvious attempt, orchestrated from the White House and US Justice Department, to convict Zimmerman as a political maneuver.  George Zimmerman walks free, now able to recoup the money he was forced

Comments

[metaphorsbwithu]

The mob mentality of the liberal lynch party failed as 6 women, despite predictions by people like Juan Williams (who said that because they were women the "technical" evidence would not matter and they would vote guilty because they were "emotional" and had children of their own, etc.) looked at the evidence and the law.

There needs to be an investigation on how this witch hunt was instigated and conducted, the actions of the lying media need to be exposed and they be made legally liable, and the politicians who lined up behind this travesty who up for election should be booted out with fluency.

[polaris93]

Saw something today on HuffPost that the White House and Eric Holder are going to try pressing federal charges against Zimmerman. That's double jeapordy, but Obama doesn't care.

[mrmeval]

The priests of the supCt have ruled it is not oh hallowed be the priests.

[akilika]

Wish I knew where my schoolbooks were for this one--but I believe double jeopardy doesn't obtain when speaking of (for instance) different states with jurisdiction over the same murder. It doesn't seem like it'd be a stretch for the federal to be able to do the same.

(The case cited in question of this, in my books, was a man who'd hired hitmen to kill his wife; they kidnapped her in (I think) Alabama, then brought her to (again, I think) Florida do to do the deed. The fact that the one state (which didn't have the death penalty) had convicted didn't prevent the other from trying its own case.)

(Reading all the "I thinks"... dang, I REALLY wish I even remembered which textbook that had been in...)

[kalance]

Double Jeopardy within a single jurisdiction definitely doesn't extend to criminal verses civil trials. Zimmerman won the criminal case; so until new evidence is brought to light, he's safe. BUT he CAN still be tried for the same incident in a civil(eg: wrongful death) suit. Case in point: OJ Simpson; who was found not guilty at trial, but still had to pay out the nose when he lost the follow-up civil case.

And I believe that the case the DoJ is looking to bring against Zimmerman is a civil one. Something about "violating Martin's civil rights" or some such.

[silent_o]

Chimpouts start in 3... 2... 1...

[jordan179]

So far, the only city which has seen rioting is Oakland, and it's been fairly mild rioting by my unfortunate hometown's standards. Remember, we're the city which spawned the Black Panthers in the first place.

[akilika]

Another thing that occurs to me--duty to retreat.

Apparently, the thinking is that Zimmerman had a duty to retreat when he was trapped on the ground with his head being bashed against the sidewalk; continuing to take it until he could get away (assuming that eventually happened) was the proper response.

However, Martin had no duty to retreat when being followed and asked what he was doing; beating up Zimmerman was the proper response.

...????

[jordan179]

Indeed. And the excuse generally given is that Zimmerman was armed. This implied both (1) that one should reasonably assume that any armed person approaching one means one harm, and (2) that Martin could even tell that Zimmerman was armed. But it's obvious from the sequence of events that Martin did not know that Zimmerman was armed, because Martin despite attacking Zimmerman appears to have made no attempt to disarm him -- this being why Zimmerman was able to shoot him!

[akilika]

I'd thought this was another chapter in the War on Guns, but this seems to expand it a lot--a War on Self Defense.

I've heard background noise for a while, about how no one needs weapons, you're just giving something for your attacker to use against you, property isn't worth a life, mistakes get made, you're more likely to commit suicide with a gun than to need to use it on someone else... best to just wait for the cops to come and file a report protect you.

Ignoring the police's job isn't to stop crime in its tracks, that the Monday-morning quarterbacks have a lot more leisure to go through the facts than a victim, and that a docile populace is more attractive to ruffians. They WANT a docile populace.

This isn't a war on guns, this is a war on self-reliance.

[cutelildrow]

It was ruled in the 70's that it was not the job of the police to protect the citizenry.

eta: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/world/a-g-urges-rethink-of-us-self-defence-laws/story-e6frfkui-1226680536787

Fucking Holder.