BCC List Diaspora part 6
Whee ha. I’ve just earned my merit badge (pun intended) by being banned on TalkLeft.
Good Stalinist that she is, Jeralyn will apparently be erasing my offending comments. (E.g. I pointed out that W6 may have credibility issues with a jury due to his multiple contradictory statements. I believe I said if there are cracks in DeeDee’s statements, then there are crevices the size of the Snake River Canyon in John’s.)
Now, if someone actually wanted to help George Zimmerman’s defense, they would be taking a cold hard look at the strengths and weaknesses of different interpretations of evidence and testimony, and trying to figure out how to counter-argue against potential prosecution strategies. But the only thing that happens at TalkLeft is summary dismissal of any discussion Jeralyn and her sycophants don’t like. Well, I’m betting they get a dose of reality when (if?) GZ goes to trial, and I’ll just have to gloat from here.
**anticipatory snicker**
Feel free to talk amongst yourselves.
whonoze 
regarding the ABC News reaction to the defense subpoena:
Is Matt Gutman still reporting on this story or has he been reassigned? I wonder if his materials are more or less under his control or if his editor and the legal division more or less taken over as custodian of this stuff?
Gutman’s name is still attached to some recent Zimmerman stories
http://abcnews.go.com/Author/Matt_Gutman
Okay that works to confirm my suspicions that Gutman/ABC News has done two things: first, they only posted that 5 min clip of Dee Dee and Crump because they submitted materials to the defense in response to a subpoena and that they are attempting to hold onto the rest of the audio as long as they can simply to keep it out of the hands of competing news organizations. I predict we will hear the rest of the hi-fi audio recording of Dee Dee and Crump when the defense releases it right before the trial begins, which will be when their very last opportunity to comply with the rules of mutual discovery come to bear.
Congrats on your Merritt badge Whonoze! But I can’t see you snickering. Why don’t you let out one of these?
Congrats on the Badge Whonoze!!! I think you should take WSI advice and laugh like Dr. Evil.
😆
Obligatory send me notification emails comment.
unitron
I’m stunned they banned you- how un-intellectual! especially over what you stated! stunning.
I’m surprised you lasted as long as you did over there at TalkLeft, whonoze. She’s a defense lawyer and there just has to be a certain amount of cognitive dissonance that comes with that profession. She simply cannot abide in the reality-based universe and also do her job, so she choses not to. Her skill is in pretending for the masses that she does. She’s fairly good at it, but like you said it’s a bubble and like most bubbles it’s fragile and about to get popped.
I know that a defense attorney is to do as good a job as possible in proving the prosecution’s case to be wrong and/or getting the jury to believe that the prosecution failed to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. To do that, I would hope that the defense attorney would examine every element known or surmised about the evidence and prosecution strategy; able to discern problem areas and how to work through them.
Jeralyn surprises me not by adamently defending Zimmerman, but by her cherry-picking or ignoring those problem areas in her OPs, and deleting comments/banning commenters that insist on their existence (there are a number of commenters who do insert questions or comments about evidence that doesn’t mesh well for the defense, but while she permits suggestive comments, she tends to remove the declarative ones).
If this type of tunnel vision is indicative of how she works, then I certainly wouldn’t want her services. Obviously, she does well enough – and her blog and forums are certainly helpful – but I couldn’t take the chance that she wasn’t paying full attention.
I wish, it was as easy as that. I tried to figure out her specific motives for deleting comments. While she has an explicate rule for the GZ/Fogen case discussions she doesn’t seem to adhere to it. In the most striking case she deleted two comments by one person, same aka, suggesting he had used the term Nazis, which s/he clearly did not.
sorry, something is on moderation, and this does not belong here. Maybe I need a bigger screen than my laptop to avoid these problems.
I’ve loaded a downloadable copy of the ABC clip from the DeeDee / Crump interview to my Dropbox:
[video src="https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2816030/ABCclipDDCrump.mp4" /]
Thanks! So much better that way.
I read on FLLB that final witness lists for the GZ trial are supposed to be delivered to Judge Nelson, and made available for mutual discovery, on March 27. Assuming that happens, and we get to see them, that will tell us a lot about the parties will be handling the case, especially in terms of what forensics experts might be called. I still don’t trust Corey, but I’ll feel better if she and BdlR have some hot-shot evidence experts lined up.
To quote Lonnie: tick-tock.
Yes, I am anxious to hear what experts that either side will call. (Twiddling thumbs). There’s seems to be a paucity of reciprocal discovery. This list was filed by the defense back in January. I didn’t pay much attention to it then, but in looking at it now , it says the defense plans to entered into evidence, among other things, video surveillence of the Lakes Edge Apartments and Sams Club and Kohl’s parking lots. Since it’s been almost two months, shouldn’t we have those tapes by now?
Click to access Defendant’s%20Supplemental%20Notice%20of%20Reciprocal%20Discovery.pdf
Thinking the same way. I want to see those tapes. I can not take the word of the submitter of those tapes being of no evidentary value. The “Bcclisters” have proved them wrong on that count with the clubhouse videos.
I can’t wait to see who they list as experts on both sides.
I can’t imagine anything on the Sam’s Club or Kohl’s videos. I’d like to see Lake’s Edge appartements. The only strategy I see in that list is the ” impeach DD” strategy.
I guess the defense wants to keep the missing minutes missing. DD makes it a more difficult to keep GZ of the stand.
Note that the date of that reciprocal discovery list was something Jan 18. I think it was only at a recent hearing that the defense said that they got a blank tape of the Sam’s club video and the prosecution was working with them to resolve that issue. So if they had a blank tape back in Jan, then they didn’t know what was on it when they released that list, did they?
@wsi
You’ve got to keep up with the ct’s. Wasn’t there a theory that Trayvon was trying to break into cars on a parking lot?
@amsterdam, “You’ve got to keep up with the ct’s”
Hah! there’re just so many, can’t keep em straight.
I would definitely like to see the surveillance video from “Lakes Edge”. I have been ruminating for some time on whether Trayvon just might have returned to RATL via the shorter and nicer back route and not down Rinehart Rd, i.e. through “Lakes Edge” and “Colonial Village”. From maps it appears feasible to go from 7/11 through both and come out exactly opposite Taffe’s cut through. This would explain why, if Trayvon was going to go home via the clubhouse, and supposing it true that he entered RATL via Taffe’s cut through (that does not mean I believe GZ first saw him there driving down RVC on his way to target, if he was going to Target, as GZ or another could have observed Trayvon crossing the grass from the road), then why take the cut through furthest from Oregon Avenue and double back when there is another cut through nearer to Oregon Avenue which would place him on a shorter path with the clubhouse. Just pondering, and no conspiracy theory!
I’ll use Occam’s razor and believe that Trayvon walked the most direct route both to and from the 7-11. He’d never before stayed at RATL more than a couple of days, and it’s more unlikely that he knew the back routes at all, or well enough, to venture on those paths on a rainy night.
And I am sure your Occam’s razor is most likely right albeit Trayvon did tell DD he would go via the “back”, a “back” which is probably within RATL but just could be before, and considering the Defence is disclosing surveillance from Lakes Edge, and I looked on Google and Bing and I can’t see, (not to say there isn’t one mind you), a CCTV that would capture the main road… well as I said just wondering!
The state’s witness list is the one I am most eager to see. Like others I don’t yet trust that Corey is going to bring the right strategy to bear. I think she’s politically motivated to seek a conviction, but the fact that BDlR didn’t pick up on the car to pedestrian chase before he interviewed fee dee worries me a lot
I wouldn’t worry about Corey and BdlR/Guy; prosecutors want to win, and, for such a high-interest case as this, they don’t want to end up looking like idiots.
Between Serino, FDLE, and SAO investigators all listening to the NEN call, I’m sure BdlR was well aware of the fact that Zimmerman drove after Trayvon, and that Trayvon had to have stayed in front of him (inferring that Zimmerman drove slowly). DeeDee will only confirm that, mentioning that Trayvon told her that this was so.
Thank s it’s always reassuring to hear this. The prosecutoon must shield its strategy but because of this one has to rely on faith
“The prosecution must shield its strategy”
Best way to shield strategy is just to keep the lips sealed. BDLR has always said he wanted to keep things in the courtroom. Except for his often snarky official responses to the defenses motions, he’s stayed out of the media. But it has a downside too. I wonder if it’s this policy of “seal lips” that also kept him from saying anything at the hearing while the defense effectively called DeeDee a liar and let MSM do so as well.
Yeah new thread!!
Congrats Whonoze,
I was wondering how long you’d last.
I guess it’s up to unitron to be our TalkLeft spy. 😉
Whonoze, I noticed your comments on the Witness # 8 /DeeDee thread. Do you mean by banished, banished from her blog or banished from the forum. And what explanation did she give? OK, I see
Interesting, nomatter_nevermind, doesn’t seem to be celebrating like everybody else. I thought he had completely moved over flags flying into the GZ support camp, But he is brought back to move in lock step like a real pro-Fogen soldier swiftly.
I tried to subscribe on the Forum by email to Jeralyn, but never got an answer. She claims that the automatic subscription has been closed down due to spam. That may not be the real reason, it may be more about controlling contributions. I used a real name but not mine and asked her to use the same aka I use on her blog: LeaNder. Maybe that’s why I do not hear anything. My comments only stopped to disappear on her blog when I started to challenge her, asking for the precise breach of rules.
By the way, has she decided to pass her 15-page analysis on the ABC tape on to Team Fogen, instead of publishing it? I keep checking back, and the IT troubles cannot explain her 8 days delay. Never quite trusted that excuse.
I was banned from the forum. They’re still talking about me now and then though, e.g. calling my audio analyses fantasies or some such.
I received notice of my banning in an email with the subject line: “You are done here”. The body text was “All you do is argue speculative theories for guilt. I’ve had enough. I am banning you again. I warned you a few times not to do this. Please take your guilt-mongering elsewhere”. Of course, that’s not true. Many if not most of my posts were not speculative, and did not address “theories for guilt.”
“All you do is argue speculative theories for guilt.”
Ha! But it’s OK to argue speculative theories for innocence all one wants over there?
I’ve seen the spam problem she has on the main TalkLeft site, and it is real, and it’s not dissenting views, it’s out and out submitted from overseas in a foreign language commercial spam.
Also there’s the matter of her still having a day job as an attorney which takes up some of her time to help explain why some things don’t get done instantaneously.
unitron
The spam ended up on the Forum?
My documentation tells me it is very much about dissenting views, unitron. And believe me in the process of collecting it, I almost learned both her ordinary and her specific comment rule for the GZ case by heart. Do you want me to put it online for your pleasure? E.g. comments that were banned since they supposedly contained the word Nazi? But maybe I do not care enough to do that. I don’t feel like my “sister’s” keeper.
So Whonoze’s banishment was only, to use your specific angle, since she realized he was manipulated by media and the “Scheme Team”? A propagandist against his own better judgement?
Whonoze, you don’t need to tell me:
I watched “little Caesar”–why not?–long enough. I considered your responses on DeeDee the most rational of all.
My own general and admittedly superficial take on matters.
Benjamin Crump in fact tried to protect Tracy and Sybrina in all his recent moves. I would imagine it’s human if you found out that someone talked to your dead son, that you didn’t stop the person from telling you what she knew.
I think Crump used Mattman not only as a media person, but in fact to make sure he had a witness to the process.
So, I somehow doubt they will find what they are looking for.
And Crump will protect his clients in their disposals. I also read somewhere that DeeDee has legal counsel by now.
But, admittedly I fear the mindset of Jeralyn much more than the Treehousers. She has a huge interest in seeing GZ acquitted, I wouldn’t put past her to support West/OMara. It’s a win-win scenario for her. She wants to have been right all along. And the playing dirty was what she suggested early. Something like, why do the parents not let it go, it will be a mudbath. That’s of course not as she put it.
From a PR perspective I think Crump at all made some mistakes in trying to get an arrest. On the other hand they had to take what they could get.
thanks for your answer.
Hmmm. “at all” should of course be et al. 😉
“She has a huge interest in seeing GZ acquitted…”
And that is?
unitron
How long do you know her unitron?
Concerning the above you should be able to answer that for yourself. Reputation? I never err?
Amsterdam, have you ever been there. On her block, I mean. I ignored the Forum, it had an even stronger pro-GZ bias, it felt. But for a while I saw every single sensitive voice on her blog disappear, or the comments deleted. After a while I started recording it for myself.
I read the forum once in a while. I never bothered joining. If people like Willis, Whonoze are getting banned, I figured I wouldn’t last very long.
It is fascinating to read how people can look at the same information and reach such a different conclusion.
I read the blog only and never bothered to subscribe to the Forum. It seemed even worse over there. She uses the same type of censorship over at her blog. Most regulars that were critical of GZ’s narrative gave up after a while. Interestingly even people that protested against her deletions. It made made me really furious, when my comments disappeared without even a whisper. I am an Internet dinosaur and I have never seen this type censorship before, admittedly.
Not immediately, but once I decided to take a closer look and knew her rules by heart.
@WSI
Guess what?!!
Osterman is a big f**king liar.
Well you already knew that but anyway, while looking around for something in the discovery dump one, I found this:
on 2/26/2012 at approx. 2321 hours I again met with CST Smith, officers and investigators and I observed CST Smith take photographs of the subjects’ injuries, hands, collect possible gun shot residue using a GSR kit. This took place in a Sandford Police Department interview room 2. We then had to wait for the subject’s wife to respond with a change of clothes and the clothes that the subject was wearing were collected. CST Smith collected and logged all the evidence.
Serino states in his report that he had to WAIT for the ole wife to respond to get a change of clothes, Osterman lied and said this instead: Oh Shellie lets pack some suitcases because I want to protect you and I am a cop used to be cop but now I am a Homeland Security Guy but not now because my identity was compromised and I know about these things, so ole’ Georgie is going to need a change of clothes and let me write in my book that we left at 8:10 and say we saw no yellow tarp so I can establish a timeline like you and George did. But I wiill put in my book that we pulled out of the complex by 9:20 but the station is only 15 minutes away. Maybe no on will notice that we don’t have any damn suitcases full of clothes. And maybe no one will notice how long I was at the complex before or after the shooting. Maybe no one will notice that the Lead Detective wrote down a damn time of waiting for CLOTHES!!!
Argggggggggggggggggggggg
This guy is in it to his eyeballs.
Gonna play the devils advocate and say they had to wait while Shellie went to the car to get the clothes. Osterman said they parked somewhere along 13th street which was the street on which the police station was located. At that time of night, shouldn’t have had to park 10 blocks away, but “had to wait” can be relative. Maybe she took her time deciding which dapper outfit she packed to pick. Ok somebody needs to scare up the security camera tapes of the police lobby and front of the police station.
@WSI
Ooooo I like when you play devils advocate. Yippee 🙂
But but but…..Osterman said he told her he would need a change of clothes. Wouldn’t wifey and friend have a nice folded shirt and pants and shoes waiting on their lap? He was quite specific in his knowledge of police procedure in his book. It would be nice to have those items close by so they can get the hell out of there asap.
As far as parking down so far, media perhaps?? But wait a minute that doesn’t jive either because we would of seen footage of the wife and Osterman entering the station with a headline like this: Wife and other man seen here entering the police station of the shooter at RATL.
>>>Ok somebody needs to scare up the security camera tapes of the police lobby and front of the police station.
I am with you a 1000%
Lets suponea those records!!!
That vision made me laugh, and I just know you are right. She was sitting there with a freshly laundered shirt, neatly folded pair of jeans and his favorite dinosaurs briefs on her lap.
@Amsterdam
Dinosaur briefs???????
OMG I busted out laughing at that one.
I didn’t know which imagine made me laugh more, her just sitting there like you described or just the imagine of the underwear with pictures of dinosaurs on them like a child has or old like in yuckkkkkk.
LMBO
Where’d that video come from of GZ and MO walking up the stairs at the police station the day or couple of days after the shooting? I can’t imagine that it was part of an evidence dump, but somebody had to put it out there.
From LLMPapa….
lol
Thanks Loree, but I was asking perhaps rhetorically because I’m not sure anyone knows the answer the question of how that video got released and by whom.
They just match the butterfly bandages.
@wsi
That video was released as part of the discovery. It is on page 7, videos SPD.
Thanks! Ok,
“I don’t know what they were up to that night, but it wasn’t the way Osterman is describing it.”
Well that’s fer shure. (typos deliberate).
ditto
I don’t know what they were up to that night, but it wasn’t the way Osterman is describing it.
I just checked Cheryl Brown’s narrative again. She was at Walmart when her daughter called her. Walmart is about 3 minute drive from her home. Her daughter called 911 around 7:19 and she was on the phone for less than 2 minutes. Cheryl said she rushed home but found the police had blocked the gates. She left her car on the other side of the street and ran home.
There is no way Shellie waited for Osterman outside the gate in her car and opened the gate so both could drive their cars inside.
Not sure if this playing Devils advocate but here goes…..
How about if Osterman used his influence to get the boys in blue to let them through?
Very good possibility. In the book, he said he pulled around in front of her after they got into the complex. Well, maybe he pulled around in front of her at the gate to flash the badge and say, “hey, she’s good, she’s with me”
@WSi
That I can see. Especially if he said, “This is his wife I got with me”. It’s plausible.
It doesn’t sound like Osterman not to brag about that. If I were to judge by the excerpts I’ve read, I would expect something like “at the front gate I found Shellie desperate and in tears, because the place was locked down and she couldn’t get in. I knew some of the guys and they opened the gate for me, so that I could escort Shellie to see her husband”.
I kind of had him off my list as being somehow involved before the incident, but I put him back on it. I’m just getting the impression that he was on the complex earlier than he is claiming.
@Amsterdam
He kinda sorta of did that with the introduction of his book. If you don’t have the book, I be more then happy to type it out for you. 🙂
Osterman has been on my list, but he has moved up a rung or two on my ladder of being suspected of more than just a friend that “helped” his friend and wife out.
Osterman brags quite a bit in his book about his experience in LE, etc, and knowing stuff, but maybe even he might know that it’s not good to say that he used his influence to get through a blocked gate, as that would suggest he used his influence in other mattters of the case.
Yep.
@loree
Is that where he says something like ” you see the guy in the police car? This is his wife”. I don’t know the exact quote, but if that’s the one you are referring to, he couldn’t have seen GZ in the police car, from outside the gate.
I am speculating of course, but if I were the prosecution, I’d be doing some checking.
@amsterdam, the only place MO says he talked to another police officer was about 100 feet away from the police car where GZ was seated in the back seat. So at the crime scene, not at the gate.
@Amsterdam
Oh no, I was just following the thought behind him arriving at the gate, talking to the boys in blue.
IIRC, on the other thread, discussing the book, he did write something to the effect, paraphrasing a bit here, “I talk to an officer and advise him I had his wife with me, and is there anything you can share. Officer relied, It’s clean from what we have gathered. major crime is on their way.
Something like that.
And I think they are checking him out. I found it interesting that they asked Serino if he knew the name of the guy who accompanied GZ to the 2/29 interview. And of course they have the video showing Osterman included in the discovery.
@Amsterdam
Isn’t it weird that Serino didn’t know him, but the local cops did. I can’t rememeber right now which three were asked if they knew Osterman.
Hasn’t it been about 10 years since MO was in the department? In any case, Serino could have been hired after MO’s exit. Or that Serino has been a detective for awhile and didn’t associate with the beat cops (which MO was, right?). Or, as MO put it, even Billy “father figure” Lee wouldn’t have been able to pick him out of a line-up, I mean a supermarket line.
@WSI
Wicked writer !!!
Wicked.
blushed, did I get something wrong about the station being only 6 minutes away by car. I used Google Maps and searched for the SPD address. In spite of red lights 15 seems a bit much. Does he write that?
I did this in connection with Diwataman’s time line. For whatever reason he lets Smith leave with Fogen at 19:32:00, which can’t be correct. Doesn’t feel there can be much traffic considering day, time, and weather.
He seems to use approximately this time entry in the 7th discovery, I think starting page 12, specific entry page 14 top:
Whoever sits on terminal/workstation TM6 seems to be mainly in charge of dispatch.. It feels to me this is a signal that Fire and Rescue should now look for Fogen’s wounds. The entry on the Fire and Rescue documents read similarly.
This is very unlikely the time Smith leaves the scene with Fogen, since Johnson does not leave at that time. I think they actually leave later triggered by a command staff page sent. See the series of entries probably page 13 bottom. The Fire and Rescue documents also suggest that the leave the scene with LEA.
In any case, would you recommend Osterman’s book and why do you think I should read it? I actually don’t like to, since there is no Kindle version. Otherwise I may have taken a look.
In any case blushed. I found this part interesting:
Does he claim there wasn’t yellow tarp by the time he left? Ahd what does he write about when Fogen left the scene. I always assumed it was about: 19:52/7:52
Yes, he does claim that timeline in his book, no yellow tarp seen at the time.
excuse typos please still laughing hahahah
It’s possible the mark osterman accompanied GZ on some of his “patrols” over the months leading up to the killing. This may have re-introduced him to the likely patrol officers who responded on these occasions.
Osterman’s self-serving book proved he’s willing to “carry water” for his lying friend.
I get that you’re positing a hypothesis on how MO could have become re-acquainted with the police department, but I’m not betting the house of the likelihood that MO ever patrolled with GZ much less was present when he called about other “suspects”. Any influence he had on the police department that night could easily have been initiated with a “Hey bud, remember me?” or a flash of his air marshall badge. But this is what he wrote:
*************
” I nodded to several of the officers on the scene that night because I recognized them from ten years before, when I was a Seminole County Deputy in the area that includes Sanford, Florida. To one of the officers I said, “I have his wife here next to me; the guy in the police car. His name is George and this is his wife. Can you tell me anything that happened?”
The Sanford police officer quickly answered, “Oh, don’t worry about it; from what I’ve seen, it’s clean.” ”
*************
Alert: There’s a commenter “Thomas R. Moore” over on BCCList that I would implore all of you to ignore please if you’re over there. If so, he’ll just go away. That thread is getting long, and I don’t feel like having the bandwidth clogged.
IIRC, one of the Defense subpoena motions was for recordings of TM’s voice, and (again) IIRC, that motion was granted and the State turned something over. Is that right? (BB?)
I clearly recall that back when the story on Owen and Primeau appeared in the OS, all sources reported that no voice samples of TM were available. I’m just wondering if anyone can confirm whether some recordings of Trayvon have, in fact, emerged, even though obviously they haven’t been made public if they do indeed exist.
If there are recordings of Trayvon, that _could_ (maybe) bring a voice recognition analyst like Tom Owen back into the picture at trial. If he (or someone using similar techniques) got a high percentage match between TM and the screams, that would be pretty conclusive. If indeed the former FBI guy is right that the recording is too lo-fi for a useful ID, that should yield a non-match between both known exemplars and the screams. This wouldn’t help the prosecution, but it wouldn’t hurt either, as ‘we can’t really say who it is via any scientific analysis’ is where we are now anyway.
Somehow, there seems to be tunnel vision in the media when talking about if it can be determined “which ONE was screaming or yelling help” than that person would be the “innocent one defending his own life”. I’ve always believed that both of them can be heard on the 911 tape. That GZ was yelling “help” as in “come help me restrain him”, while TM’s screams were unintelligible. I’m thinking the voice analysis is going to be hugely complicated and at the end of the day, the determination from the experts won’t sway people much either way.
Probably a bit late to reply to you but I was so glad to read this. For a long time I am sure I hear both voices, one, GZ’s, yelling or calling out (not screaming, and there is a difference, at least a nuance, IMO), “Help me, help me”, exactly as you say, i.e. “help me restrain this guy”, which coincidentally are the only words GZ has ever claimed to have uttered, and another, very visceral voice, screaming, but at least to me, sometimes intelligibly (I am sure I hear “I’m begging you” at the beginning) while other times I hear words that could be interpreted in several ways.
Further, and at the risk I will be simply seen as nitpicking, I believe when GZ told Serino, after listening twice to the screams, “That doesn’t EVEN sound like me” (u/c emphasis mine), his non reaction/recognition even of the words and his use of the complex adverb “even” which used in such circumstances assumes something else is in play, (e.g. “Those pants don’t even fit me” assumes the pants don’t do something else other than just not fit for the speaker which the listener will be able to “know”) makes me think there was something else GZ didn’t recognise in those screams, i.e. the words, or the “help mes” GZ claims he called out, which considering that IMO GZ’s “help mes” are lower on the volume scale than Trayvon’s screams is understandable because it took me a quite several attempts at rewinding and listening to be able to distinguish them clearly.
Lastly, there is of course a part, even if small, of the tape we haven’t heard yet which I always hope contains at least some intelligible utterances. Because it may be by actual sound it is impossible to determine who but by words that may become obvious and determinative in court.
I also hear what could be “I’m begging you” but because you and others have mentioned it, but I don’t think that’s what’s being said. Not only because I don’t hear the syllables clearly enough, but I can’t imagine a teenager saying that.
@wassointeresting
Funny, because “I’m begging you” is the one utterance I hear clearly with all the syllables, and from before it became the widespread choice. But then the mind plays tricks and with so much reinforcement by others claiming they hear the same you can be conditioned and unable to “hear” anything else. Hopefully the prosecution has cleaned up tapes for the trial as even though I am certain I hear this one phrase clearly, I still waver between “punks” and “coons”!
Just checked my comment, and what I was trying to say, not very clearly I think, was that most of the time with all the opinions, controversies, demos, and different claims, etc. I don’t know what I hear even though I sometimes think I’m sure!
Because of what the FBI has said, I don’t see the identity of the screamer ever becoming a “deciding issue” for jurors.
However, the issue will be brought up at trial and the emotional high point of all the testimony and presentations will come down to two possible moments: either George Zimmerman’s cross examination (if he testifies) or the moment the slain teen’s mother takes the stand to insist that she hears her sons’ voice crying out for help that never came.
This may or may not be true – we just don ‘t know who is screaming. Everyone can have an opinion but at present there is no conclusive report, test or testimony.
This issue will be huge at trial. But ultimately I I were a juror I’d look elsewhere to base a final guilt or innocence vote. I’m sure the jurors will be asked to weigh the totality of the evidence and testimony.
I can certainly see a path to a guilty verdict even with jurors who think its George yelling. (It’s the direction I am leaning .). But having the mom say its her son is going to be powerful.
I always thought they might have a recording of TM’s voice vis-á-vis the voice mail on his cell phone or from family videos. But, wouldn’t such analysis, if done, have to be part of state’s discovery?
It might just come down to common sense. After presenting the minutes between the end of the NEN call and the struggle, the location of the struggle (towards Trayvon’s destination), and the forensics regarding the gunshot (TM’s clothing, bullet trajectory, lack of blood evidence on TM, and the shell casing, the minor effect of GZ’s injuries), what matters is who would have more cause to scream? The unarmed “kid” who had run away or the armed man in pursuit?
Any such analysis would be work product, exempt from discovery.
I am worried that there are no reports about the photobutton. That report should’ve been part of the discovery.
I am also worried about the categorie A witness list. I can’t find witnesses on that list that were not interviewed and memo’s or reports are included in the discovery. Six cars past the mail shed on TTL, between the time we think Trayvon got there and GZ showed up. One car is driving west on TTL right after GZ got of the phone. How many people would take TTL to go to their house from the front gate?
I am a bit unclear about the discovery process, since there was no mention of the GPS data that was found on Trayvon’s phone. If O’Mara hadn’t made a stink about it, and by the way stopped talking about it real fast, we wouldn’t have known about it.
“One car is driving west on TTL right after GZ got of the phone. How many people would take TTL to go to their house from the front gate?”
Just so I’m sure I’m understanding you, or sure that I’m not misunderstanding you, that’s two different things, right?
unitron
Ignore my previous question about the two different thngs.
Every once in a great while (especially when lacking sleep) I get turned around on east and west and this was one of those times.
unitron
@Whonoze
Sorry for the late response, But I will check as soon as I get through the next 900 emails……
Wow, Lorree, Here’s email #901….did you and the professor take a hiatus or go on a top secret mission together? 🙂
@WSI
You make my day WSI, really you do, I love your posts!!!
Aw shucks, now I’m blushed (but not brown, more like a tinge of pink over my normally sickly pale color, don’t get out much)
West on TTL would be toward the front (North) gate, yes? I would guess cars going that direction would be people who live in the SE corner of RATL leaving via the North gate to turn left on Oregon, or people who live in the NW corner of RATL returning home after entering the back (East) gate from the South.
It didn’t come out the way I wanted it to. The point I was trying to make is this one.
How many people would be using TTL on their way to and from the North gate?
I counted 6 cars between 6:54 and 7:07, the time between Trayvon’s likely arrival at the mail shed and GZ’s arrival.
And I counted 1 more car after GZ got of the phone. That is a total of 7 cars with people who could’ve seen something.
I imagine that only the people living on TTL and maybe some people living on
OTL, would be using that path. It can’t be too difficult to locate them.
I hope the GPS data will place Trayvon at the mail shed at 6:54, but it appears they only got that data somewhere in January.
Feeling the need to leaven the over-riding tragic and disturbing nature of this case with some ironic shits and giggles, I’ve started a Zimmerman case limerick thread (though other forms of verse are welcome.)
Pictures of TM phone were released and some documents that don’t tell us anything. Although I’m doing the happy dance inside just remembering about the treepers wild speculations that the heart sticker phone didn’t even belong to TM but instead to some little girl.
http://www.cfnews13.com/content/news/cfnews13/news/article.html/content/news/articles/cfn/2013/3/14/new_zimmerman_eviden.html
So the defense is not releasing the GPS data. Media will probably filing foia requests.
It may not just be GPS data he’s talking about, and if there’s “data” then it would only be useful to the public if there were an analysis or report to go with. The files I’m guessing that what are sensitive and withheld from the public may be the phone contacts directory and perhaps personal photos/videos.
But it does include the GPS data. Of course it would be nice to have a report explaining the data, but I think we would be able to analyze it and create some kind of map.
Well, if there were something seemingly in the defense’s favor regarding the GPS data, I’m sure we’d hear about in the form of a milelong footnote in a motion to request additional information, which has been the defense’s tactic in terms of getting insinuations out to the public. If they keep truly mum about the GPS data, then they’ve either got bupkis or there’s something damning.
Yup, that’s what I think. I want to see that GPS data.
I predict there is no useful GPS data at all.
@wsi
Don’t worry, they’ll congregate somewhere else.
Oh I know, they have already gone to Rumpole’s “Random Topics” site.
http://randomtopics.org/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=767&p=25351#p25351
Diwataman refused to host a daily thread on his site.
Both of their sites existed before this shutdown, and I don’t care really to chase those rabbits down.
@willis
What makes you think that there won’t be any usable data?
regarding the likelihood of usable cell phone data:
In order to try to locate a cell phone, it takes three cell towers to triangulate a position. The fact that Dee Dee and TM kept getting their calls dropped makes me think they were on the edge of reception for ONE tower, not in a spot where TM had access to three. Given that she was in or around Miami, not likely traveling as he was, and he was in Sanford, a smaller place, I think the problem was on his end.
MOM has already complained there was no data for the date in question with the materials he received. He may be right, in that there simply isn’t any. Or, as he tries to suggest, we are to believe that the state has information that places the teen and is willfully hiding it form the defense, an act that would have the case thrown out of court with one motion. I tend to discount the latter and think the former is the case.
On second thought, a big indication that nothing at all or nothing helpful to the defense was found regarding the phone is that these latest documents were released by the defense in their “documents” page, and not on the main page and took awhile for the media to pick up on it.
http://www.gzlegalcase.com/index.php/court-documents
UIAM The custody report appears to be in error and it is not a flip-phone. From my research it is “Huawei U8150 Ideos” (link: http://tinyurl.com/cwlfagt pics of inside show CE and FCC ID same and model No if not same almost). Anyone any idea why we are seeing a lot of pics of the inside of the phone? Is the pic with the several brown cables going off page supposed to show the state of the art rocket science used to download the data?
It’s probably something like a JTAG header and they had to solder those on to access it.
unitron
@gbrbsb says “Anyone any idea why we are seeing a lot of pics of the inside of the phone? Is the pic with the several brown cables going off page supposed to show the state of the art rocket science used to download the data?”
Haha! I believe those are pictures taken by Brenton, the FDLE analyst who fiddled with the phone and didn’t get anything important. O’Mara made a big stink about nothing.
But did you guys notice on the front of the phone, it says “To unlock, sign in with your Google account.” So there’s no wonder that no one else (Tracey, Chad) would have had the password. That password doesn’t just unlock the phone, it would have opened any media connected with the Google account, correct?
Also, at the bottom of the screen, it has a button that says ” + Emergency Call” Does any one care to guess why that’s that’s there? I have a dinosaur of a phone, nothing smart about it, so I know nothing about those phones. All I could think of is that it allows you to still call 911 even though the phone is locked out. It doesn’t mean, as some have suggested, that TM had made a 911 call.
(@whonoze, this is a repeat post. please delete the one in moderation. I hate wordpress, won’t let me do a block quote and add a link!)
Amsterdam, the cell phone seems to have used A-GPS technology. Here is a comparison with GPS. The last item may be important:
A-GPS is faster though.
Wouldn’t cost and the use of network resources, maybe resulting in more frequent recharging actions, matter to a teenager? I surely hope he didn’t for one reason or another deactivate A-GPS.
What phone has Fogen?
I’m not sure the public knows what phone GZ ha .
When he started spending the money donated his wife got an iPhone for each of them according to recorded jailhouse phone calls. The “bloody head” photo shows a fat cell phone held to his ear, likely NOT a smart phone. That’s all I know about his phone. The SPD had custody of it and presumably could have searched it in some fashion. But what they found or didn’t, we don’t know.
Whatever it was, the phone was returned to him and so information the prosecution may use against him is already “shared” with the defense and isn’t part of any discovery materials made public.
Some speculate his call records might be evidence against him somehow. Talk of a tip-off makes many curious. If there is a trial we might hear more. If there is a plea deal we may never know.
I vaguely remember that exchange. Wasn’t it about a laptop too, and only one phone?
So we know what type of cell phone Trayvon used but we do not know anything about GZ’s. That’s unfair. 😉
@willisnewton – Zimmerman’s phone is a BlackBerry, if the phone in the pic is the same as the one he gave FDLE consent to search on 3/22.
Page 29
I did that wrong. This should be good.
Page 29
Also applying this “happy dance” to news of disbanding of the GZ treepers.
@amsterdam, I’m afraid that this will severely limit my ability to keep up with conspiracy theories 🙂
http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2013/03/14/effective-immediately-the-gz-daily-discussion-thread-is-discontinued/#more-60027
Wtf ?
Nothing to worry, wassointere:
have you ever managed to wade through the daily chatters? It’s way enough to watch them occasionally at special events.
I wonder about their 1000 FOIA files, or whatever they think they can find there? A Obama conspiracy against Fogen?
Hey leander, Yep, I had gotten proficient at wading through the muck over at the treehouse, got very good at ignoring the awful comments and just gathering the gist of what was going one there. Sundance used to/still does imply that he knows a lot more than he lets on at the website and that kept the followers salivating. The 1000 foia’s are likely nothing more than what we’ve seen or doodle scrap paper not fit for public presentation anyway.
BTW, it’s supposed to be “wassointeresting” or “WSI” for short. The wordpress format on this blog cuts off everybodys names!
Also, I just wanted to mention that I know you’re using the name “Fogen” to refer to GZ and the whole theory behind that from the Leatherman blog (I lurk there but don’t comment). I don’t know how Whonoze feels about it here, but I’ve always thought it’s use is pointless, especially outside of the Leatherman blog because not everyone is aware of it’s meaning. I just think it discourages newcomers to a blog, because they might feel like they need to ask about its meaning in order to be initiated into the “club”. Please don’t take this as a personal criticism, I’m just spewing my own feelings about that term.
OK, WSI, I do it for Malisha. admittedly .she’s a complex character and yes, I like her humor. Sure I can use GZ, if that is OK with you? Strictly nothing insulting about it, Fogen, I mean.
Basically I understand Whonoze’s complaints about group dynamics over there, initially they felt over the top for me too. But then I came from TalkLeft at the time and the .confidence was slightly overpowering. One learns to separate wheat from chaff after a while. 😉
@leander, Oh, I didn’t mean to be a word police, and I don’t have the right to grant permission on anything here, not that you need to ask permission to use the word!. Like I said, I was just spewing my own thoughts. I know Fogen isn’t insulting, it’s just highly cryptic in general. Use it if and when you like, just be prepared to give the long and drawn out explanation if asked by anyone else! 🙂
I already reflected on the “long and drawn out explanation”. A link would be fine. Although, I am not sure if I ever completely understood how it developed. For me it came out of the blue. I had to ask her:
Malisha got the idea from a Jewish phrase.
yimakh shemo
As you can see, it’s meant for someone truly, deeply evil; a Hitler, or a Charles Manson.
Hmm, when you put it that way, then that term really does seem inappropriate.
@wassointeresting said:
Same as you I reckon MOM & co’s huffing and puffing over the phone data is much ado about nothing, but I am also sceptical that GPS data, if existent and obtainable, will afford strict proof of both player’s routes that so many at the lounge think it will anyway. We have used mobile tracking for my OH’s learning impaired sons and the most common GPS used in most mobiles does not give the accuracy to determine precise locations. The GPS we adopted does track to a pinpoint (when outside) but only works on certain phones on which you instal the appropriate software and leave it pinging all the time. Of course the US is ahead of us but if this citation from a 2009 news item on the BBC is anything to go by it doesn’t look like US providers are obliged to pinpoint user locations anyway, only a general one:
A final thought, although I’m not sure if relative, IIRC the police, at least over here, haven’t found any missing kids via GPS, nor even found their phones for that matter as with the tragic case of the murdered 13 year old Millie Dowler whose mobile was active a week or so after she went missing forming the more sinister part of the recent press phone hacking enquiry over here, when were providers holding precise location data at all times you’d think they would be the first port of call, if only to ascertain where a kid’s mobile was last located.
@wassointeresting said:
It sounded logical but after researching I found Android phones only request you sign in with your Google account after 20 unsuccessful attempts to unlock the phone with your phone psswd. Seems either SPD (or maybe Tracey) just kept trying… and trying…
@wassointeresting said:
I too reckon that is the case because even my mobile, also antediluvian albeit not as much as yours methinks, lets me call 911 without unlocking and I can even call it if it’s just the sim card that’s blocked too.
whonoze or amsterdam,
How many RATL surveillance videos were released? I ask since I discovered, going through 2nd discovery again, that there are 9 cameras around the clubhouse – 5 outside and 4 inside – and I don’t think that many tapes were in discovery.
I’ll definitely have to look up synonyms for discover/discovery.
There were cameras at the main gate that didn’t function. Could these be the unaccounted for ones?
There were 9. West pool, west pool hall, east pool, east pool hall and front door outside.
Game room, kitchen, rear doors and lounge inside.
Thanks, amsterdam. I could only remember about four that you guys used for analysis, so I couldn’t figure out whether the others were also available.
@willisnewton – the nine referred only to those near the clubhouse. FDLE did note that the gate cameras weren’t in operation.
IIRC cameras on the outside of the clubhouse were not working either.
They were all working.
Great news, but then where are the tapes?
The videos are all on youtube and axiom. We didn’t use all the videos for analysis because there wasn’t much of interest on the other ones.
I don’t know about you guys, but for me there’s those few items that persistently bug me. One, which I’ve commented on before, is how Zimmerman was able to discern the color of Trayvon’s hoodie – and how he was able to tell the dispatcher the color without hesitation while giving the response, “Yeah, he looks black” when asked for race.
The other issue that bothers me is how so much evidence was not processed until FDLE got involved. On the evidence sheet, items are submitted and retrieved in late February and early March (the latest March 9), and all is quiet until the 19th and 20th; Serino submits his audio tapes on the 19th, and then the FDLE gets busy retrieving evidence for further lab work. It just seems strange that it wasn’t until then that clothing for both Trayvon and Zimmerman were checked for DNA/blood evidence and trace debris, and Trayvon’s for ballistics; and for DNA/blood evidence on Trayvon’s cell phone. Heck, the Skittles and flashlight weren’t turned in for urgent examination until July. It was FDLE who got consent from W13 to examine his I-Phone, and from Zimmerman to search his BlackBerry. Heck, even the crime scene measurements and sketch weren’t done until the 19th.
unitron once pointed out that it was Norm Wolfinger who asked for FDLE assistance on Thursday, March 15 (four days after which Gov. Scott sent the FDLE Commissioner a formal ‘demand’). But, that was two days after Serino submitted the capias. It seems to me that Serino really dropped the ball on pursuing more evidence tests; does anyone here have other ideas why these tests weren’t done by SPD?
“I don’t know about you guys, but for me there’s those few items that persistently bug me. One, which I’ve commented on before, is how Zimmerman was able to discern the color of Trayvon’s hoodie – and how he was able to tell the dispatcher the color without hesitation while giving the response, “Yeah, he looks black” when asked for race.”
I’m pretty sure he said “He looks black” without the “Yeah”, and one possible explanation is that at whatever the distance was he had seen dark face and hands, but it wasn’t until later and closer that he could confirm the darkness wasn’t an Hispanic/Latino or Mediterranean or Arabic thing, but what once would have been called Negro or Negroid.
“The other issue that bothers me is how so much evidence was not processed until FDLE got involved. On the evidence sheet, items are submitted and retrieved in late February and early March (the latest March 9), and all is quiet until the 19th and 20th; Serino submits his audio tapes on the 19th, and then the FDLE gets busy retrieving evidence for further lab work. It just seems strange that it wasn’t until then that clothing for both Trayvon and Zimmerman were checked for DNA/blood evidence and trace debris, and Trayvon’s for ballistics; and for DNA/blood evidence on Trayvon’s cell phone. Heck, the Skittles and flashlight weren’t turned in for urgent examination until July. It was FDLE who got consent from W13 to examine his I-Phone, and from Zimmerman to search his BlackBerry. Heck, even the crime scene measurements and sketch weren’t done until the 19th.
unitron once pointed out that it was Norm Wolfinger who asked for FDLE assistance on Thursday, March 15 (four days after which Gov. Scott sent the FDLE Commissioner a formal ‘demand’). But, that was two days after Serino submitted the capias. It seems to me that Serino really dropped the ball on pursuing more evidence tests; does anyone here have other ideas why these tests weren’t done by SPD?”
It may not be that processing the evidence was ignored until the FDLE was called in so much as it was that there were plenty of other cases in line in front of this one.
Admittedly I’m trying to avoid going back and wading through hundreds of pages of PDF files.
unitron
Why don’t you add some type of sun worshiper or tanning bed addict to the mix? One thing I find really strange. Why are e.g. the descendents of Europeans in South America considered a different race in the US than e.g. the same in North America. Europeans in Spain or Italy tend to be darker than in Finland. I wouldn’t be able to distinguish any of my South American friends visually from myself or friends of Italian or Spanish descent. Hint: I didn’t inherit the blue eyes and blond hair of my mother.
That said, our eyes somehow adopt to the darkness if we give them a little time. But strictly that he immediately says. He looks black, suggests to me he was aware he was reporting a black juvenile. Nevermind that he only said it when asked.
unitron, be so kind and use blockquote. These type of comments are really hard to read, in other words it’s not easy to figure out where comment starts and quote ends. I found myself hunting for the tiny quotation marks. A quote is really easy to do.
You simply substitute the square brackets below with an arrow:
[ the first with this
[blockquote] starts the quote, and [/blockquote] closes it.
The backslash is the standard to close every html tag.
If you prefer italics that’s “i”.( “b” for bold works the same way.)
[i] whatever you quote [/i]
I know perfectly well how to do blockquotes and a few other HTML stunts as well.
When I’m not sleep-deprived.
: – )
unitron
didn’t work WordPress swallowed some of the text.
substitute the square bracket symbols with the appropriate arrows on your keyboard. .
The “open bracket” with the arrow pointing left,
the “bracket close” with the arrow pointing right.
I agree that it was a resource issue, albeit based on the SPD’s expectation that GZ would not be arrested, that led them to not process the DNA evidence. If you think about it, DNA is usually meant to find “whodunnit”. Here, there wasn’t a question of “whodunnit”, just why. They had a mountain of other evidence (so they thought anyway) in terms of GZ’s NEN call, the witnesses and their 911 calls.
wassointeresting,
Yeah, that’s true. Except that indicates the SPD’s focus was on substantiating Zimmerman’s self-defense as opposed to investigating whether the claim matched all the evidence, which, of course, require blood/DNA/trace/ballistics on the clothing.
Concerning evidence procession, nemerinys, I could imagine since this means costs, there needs to be a consent from whoever higher up on the ladder, Lee, O’Connor? Would Randy Smith as Serino’s boss have been able to decide this on his own?
My basic assumption is that the SYG laws were done to save people from high costs for legal counsel and a lengthy law suit, but it was also done to save police and court administration money and funds. As far as I remember the issue surfaced on Jeralyn Merrits blog. Yes, indirectly
Please keep in mind that Florida’s Justifiable Use of Force law has several different sections of which SYG is only one, and immunity is different and entirely separate one, and that no matter who says SYG or how often, it is really the immunity provision that was at issue in Zimmerman not being charged initially when they couldn’t disprove self-defense right away, and that it is the immunity provision that would be raised by O’Mara in a separate hearing before trial if one were to occur.
SYG concerns the concept of “duty to retreat”, or a lack of that duty. depending on the laws in place, and it is the contention of the defense that it’s a moot point as there wasn’t, according to them, the possibility of retreat.
unitron
unitron, I read somewhere on a blog by a Florida attorney that the SYG law makes all the difference between earlier laws concerning justifiable force. The difference he stated was that it meant actually that police couldn’t arrest someone compared to earlier legal regulations.
I can try to find his article if you like.
As best I know, there is no SYG law, there is only the SYG provision which is part of the Justifiable Use of Force law.
http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0700-0799/0776/0776.html
776.013 (3) is the no duty to retreat part.
776.032 is the immunity part.
Even attorneys occasionally employ sloppiness in language.
unitron
Here it is: No, not from Florida, but it feels I must have the same argument by someone from Florida too.
I seem to be on moderation, concerning some of the questions by nemerinys above. So maybe this will not work.
But if you allow this is nitpicking. It is a frequently used coinage for the laws as propagated by ALEC and its supporters, one of which may well be JM.
It’s enormously comfortable to use the abbreviation instead of the “correct term” you suggest.
Should we be more careful than even lawyers in the use of our words?
Are you indicating the use of the word already suggests bias of the user?
Block quoting sometimes throws you in moderation,especially if you have other links with it. Don’t like it. That’s why the good ol’ fashioned quotes ” ” works every time, even if it’s hard on the eyes.
To twist an old phrase almost past the point of recognition, never attribute to bias that which can be explained by sloppiness and imprecision of language.
It could be that including more than one link in a single post will get that post hung up in moderation until it’s been deemed not to be spam.
unitron
(who is not licensed to practice law in the State of Florida, or any of the others, come to think of it, but reserves the right to criticize those who do)
Can you explain to me why this would be a case of imprecision of language? I had a very fascinating co-student in the little law I did in a special post grad program developed for people working in the field of the arts. What was fascinating about him was that he could use the contents of law or it’s application and meanings in everyday situations without ever using the correct terms of the laws, but he was rather swift and brilliant in his applications. Most of his examples were really hilarious. Isn’t that what law is about? You have to understand it’s applications in life?
Now, I am avoiding to ask you again, why do you think an alternative term denoting exactly the same law is imprecise? Could it have been coined to make people grasp its contents more easily? Or to get around strict legalese?
In any case the core of your argument would allow GZ both to know the law and it’s application and meaning, while denying he knew it before that night, or he could in fact state he did not know SYG while knowing it really. “Use of Deadly Force for Lawful Self-Defense”. Look were you can find that.
Now I am of course entering the more speculative field concerning intentions, a dangerously “imprecise” field. And while using GZ as an example I am very aware that I am addressing you.
What’s your problem?
Maybe if you put the term in quotes, unitron will leave it alone 🙂
WSI, I am trying to figure out how his mind works. But maybe I should give up. I haven’t moved much beyond the explanation that he may find the argument on the other side: media misrepresentation, somehow convincing. At least that is the core subject that keeps surfacing. I could of course put it in quotes. Problem is, I use them beyond for quotes mainly for showing that I distance myself from the usage, and I do not see any reason why I should distance myself for a usage coined for the ordinary folks. See what I mean? I would prefer to not use Fogen anymore. That would be a more easy decision. But I won’t move beyond GZ either. 😉
@leander, Well, in the link that you provided, SYG is written in quotes. In this case, it’s not used to distance yourself, it’s another way of saying “so-called”. As in, the so-called SYG law. because it’s not officially called a stand your ground law, so the quotes just means it’s an alias for ease of understanding by common non-lawyerly folk like us 🙂
http://www.husseinandwebber.com/florida-stand-your-ground-statute.html
WSI, want me to surrender? Teasing?
Venturing a guess: the term will make it as neologism into Webster in capitals soon.
In Wikipedia the law on these laws is titled: Stand Your Ground, the text only uses quotation marks in a context that refers to legal procedures. Makes sense. Attention this is not the real name of the law. As you suggest. 😉 Do I need this marker here?
Could I make people leave in despair if I do not use quotation marks? Would I be smirching Whonoze’s blog? Harm his reputation?
Is there a problem since Stand Your Ground, does not refer to “justified self-defense”, which sounds more benighn? I am not calling it “Shoot First”. How about Castle Doctrine? Do I need to put that in quotes too? “Defense of Habitation” Law? Since when do I not have to use quotes for that, or do I still need to do? The evidence on the web is diverse. Look this, sometimes in quotes, sometimes hypenated, sometime without quotes.
Look not even Jeralyn uses quotation marks in this text. Do I need to use legal terms more correctly than a lawyer?
Compromise no more “Fogen”. 😉 Now I have to shut down this laptop.
Oh no, now I’ve become the punctuation Nazi! (Oops, Godwin’s law invoked again). Use quotes, don’t use quotes, it doesn’t matter to me, it was just an off-handed/sarcastic suggestion to get unitron off your back. I’m not sure I know what this conversation was about when I jumped in, sorry. I’ll admit to not knowing much about SYG, in fact. Personally, I think we can call it the “shoot first if no one’s looking and avoid arrest if you’ve got buddies in law enforcement because they’ll believe you if you say ‘yes, sir’ and ‘yes, ‘ma’am’ nicely enough times” law/provision/subsection/clause or whatever.
I understood, you were ironic WSI. No need to get unitron off my back. You should read the latest motion against Benjamin Crump. Strictly I have the feeling it would be better if JM had passed on her 15 page paper, at least from what I read so far. I have to return there now, I am only on page 14 by now. Take care.
too fast: I tried to correct this: benign but instead pushed the reply button.
Gone, have a nice evening.
“Can you explain to me why this would be a case of imprecision of language?”
It’s the Justifiable Use of Force law.
Stand Your Ground is only one part of it.
It’s like calling the entire Motor Vehicle Code the License Plate law.
unitron
Let’s agree to disagree, I have the impression that the coinage seems to have been chosen since it expresses something central about the new justifiable defense laws.
leander22,
As with wassointeresting’ point, I agree with you that expenses may have had to be approved by higher ups – although I don’t see why an investigator can’t do as thorough a job as possible as part of his work. Since ballistics and nail scrapings were examined, I just don’t see how things such as DNA, etc. couldn’t be requested, or a search of both W13’s I-Phone and Zimmerman’s BlackBerry. If expenses were a sticking point, this only underlines what I wrote to wassointeresting; SPD seemed only interested in substantiating Zimmerman’s claim.
“SPD seemed only interested in substantiating Zimmerman’s claim.”
Yup. Imagine Serino’s frustration when he said “I’m working for you here.” in trying to get GZ to clear things up, only to have GZ just dig himself a bigger hole the more he talked.
Yes, I guess one can read the Norm Wolfinger letter that way, and I read it myself that way when I looked rather casually into the Wolfinger rumors. But strictly it could be read as some as some type of stalling tactic by others. On March 13, the press release wrote that it would take time. Obviously time is a factor in such investigations. Doesn’t Serino’s Capias suggest arrest somehow?
The Norm Wolfinger communications on the issue.
And the letter to FDLE unitron referred to.
He no doubt is trying to protect himself, what exactly changed his mind in these two days? I thought public pressure started only with Crump’s release of the DeeDee tape.
Correction: But strictly it could be read as some type of stalling tactic by people observing matters. On March 13, the press release noted that it would take time.
Well does not work either, a press release does not do anything. But I am not sure what to call the person: press secretary? OK, looking at matters, maybe press assistant would work.
Public pressure intensified with Crump’s release of the clips from the recording of Dee Dee. But public pressure was already building. I was following the case already when Crump released the recording by Dee Dee, and I’m pretty sure I had signed the petition on change.org already as well.
Wolfinger is a bit of an enigma. He refused to speak to the reporter from the NYT who wrote one of the most in-depth pieces filed on the case, and he quietly announced he wasn’t running for re-election after many terms in office in the wake of the appointment of Angela Corey.
Whatever action he took, I read that letter to the FDLE as a case of “spreading the stink around.” The time for investigations to BEGIN had already come and gone in my book.
Thanks, Willis, good argument. The thesis about media manipulations seems to make me really furious. Without the repetition of this meme accompanied with freely admitted racist comments and the censorship of Zimmerman- narrative-skeptics I may in fact not have paid much attention to the story. Or wouldn’t have been aware of it.
Now Pat Lang, while he supported Obama during both recent elections is clearly a conservative, a former man of military intelligence, with a deep prejudice against the left. “They” were the ones that spit on soldiers during the Vietnam war. How many actually did? It would have never entered my mind. We had reached some type of ideological cease fire before this case. I even managed to make an article on homosexuals and the military disappear. At least it felt at the time to be connected with some highly critical comments concerning his position, which felt economical at its core. No problem with don’t speak don’t tell, but arguments about the benefits partners could claim like the normal couple. I think one of the articles disappeared this time, without a comment. Now that something Jeralyn does not do.
I simply cannot wrap my head around someone like unitron that pretends to have a liberal outlook on the issue, but embraces this story as the most important issue. And he seems to do. Please note: I have no problem at all with media criticism. None at all. But the curious reduction happening in this case.
Quite obviously Trayvon’s fate is a story that found media and not the other way round.
Besides Serino already told GZ that it would raise a firestorm when he hardly knew that Tracy Martin had hired Benjamin Crump on February 29, 2012.
“…but embraces this story as the most important issue. ”
To what story do you specifically refer?
unitron
Unitron, I felt a bit guilty after my attacks on you here. But basically there is a nexus between media treatment of the story or “misrepresentation” and the position that GZ should not have been charged to start with. Pat Lang had precisely this position, it’s no accident that the case is filed under media. His argument in a nutshell was tthathe had trained soldiers who were Trayvon’s age, or basically was aware, I don’t remember correctly that they were very able to kill at that age. (Was Trayvon trained?) In his last private mail he wrote: You are naive if you don’t believe that some blacks hat whites. Now that is a collective-judgment-argument, if you ask me.
We already had a longer discussion on the issue, and maybe from having worked in the larger field of commercial media, if I understand correctly, everything looks commercial. Let’s agree to disagree on this issue too.
Besides there is a new motion that is very much about our pet theme. Peace.
This is just another indication that TM was under the mailshed while GZ paused by it and scoped him out before calling 311, as the security vid analysis shows. Marinade Dave’s night video shows that there are ceiling lights in the mail awning that illuminate that area quite well.
sorry, no idea how I managed to get here using the quote option.
I did not get here, good evening/night/morning Whonoze. 😉
whonoze, yes that’s what I thought. Zimmerman was asked if knew of the race (“white, black or Hispanic?”), then was immediately asked whether Zimmerman could describe what ‘the suspect’ was wearing. I thought it strange that he would say “he looks black,” and then follow with a response of the exact color – not just ‘dark’ but gray – of Trayvon’s hoodie.
It’s just one of those little things that I see as quite important, since it that blows yet another hole in Zimmerman’s account.
Ok; nemerinys, thanks, so she remembered an old Jewish tradition in this context. But Malisha is neither religious nor does she think in terms of enemies of the Jewish people, descendants of Amalek. And she did not call him Yimakh Shemo or Shemo. Personally I regret having mentioned bits and pieces of German history, admittedly I find the excessive use of Hitler or Nazi slightly nauseating. I wonder if I should feel guilty for the latest coinage of FogenHitler, which I don’t like.
That said, I have a slight idea why one maybe does not like to use the name of someone who is celebrated as some type of hero of the people. … feels slightly perverse.
Concerning evil, I could even imagine that up to the point he shot he never understood he killed a figment of his own imagination. But I am admittedly also slightly enamored with the idea that he may have shot to avoid troubles. Notice unison, that’s speculation. I can imagine a lot of other things.
Thanks, nemerinys. my problem is what exact model. Some blackberrys seem to not have GPS, besides you have to switch it on too. It does not seem to be in the standard setting.
As much as I would love to have GPS data, I am simply preparing myself for a possible disappointment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
Almost a quarter century later, it seems it still holds true.
unitron
Hi, unitron. Just in case your comment relates to what I wrote above about yimakh shemo…
My point is that it is a specific Jewish curse against extremely evil enemies of the Jewish people, such as Hitler and Stalin as well as ancient biblical foes. Not being Jewish, I extend it secularly to include criminal types such as Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, and other such serial killers, as well as people and groups like Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, the Khymer Rouge, and the various right-wing juntas in South America.
My second point, implied, was that, IMO, it’s silly to use any form of the curse against someone like Zimmerman; he hardly belongs in the same company as those mentioned above. And I don’t want those names forgotten; they personalize an evil we should always remember. I think the case encompasses more than ‘Justice for Trayvon;’ it opened a dialogue about SYG, the racial aspect of the dangers faced by black Americans (especially youth), and, the least important but the most entertaining, the opportunity for us armchair detectives to piece together the evidence and arrive at our own conclusions.
But you think that people here don’t deserve the respect to make parsing your comments more easy? 😉
OK, I’ll take one link out, then this should work:
leander22,
A timeline:
For two weeks after the incident, SPD officials met daily to discuss the investigation. Assistant State Attorney Jim Carter joined in during the second week. On March 12, the last meeting was held and, as Chief Lee later remarked to the press, there didn’t appear to be evidence to contradict self-defense. Yet, on the following day, the 13th, SPD sends the case to SAO/Norman Wolfinger with Serino’s capias requesting a manslaughter charge. On the same day, ASA Jim Carter goes to SPD and, to put it mildly, is more than a little vexed that Serino recommended charges. This is also the day when the NAACP requested the Department of Justice to review the case.
On March 15, Wolfinger requests FDLE assistance. The following day, the 16th, the NEN and 911 tapes were released to the public; did Wolfinger know the day before that Mayor Jeff Triplett had okay’d the release, and, guessing that the proverbial merde would hit the fan, then decide to contact FDLE?
On March 19 (IIRC), Crump publicizes the existence of ‘DeeDee’ and plays a snippet of tape of his interview with her. On the same day, the DoJ/FBI state that it will investigate the case, and Governor Rick Scott sends a memo to the FDLE Commissioner to request assistance; frankly, IMO, he was telling FDLE to take over the case.
On March 20, Wolfinger releases his first public statement, saying that the case warranted further investigation (which FDLE had already begun with great energy), and that he was calling for the grand jury to meet on April 2. On March 22, Wolfinger announces he’s stepping away from the case “to avoid conflict of interest,” (or the appearance thereof), and Gov. Scott appoints Angela Corey. Her own investigators begin their work on the case. On April 11, she announces the charge of Murder 2.
And, of course, during all of that, Chief Lee was suspended and then fired.
I think it’s clear that, to a point, the media frenzy after the tapes were released drove the subsequent events. But, since I very highly doubt Corey would make that charge – confidently enough without resorting to a grand jury – there was, also clearly, an amount of evidence gathered by the FDLE/SAO that shows the SPD failed to investigate as thoroughly as it should have done.
thanks, nemerinys, I always wonder what made you choose that aka. 😉
Team GZ filed a new motion against Benjamin Crump. I am still reading, but this caught my attention earlier on.
Later argument about BC haiving waived his privileges by publication in the media has this footnote:
1 A person who has a privilege against the disclosure of a confidential matter or communication waives the privilege if the person, or the person’s predecessor while holder of the privilege, voluntarily discloses or makes the communication when he or she does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy, or consents to disclosure of, any significant part of the matter of communication. This is not applicable when the disclosure is itself a privileged communication. Fla. Stat § 90.507
I guess I have to look a the complete statue in context.
This is an interesting statement too:
Well, if so why not dispose Matt Gutman and colleague?
Slaves were brought (in the staggering quantities necessary for the work to be done exploiting the natural resources in order to amass and extract staggering amounts of wealth) to the new world from Africa.
It’s not like the Europeans could claim that it was a case of enslave or be enslaved.
There wasn’t the faintest hint of self-defense or national defense about it.
It’s been theorized that the whole demonization of “the Negro race” came about in order to avoid having to consider the question of them being fellow human beings.
Easier to just dehumanize them instead. So the process began of labeling them as not quite human, as “other”.
And if one is going to demonize and dehumanize, the last thing one is going to do is respect the right of “one of them” to their own individual name.
unitron
Don’t forget this came on top of a few centuries of European colonisation , both in Africa and in Asia, in which the Europeans always felt superior and thought of the colonised peoples as “savages”. Sometimes they treated them well, in a patriarchal and patronisng way, usually on condition they started to wear western clothes and took some interest in one shape or another of Christianity. Other times they treated them brutally. Certainly dispossessed them of any lands they may have found useful for themselves.
Plantations that were established in colonies were run with white masters and local native workers, in conditions not much different from slavery. So taking some of these people to the New World as slaves was just a matter of importing the existing labouring classes. The Africans in South America were taken there as slaves, too, to work on plantations and in mines, especially where the natives were nomadic tribes who could easily disappear into the jungles to avoid being rounded up for such work. (In North America they were just too good as warriors).
Many slaves were found and sold in Africa by other Africans, most likely those from traditionally enemy tribes. This was encouraged by colonial administrations, which would favour (and arm) a stronger tribe to keep down “trouble” from the weaker. But in Africa, as in Europe 2000 years earlier, it was normal to make slaves out of any prisoners of war who survived the battle. While other things were equal (ie one side didn’t have guns) after some time the losing tribe could turn the tables, win a battle and make slaves of the former victors/slave owners.
So the slaves in America were “savages” to begin with, were property because they’d been bought for money, and could not be given any rights lest they revert to tradition and try turning the tables by physically getting the upper hand. It would have been easy to demonise them, as they didn’t behave “normal” ie kept trying to run away, fight back, sabotage work and generally react as expected to being treated as animals. Far easier to blame this on their “real nature” than on how they were being treated. Besides their souls were damned already anyway, as they were not Christians; there may have been doubts expressed even that they possessed souls ( as there was at one time re women).
Today the strongest believers in the supremacy of being white are those who seem the most inferior.
In colonial times, European supremacy was based on science and education, on organised civilisation (in the strict sense of the word, city-dweller), on sufficient wealth thus created to afford an administrative class, and the military might resulting from these factors.
Today’s supremacists seem to eschew science, avoid education, resent the collective administrative effort, and at best try to hold on to their own little personal “military might” in the form of 2nd Amendment rights. Having nothing to be objectively superior about, they try to compensate by putting down others who are different to look at — ignoring that they may be as good as, or better than, the old Europeans were, in the fields which back then made them the superiors.
In the USA in particular, it “helped” that many of the early settlers were from sects or religions which were extreme enough to cause them to be outcasts from their homelands, giving them the righteous “us against them” mentality of persecuted minorities . In a new land, no longer persecuted themselves, they were able to turn this experience around to be the ones on top, “equality” not being in their life experience. This was justified in part by the slaves being (possibly soul-less) non-Christians. (Part of the early discrimination against Italian and Irish immigrants was the fact that they were Catholics, one of the original “persecutors” back in Europe).
@WSI
EXTRA !! EXTRA!!!
Just in Excerpt from NBC motion…….
Haven’t read it yet
Still have about 700 emails to go……
Click to access defendants-motion-to-stay-proceedings.pdf
Thanks Loree, I briefly, skimmed the NBC’s motion to stay the lawsuit by Zimmerman. At the heart of their defense I think is that when they reported GZ’s voice saying “He looks like he’s up to no good….” “He looks black”, these two statements were shown on separate screens and there’s an ellipse (the dot dot dot) after the first statement, indicating that the recording was not continuous. (pages 15-16).
Page 19 is very interesting………. NBC says GZ can get depositions and other evidence really easily for a civil trial, that for the murder trial he has to get the court’s permission for. As many of the witnesses are the same ones, NBC suspects the case against them is a ruse to get the witnesses more easily.
Sneaky………..
Yes very sneaky (great descriptor)… and sagacious, astute, shrewd, wily and canny… congrats to NBC’s lawyers!
@Willis
I need your expertise, on page 34 of 262, the photo of Trayvon’s shirt shows a dark line from the bullet wound going down near the end of the shirt.
Click to access FDLE-Reports_R.pdf
On other photos of the undershirt there is no line.
http ://gawker.com/5925458/first-photo-of-trayvon-martins-hoodie-released-with-other-evidence
http ://thegrio.com/2012/07/12/trayvon-martins-hoodie-among-new-pieces-of-evidence-released-in-zimmerman-case/#s:bloody-shirt
http ://www.businessinsider.com/trayvon-martin-hoodie-photos-2012-7?op=1
The above link, I think has the clearest photos.
Could you give me your opinion on why the document dump photo what appears to be a blood line coming from the bullet hole and the other photos don’t.
TIA
quick answer – these aren’t photos. they are b+w zerox copies of color photos, and they look like poor copies at that. The first thing any self-respecting photo analyst would say is, “show me the originals and I’ll be willing to give you an opinion on what we are looking at here.”
But one guess might be that the photos are taken with different light sources. Body fluids of all kinds reveal differently to varied aspects of the spectrum of light.
If’ you watch any “police procedural” television shows, you might say what real forensics people always say when they watch these shows, which is, “why don’t these people ever just turn the lights on when they come into a house? What’s with the flashlights all the time, and why does their lab look like a Miami disco, and how do they get test results back so fast on a government budget?” Or, you might notice that occasionally when they look for evidence they shine a purple light around and come up with clues. Usually sperm… but hey, sex sells. Blood might do the same thing, or sweat. I’m no pathologist. (Ask your doctor, or your mother. Some side effect may occur.)
Another explanation might be that one is a photo of the inside of the shirt and the other is a picture of the outside. Without captions, who can tell?
Interesting find, however. It sure looks like a liquid stain to me. Like one of a victim who was standing upright at the time, too judging from gravity.
@Willis
Got it. Bad photos.
>>>If’ you watch any “police procedural” television shows, you might say what real forensics people always say when they watch these shows, which is, “why don’t these people ever just turn the lights on when they come into a house? What’s with the flashlights all the time, and why does their lab look like a Miami disco, and how do they get test results back so fast on a government budget?”
OMG YES!!!
>>>Interesting find, however. It sure looks like a liquid stain to me. Like one of a victim who was standing upright at the time, too judging from gravity.
Exactly.
I was watching a crazy response video to LLMPapa at the Lounge. Around 3:39 in the video, the young man who gets shot with a bullet proof vest on (stupid thing to do) the blood trail is the same in the picture. If you open two tabs/windows the blood trail is almost the same in the photo. The person was shot standing upright.
http ://trayvon.axiomamnesia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/FDLE-Reports_R.pdf
What looks like a blood trail on that shirt may just be a shadow. It’s too unclear to tell for certain. But take a look at the photo on page 35, where areas of interest are circled and lettered. There are similar shadows seen behind the folds of clothing in that one.
The copies of photos on 38 and 39 give the appearance of being out of focus. I think these may be some kind of “xray” type picture made using a special light of some sort. They are very odd looking.
Yes, I see the letters on the shirt, but no trail.
Hmmm could be just a shadow.
Very odd.
@Blushedbrown
As willisnewton notes, apart from the fact they are really bad photocopies the photo you refer to looks like the photographic result of some kind of forensic testing using a special light. I say this because other photocopies from discovery show no sign of a “black” blood trail on the front of Trayvon’s undershirt, at least on the outside, something impossible if you consider that reprography interprets red as black, just as it interprets cyan as invisible, both colours used in the pre-digital era by graphic artists for layouts and mark ups, so, IMO, if such a trail existed it would have to be noticeable on all undershirt photos of the front not just one.
errata, please read:
“…if such a trail visible to the human eye existed…”
Listen here at 6:15 forward to Witness 11 (aka HOA lady, caller #2 who’s 911 call captured the gunshot) interview with FDLE responding to a question about who was appointed to the neighborhood watch: After saying she knew it was George ZImmerman, she then says “I’m not sure who else is on there with him, I know there was a man at the last meeting, when the police department came after this happened, he said he was on it, I haven’t seen a list of all who’s on it.”
http://trayvon.axiomamnesia.com/people/witnesses/witness-11-files-trayvon-martin-george-zimmerman-case/
I am in no way bringing this up because of a conspiracy theory. I just don’t remember anyone saying much about who else was on the watch. Seemed like it was pretty much a one man show. Does anyone know if this other man she’s referring to may be Taaffe (although I keep reading that he was the “former captain”, but this HOA lady made it seem like they never had one until GZ came along) or some other person. Whoever this person is, I think should be at least a witness to testify to what the formal or informal setup of the watch and to GZ’s normal patrolling routine or whatever.
Strange place for a fold to be, but there’s a similar black line on the sleeve and another to the right of the picture. It almost looks like they photocopied the actual shirt, not a photo of it.
Certainly if I were the defence I’d be demanding photogrpaphs; these photocopies are worse than useless as evidence.
The defense doesn’t want a jury to see a boy’s sized t-shirt with a hollow point 9mm hole blasted in it!
Would it be to much to ask for the garments to be laid flat and photographed again. Geez, one would think the examiner of the evidence would have done a better job.
Remember, they gave the defense the Wagner photo, and only released the bad photocopy to the public as part of the discovery .pdf. The defense released the actual photo later. I’d guess they have the actual photos of the clothes too.
I remember vaguely when Mr. O’Mara in some motion mentioned receiving data regarding TM’s phone, that the FDLE had managed to create a hand-drawn map. We had all thought (at least I did) that he was talking about a map drawn up from the GPS data. Could this “map” be the pattern drawn on the last page here? It’s indicated as the “lock pattern”. So all it is is the code to the phone! Silly lawyers!
Click to access extraction_report.pdf
That’s the suggested pattern for GZ to pace in his prison cell. Lol
I think you might be right about that “hand drawn map” inquiry. What a bunch of horse-hockey to claim the FDLE is withholding evidence. This is third grade level lawyering, and just another attempt to try the case in public where innuendo and rumor have weight and not in court where facts are what matter.
What a bunch of incompetents! Your’re right, the code typed in the box titled “Device Information” under the sub heading “value”, (7-5-3-6-8-4-2) is exactly what you get by following the arrows drawn on the back!
They are NOT incompetent. They are rank opportunists who know that their monetary supporters are incompetents. Treepers see diagrams like this as “proof” travon “doubed back” because that’s what they want to see. Then they see MOM as “smart” and the FDLE as “evil,” and then they smoke some more banana peels or whatever it is that makes them so stupid.
I actually think MO’M is fairly good at interpreting how these morons think. It’s a skill. He also has the MSM’s number on speed dial. He plays them the same way.
Ha! Maybe the pattern reflects the defense strategy which ends up having them chase their own tails in a loop de loop fashion?
Thanks for your explanation. I hadn’t thought of it like that, but then it leaves me perplexed as to what you meant by “third grade level lawyering” or what WSI meant by “silly lawyers” because from your explanation MOM & Co appear to be doing a pretty good job at getting the attention they want (both for fund raising and for tainting the jury pool), which as they are obliged to use every LEGAL effort to defend a client, and so far the judge hasn’t reined them in, it could be said they are top notch defence lawyers!
Jokes apart, I find it difficult from a UK perspective to get my head around these Machiavellian tactics by lawyers over there as we don’t have any of the media circus surrounding criminal cases here so they would serve nothing and be subject to Contempt of Court charges anyway. As our system sees it, in order to protect the presumption of innocence, even without specific restrictions imposed by the judge (fairly common), from the police investigation, through arrest and charge, right up to the start of trial, there are tight reporting restrictions on any information that could even indirectly taint the jury pool, witnesses, etc., and only once a trial starts, and only when the jury is physically seated in court, and only if the judge has not imposed added restrictions, is the press allowed to report in full to comply with the principles of open justice. And we don’t get to study the evidence either!
Pardon my ignorance, but who or what is/are MSM ?
@gbrbsb: you are correct that counsel are not being restrained by Judge Nelson, and please understand, i do not make any effort here to justify the media circus, but i do want to point out that Florida is different from other US states in that in Florida there are “sunshine laws” that are supposed to provide for transparency in government. Much of what is taking place in this case would be prohibited in other states. I do think that the defense side has more than exploited “transparency” and has crossed the line- but it only matters what Judge Nelson thinks. It seems that her standard is whether they will be able to seat an unbiased jury, and to date, she believes that unbiased jury selection will be possible. Also. this is an early case in the use/exploitation of social media, such as counsel having a blog on the case and inter-acting with the treehouse, etc., and there are few, if any, rules to follow (relating to social media). I am not in Florida, and to me, like you, it seems defense counsel tactics do cross the line.
I joke about the defense really as a commentary on the case they were dealt and the defendant they have. I actually don’t have any background knowledge to evaluate their legal expertise, and it was my general impression that O’Mara is highly regarded. But no matter if you’re a chef in a 5 star restaurant, it’s still gonna be hard to make a fillet mignon dinner if you’re handed rotten ground beef. So what to do? Make it meatloaf and hope it can pass for steak?
In this forum, MSM = MainStream Media (I come from a science/health background, and was previously used to reading it as Males who have Sex with Males.)
@wassointeresting
Hmmm… don’t you just adore filet mignon!… but I do get you, silk purse out of a sow’s ear sort of thing, and MOM sure ain’t got no silk rather an old bit of sacking full of weave holes!
@bgesq said:
Very interesting, I did’t realise Florida was that different but now I think of it the few cases I tried to follow were all Floridian.
Yes, and haven’t they from my side of the pond, but then I suppose it’s all down to swings and roundabouts, so I am not here trying to judge merely denote differences. I don’t even presume to say what is best as it can be very secretive over here with so many restrictions and we have had at least our fair share of wrongful convictions, many due to police corruption or dodgy experts. Then you have the other problem, like a 2 years ago when there was a gag order prohibiting publish the name of a baby victim referred to here as “Baby P” and the name of the accused but they had a hell of a job stopping
Malisha, I again say I am sorry for the misunderstanding. I really only read the first lines of your reply which I wrongly took to de tarring me as a troll. I am mortified and feel terrible. Of course you do not have to pardon my big mistake but I am at present not even sure you have seen my appology and
Just dug up the defense’s motion to continue. On page 11, they stated that there’s a map (doesn’t say it was “hand-drawn”, I was mistaken about that) generated by the FDLE in March and April of 2012 that shows the whereabouts of TM’s phone on Feb 26. So if they weren’t able to get into the phone until recently by sending it to CellBrite, then that map they’re talking about must be from the phone company or phone towers or whatever and not from GPS data. I’m no expert, but am I correct in thinking that “ping logs” (hate using that term, conjures up memories of my treeper lurking days) would not be as accurate as GPS data from the phone? In any case, there should still be some “map” out there, but what value it has is still in question.
Click to access SKMBT_363-V13020111410.pdf
MSM = Mainstream media, ie the corporate owned, shortsighted underfunded media where shoddy journalism and info-tainment is the norm.
Actually, here, as in the UK, that description applies more to the tabloid media, which is generally not included in the MSM category. However, MSM is is an essentially derogatory term, inferring that some alternative – be it the tabs, a particular online source, or partisan opinion journal – is a more honest source of Truth. For instance, Fox news (which is as corporate as you can get) does not consider itself MSM, since, you know, they’re “fair and balanced.” (barf). Tea Party conservatives often morph the phrase to “Lame Stream Media.” Basically, MSM is any organization with a mass audience the speaker finds somehow inadequate
I disagree about the MSM being anything the speaker doesn’t like. I’m using the term to differentiate between news sources that have journalistic standards that are maintained and ones that allow corporate interests to step on these ethics and dilute the quality. On top of all this bias, there is also a clear economic squeeze on print media like newspapers and magazines that is having a serious effect on the level and quantity of investigative journalism that is available.
And the compare-and-contrast that maters to me is not CNN vs MSNBC vs FOX news – to me the similarities outweigh the differences for the most part when it comes to cable tv news. I’m talking about the level of actual empirical truth one gets from blogs vs paid media in general.
The nuclear disaster at Fukashima, the Macondo well Gulf oil spill, the recent wikileaks scandal related to pentagon papers, etc all have shown me that bloggers get more of the true story teased out of the press releases, spokesperson spin and original documents than the MSM does, simply because we put in the time and peer-review one another’s work.
Your defintiion is prescriptive, how you think the term should be used. Mine is descriptive, reflecting how the term is used in actual practice. By pretty much anyone’s definition the three traditional broadcast networks and the NYT are MSM. But online media are hardly free from shoddy journalism, info-tainment, spin, and corporate control for that matter (HuffPo, for example). If you took an opinion poll and asked “Name a significant person in news who is outside the mainstream media” I would guess the most oft named figure would be Rush Limbaugh or Matt Drudge.
Let’s get even more descriptive then. Who has “got it right” in the Trayvon Martin case?
‘Fraid if you want an answer to that before the trial, I’m gonna have to bury a note for my future self to find when I’ve invented a time machine because I will have been sick of what society has devolved into. I’ll tell myself on my way back to simpler times (after indoor plumbing was commonplace, but before the NRA took hold of the country) and make a stop off here in 2013 to drop you a line about what future historians will have decided on this case.
When you get that time machine working, if it’ll let you do large scale changes in the time line, stop off as Trayvon’s leaving the house to head for the 7-Eleven and take him by and introduce him to George who won’t have left on his grocery run yet.
Otherwise, if you can’t actively meddle, set up infrared video recording devices at all the areas of interest.
unitron
Nope, can’t meddle. I’m enough of a Trekkie to know that you can’t mess with timelines. Given his track record of patrolling, GZ would end up shooting somebody else but maybe not before spawning children, and well with that gene pool, Pope Francis help us. Maybe I could switch out the bullets in his gun for blanks and also set up the infrared cameras. That way, he’ll get in the fight, TM would be alive to tell the cops, hey, this jerk followed me home and tried to kill me! GZ will get arrested for assault, discharging a weapon or whatever, Shellie would get so sick of him and leave. No kids.
How do you know you can’t mess with timelines until you try?
It’s not like we have documentation of people trying and failing (or of people trying and succeeding, for that matter).
Perhaps you actually had the means to time travel and successfully meddle until you went back and prevented yourself from ever being able to acquire those means in the first place, in which case how would you ever know?
unitron
(who went back in time to prevent himself from saying anything here about steering your beliefs by having gone back even further in time and prevented the “not ever meeting” of a couple of Gene Rodenberry’s great-grandparents that would have happened, or perhaps not happened, otherwise)
???HUH????
Whatcha talking about Uni? (pseudonym capitalized and shortened ON PURPOSE! :> )
Whenever there’s an actual danger of someone developing time travel technology, the timeline protects itself by distracting them with Trek trivia and they never get their thoughts organized sufficiently to do the actual inventing.
unitron
(who wishes to point out that someone else was first to mention time travel)
Oh my, I dig your explanations unitron. I think the last one that left me on the floor was your explanation to PiranhaMom over in the Lounge who thought “new keyboard please” meant you were criticizing her typing skills, when in actuality you had to explain that:
*** Was shortened version of long standing internet meme “You owe me a new keyboard”, as in “I found what you posted so funny that the instantaneous and overwhelming laughter it brought on caused the beverage which I was consuming at the time to explode from my mouth and nose all over my keyboard, necessitating its replacement.”.***
WSI (who thought that was funny, beyond the overly precise explanation, because it’s so classic that people think your comments are always critical or sardonic Dennis Miller style humor, and get thrown for a loop when you go light-hearted.)
LMBO
@WSI
>>>Aw shucks, now I’m blushed (but not brown, more like a tinge of pink over my normally sickly pale color, don’t get out much)
You crack me up WSI !!!
Whonoze, I have just made a complete f**k up… and although it’s the first time on your blog at the lounge I have unfortunately done it a few times* (*much too embarrassed to admit to exactly how many). The problem: I just posted a reply to WSI which I forgot included cut and pastes of replies I was drafting to others even including an apology for Malisha at the lounge. Either you delete my reply and I will start again or you let it stand as proof of my forgetfulness or stupidity or both… I wonder why this always happen to me when I have had a glass of wine!
@gbrbsb
There is no stupidity about you. Have another glass of wine. 🙂
I have… to drown my sorrows!
@gbrbsb
It will get better, I promise.
I’ll believe you after the fourth!
@gbrsb
Well damn, that’s the whole bottle! (give or take a 1/2 cup) 🙂
Oh, ok. Well maybe after the third the embarrassment will have mellowed enough !
Good enough, after the third glass it should do the trick. . 🙂
I forget a letter in your name, ughhhh
That’s ok, I fully understand. As I am sure you have by now realised I get the same after a glass of wine or two!
@gbrbsb
Enjoy!! I love Bugs Bunny!!
Ugh, that’s the last time that I’ll attempt emoticons other than a smiley face.
above was supposed to mean “confused” and :> was supposed to mean “smug”.
Re: “who has got it right in the case so far?”
Judge Lester, for one.
Serge F. Kovaleski of the NYT.
Judge Nelson, so far.
Who else? IMO the good folks from bcclist who agree GZ lied to the SPD and chased Trayvon Martin down TTL with his car after trolling the mail kiosk.
Re: “who has got it right in the case so far?”
I thought the question was referring to who in the media has got the case right so far. Few if any. However, I believe Joy-Ann Reid very early on asked some very good questions that we’re still trying to figure out. And she pondered the pursuit of TM by GZ in his truck down TTL (see her video in this report)
Journalists can ask questions but most often they simply report the “facts” as they get them. For this reason they have not generally done a good job finding the truth in this case. Keep in mind the prosecution has every reason to shield it’s strategy from the defense while the defense has an obvious strategy in play to sow doubt and confusion onto the public.
Bloggers on the other hand aren’t afraid to speculate wildly but some care to back up their theories with evidence. “Garbage in/ garbage out” theories fall by the wayside and plausible and convincing ones rise to the top.
I’m still seeing some “garbage in/conspiracy theories out” action going on.
unitron
So am I, unitron….. but they continue to be shot down easily.
Here’s a related question: did detective Doris Singleton “get it right?” IMO she played good cop/ good cop with Serino in order to keep George making (up) statements without a lawyer present
Her tactic was not to openly confront GZ with his obvious inconsistencies and contradictions so much as to simply get them all on record.
She could have pushed harder, but didn’t in the third / final questioning session. But clearly she called him out on his lies regarding his car position when Trayvon passed him. Yet she could have pushed him harder as could Serino. Why didn’t they?
IMO Serino had a game plan, and that was to keep George talking without a lawyer. Remember that GZ was still calling Serino all the way up until his arrest.
So, did Doris “get it right?” or should she have been “bad cop” and confronted George more hoping for a “Perry Mason” style breakdown and confession?
Orlando Sentinel reporting that MoM is seeking again to depose Crump, now that “dee dee lied” about hospital visit.
One can’t blame them for trying.
No word yet to say if the defense has done what the judge wanted, which was for them to depose w8 already.
It’s worth noting that the courthouse doesn’t yet have the actual motion posted yet, which seems to signal that the Orlando Sentinel is reporting the news based on a tip from the defense. And the Associated Press is reporting thusly:
“The new evidence includes an admission by prosecutors that the teen lied when she said she had been so distraught over Martin’s death that she was hospitalized and couldn’t attend his funeral.”
To my knowledge, the prosecution made no such admission. Perhaps “lamestream media” isn’t so far off sometimes.
The story says “The new motion is based on a recent disclosure that the witness falsely claimed she was hospitalized after the shooting. The defense now argues that her credibility is in question, so learning what Crump knows is all the more important”.
Don’t they realise that “what Crump knows” is 110% hearsay? therefore totally inadmissible anyway?
And what part of NO don’t they understand?
“Don’t they realise that “what Crump knows” is 110% hearsay?”
Would that include his accusation that Chief Lee and Wolfinger met the night of the shooting and conspired in a coverup? That they somehow concealed evidence?
unitron
What the public knows is that Crump accused the two of meeting in secret, or whatever his exact accusation was. Unitronis right that this accusation is hearsay and has no place in the courtroom.
Oddly enough however both Lee and Wolfinger vehemently denied such a meeting took place but Wolfinger has refused to speak to the press, quietly announced his retirement and Lee was driven from office by political pressure.
Whether this issue has any bearing on what should be allowed in a courtroom remains an open question in my opinion. If Crump had proof or a witness he has not produced it. His accusation is hearsay. But Wolfinger’s behavior draws attention to himself. Perhaps the DoJ investigated this angle and perhaps they didn’t . We have no evidence whatsoever that they did investigate the actions of the SPD and Norm Wolfinger at all.
Sanford city council members who backed Lee kept him on the city payroll for months insisting that the DoJ investigation would “clear him of any wrongdoing” yet ultimately he was fired from his job. We don’t know I there was a connection between this firing and any federal investigation or not.
We do know that Lee was at the crime scene that night and that Wolfinger’s office was contacted. This is all SOP. I’m very curious to know more but the prosecution most likely is NOT interested in the angle involving “police missteps” of any potential kind as this would just sow doubt onto their findings in other areas. The defense likewise will probably ignore this issue because they don’t know the answer to the question “what proof exists of a conspiracy between Wolfinger and Lee?” even if the answer is likely none.
So in the end two elected officials at the heart of this case escape scrutiny and accountability for their actions or if you assume they are innocent, leave their jobs with tarnished reputations due to this unanswered unproven accusation. Either way I as a bystander would prefer the question be answered to everyone’s satisfaction by a credible outside investigation.
But unless the answer has a bearing on proving the innocence or guilt of GZ I agree it doesn’t belong in the case before the bench, just as I believe the judge was right in telling the defense to go ahead and depose W8 before demanding access to a lawyer who worked as an advocate for the victims family.
Was Crump there?
If he was told by someone, they could ask that someone. If they saw Lee and Wolflnger there, THAT would be actual evidence. But not relevant to this case at all. Certainly not O’Mara’s job to find out, one way or another.
If evidence was concealed, and that led to GZ not being charged, that is an issue of corruption. It has nothing to do with defending this particular case, as any concealed evidence has since been brought to light and resulted in the charge.
Anything Crump said to or heard from DeeDee is hearsay and irrelevant, just as much as anything I said to anybody about this case is.
off topic: Jeralyn Merrit is adding a pay site to her “talk left” empire. This is the new model for internet monetization of blog content. The advertising model is failing according to most reports. Noted columnists who have a following such as Andrew Sullivan have moved to a pay site/ subscription model in recent months and are reporting great success. “Sully” as his followers sometimes call him reportedly is making six figure sums now, which is good news for some and likely fair compensation for the audience they draw.
Print media is dying. Those who have a loyal following deserve compensation. I don’t know what sort of traffic Jeralyn Merrit might draw to a subscription site, but it will be interesting to see if her venture succeeds or fails. Like it or not, this is one future for journalism in general, not that I’d call what she does actual journalism.
Magazines such as The Atlantic as I understand it are run by foundations and are not strictly for-profit enterprises. That’s another potential model to look to in the future.
If anyone has an interest in this overall topic, I’d recommend “Page One,” a recent feature length documentary about the daily business of the New York Times shot over a year that included the Wikileaks scandal and the moving of the NYT content behind a soft pay-wall.
The public in a democratic society deserves a fourth estate, investigative journalists and the apparatus to support all this where the workers make a living wage for what they do. Whether we will get this or not is still an open question.
a side note: one wonders if Jeralyn Merrit would be so quick to ban users if they were paying customers. I guess we will see.
My guess is that JM won’t be asking people to pay to post, but merely to gain access to her extended pearls of wisdom (or as I like to call it, bullshit). I wouldn’t be surprised if her ‘premium’ pages don’t have comment threads. But if they do, since any single subscription isn’t going to make or break her bank account, and few people are going to pay for access just to troll her (or as i like to call it, apply some sense to the discussion), I’m sure if it comes to a choice, she’ll choose her exercise of iron fist authority over mere money.
Whonoze, saw your post at FL about Crump and I agree! I re listen to his recording over at axiom and it is almost impossible to hear but at the end he asks her about her not coming to wake. She mumbles and he repeats question . She says she was in shock, repeats I was in shock then says her mom came over. Guess that wasn’t enough for him cause he then asks ” so did you have to go to the hospital?” She mumbles sort of a yeh.and then HE says ” so you had to go to the hospital”? She mumbles sort of a yeh again.
TM’s parents came to him depending on him and beyond despondent in their grief and lack of arrest of their son’t murderer.My feeling is he wanted to pump up DD’s emotional devastation beyond what she told him and embellished her words. She corrected him but just let this slid.
I don’t trust lawyers and I think he has hurt this poor kid and TM’s grieving parents when it was not necessary.
Oops slide not slid
DD replies with the same manner to BDLR when he asks stupid questions (two options in one breath) or has pre-empted her reply… “yeah”, “you could say that”, etc. A lot of kids are brought up not to contradict elders or those in a position of authority and neither Crump nor BDLR were patient or clever interviewers. Great shame, as I think both could have missed a lot because each time DD does manages in spite of them to get going the words come tumbling out recounting it all very vividly which IMO goes towards her credibility.
BdlR’s session with DeeDee is the worst example of interviewing I have ever encountered, and I’ve heard hundreds of interviews conducted by inexperienced college undergrads in documentary or broadcast journalism classes. Awful from beginning to end.
“BdlR’s session with DeeDee is the worst example of interviewing I have ever encountered…”
Oh, I don’t know, I thought Crump’s was similarly craptacular.
: – )
unitron
Not even close. Crump’s interviewing skills were mediocre, but he took more time, actually listened to DeeDee on occasion, and asked her to repeat things several times for clarification (and to get good sound bites for Gutman). BdlR ran through his session like a bull in a china shop, didn’t listen to DeeDee at all, interrupted her, rushed her, never asked for restatement or clarification. I’m not talking about what they asked about, but how they interacted with the interview subject. Crump: C. BdlR: F.
As a comparison, I think John Bachelor of the FDLE who did many (most?) of the interviews with the witnesses is an excellent example of an interviewer. He has this calm voice, speaks very deliberately and lets the witness take his/her time.
BDlR may have felt he was hamstrung by what Crump had already asked. He wanted the witness to appear consistent so he followed Crump’s lead. They got the same general results, which does indeed help to make Dee Dee appear credible.
Sadly, BDlR seems to have missed the specific detail of the car-to-pedestrian chase as he didn’t ask any specific questions about it. This worries me greatly as it can be surmised that the investigators had not yet tried to carefully compare the NEN recording with GZ’s contradictory and inconsistent statements to SPD, nor taken interest in the map GZ marked with an initial position indicated at the first corner of TTL, by the mail boxes (which he quickly crossed out, but failed to adequately explain how his new markings made sense).
BDLR’s interview may have been lacking in depth for a reason. The prosecution may be planning a simplified attack using the “profiled, pursued and killed” outline he’s hinted at in preliminary hearings. Perhaps they don’t want to rely too much on Dee Dee’s testimony and so didn’t question her strongly on the timing and exact meaning of her phrases like “from the back” and “right by,” etc since they only want to keep things in a general realm anyway.
We don’t know. But many things are possible… (you fill in the rest.)
FYI, the defense had already deposed DeeDee and TM’s family last week.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57575336-504083/trayvon-martin-case-zimmermans-defense-team-deposes-victims-girlfriend-and-family-report-says/
And note that the depositions of DeeDee and TM’s family were video recorded. I didn’t see any of the other witness’ notice of depositions saying that they would be videoed
http://www.gzlegalcase.com/index.php/court-documents/124-notices-of-taking-deposition2
Video recorded? I know… maybe MOM & Co are hoping to nail them in a video recorded lie !!!
They’re going to claim the DVD was blank, could the interview be done again please?
(**sarcasm**) Well, if the video doesn’t show DeeDee’s interactions with the defense from the moment she walks in that door, then the prosecution should subpeona everyone in the room to piece together every syllable uttered from her and to her. And by gosh, if she gets up to go to the bathroom, that trip better be recorded too lest she be influenced by any shady characters along the way, eh?
I just wonder what effect a video recorder would have on DeeDee’s nerves. Wouldn’t be surprised if they hire a body language “expert” to review her deposition.
Hell sure they are going to go over the vid time after time after time so as to not miss the teeniest weeniest thing they can pull DD up on because in their last motion they stated she is THE most important witness for the prosecution so they will try whatever it takes to impeach her… like you say, even to the extent of hiring a body language “expert”.
Using a video camera to depose Dee Dee is a form of intimidation, since she is obviously worried about concealing her identity. If her identity becomes public it’s going to be on the defense to explain how the secret got out.
I have a general legal question: WIll this deposition (and those others that the defense has taken) become part of the public record, and if so when?
Obviously, I know nothing about legal stuff, but I would think that first the defense has to decide which depositions that they will use in court (that is, just because they took someone’s deposition, doesn’t mean that it’s automatically public), then they will have to submit a notice of reciprocal discovery on those depositions. I doubt there’s a time limit between the time of taking the deposition and giving the notice of reciprocal discovery, but I thought there was a general agreement between the prosecution and defense that they would give each other about a month to review discovery provided by the other party before it’s released to the public. Given that the trial’s in june, I would guess that it’s gotta be submitted about a month before??? Again, just shooting crap outta the top of my head.
Random folks on FL are saying the defense is under no obligation to share depositions – that they are NOT discovery. But if they choose they can share this information with the public.
This is not an answer from a lawyer however. But I do wonder what “reciprocal discovery” will be shared, and what the rules surrounding all that is.
Sad to say, but I think they want her video to compare with the twitter account pics of their multiple DeeDees.
I think it will be intimidating for DD and that may be a part of why they are videotaping, but as they are also videotaping the whole family and a couple more witnesses I personally think, considering that some of these are witnesses whose testimony will be really important in respect of emotivity, and DD’s in respect of what she heard, I still feel the principle motive is to not miss out on one single word, gesture, look, blink, sigh, cough, etc. My bet is they will later study, re-study and re-re-study the tapes, probably with a body language “expert” as you noted, to see if they can devise any tiny weakness, doubt, hesitation, any small chink or wedge to go for and try and prise open in court under cross.
All the blinks, sighs and coughs in the world won’t change the basic truth, IMO. Dee Dee was on the phone with Trayvon at the moment the physical gap was closed between TM and GZ. She’s not lying about this from what I’ve heard and learned and I think a jury is going to feel the same way.
@willisnewton
Me too WN! I find DD very credible and I think if BDLR (and to a lesser degree Crump) had interviewed her more competently she would have given much more info and possibly even explained what she meant by some of the lingo she used. On the other hand it may be, as others have put forward, that BDLR didn’t want to concrete DD’s story before trial so I think we may well see her dot many i’s and cross many t’s in court.
Orlando Sentinel says “Zimmerman’s attorneys did not finish questioning the 19-year-old woman, his office said, and will schedule another session.”
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/trayvon-martin/os-trayvon-martin-girlfriend-deposed-20130320,0,866649.story
They want to have it both ways. I am guessing the defense wanted to ask Dee Dee certain questions that they will also put to Crump, provided they get to depose him and will try to highlight differences between the two recollections as a way to sow doubt. It’s a worthy strategy but I doubt it will pay off in the end.
If they get an answer from Dee Dee such as, “he called me around six o’clock” and then Crump says “I called her around seven o’clock” to make a benign example, then the defense could go back and ask Dee Dee a second time, “well, Crump said he called you around seven. Do you want to change your statement?” Then at trial they would accuse her of being “indefinite” in what she is able to recall, and therefore unreliable as an ear witness, etc.
I don’t think they’ll get the opportunity to do so. I read Nelson’s order denying their motion to depose Crump again and IANL, but I don’t think the defense overcomes any of Nelson’s arguments.
Nelson is very clear in her order. Crump is not a fact witness to the crime.
The defense argues that Crump was somehow negligent by not providing the ABC recordings. While in Crump’s affidavit, he makes it clear that he was not aware of any recordings made by ABC.
I don’t think Nelson is going to appreciate this motion. She got pretty irritated when they kept asking for the addresses ” for the third time”.
This is how she ended the order denying the motion.
“Having made that determination, and in order to avoid the necessity of further hearings on this matter, the court makes additional findings.”
She then provides the statute defining in what case an unlisted witness can be deposed, and that Crump does not fit the description.
She also provides the statute that describes that only written or recorded statements are discoverable, not what else may have been said, during the interview.
I seriously doubt the defense will be allowed to depose Crump either. But in what seems to be a mighty effort to appear fair to the defendant, an appeals court moved to replace judge Lester and I didn’t expect that either. Some have opined that judge Nelson might reverse herself simply to take the moral high ground and give GZ every consideration possible to avoid the appearance of unfairness of any kind. Again however I don’t feel this will happen. Legal precedent and statutory law is on the side of her first ruling. We’ve yet to see the state’s response to the second motion asking to depose Crump, nor have we heard from Crump’s lawyer.
All this notwithstanding, the defense still has an advantage to press, or at least the potential to try of it is allowed to depose Dee Dee a second time, In the first place they are going to mine all the “doxed” social media to try to uncover her full identity now that they have seen her face, and pursue an investigation into her background. Imagine the noise they would make if she has a criminal conviction of some sort.
Also they can re-ask her simple question and try to make her give different answers, then accuse her of “contradictions and inconsistencies.” Sound familiar?
I can imagine MOM holding a press conference to announce “dee dee can’t keep her story straight” if she first said “then I picked UP the phone ” but later answered “then I picked the phone UP.”
This is why citizens should always wait for a lawyer before answering questions in regards to a legal matter. A good lawyer would head off such a question by saying, “my client has already answered that question” and instructing the client not to say anything.
We will have to wait and see.
I’ve been wrecking my brain about the defense strategy. There fixation on Crump doesn’t make much sense to me. After their latest antics, I did develop a theory. I’d like to know what you think about it.
I think they may pull a Baez by introducing a scenario during their opening statement, which they then never deliver on during the rest of the trial.
Let’s face it, the defense strategy will be geared towards racial prejudices with members of the jury. The prosecution should be able to weed out overtly racist potential jurors, during voir dire. But I think the strategy will be, to stir up the more subconcious layer of biases.
What I’ve noticed is how people like Crump and Sharpton really rile up those emotions. The Martin family is very dignified and soft spoken. It will be very difficult to attack them.
I got the impression that DD stirred BdlR’s protective side. I think she’ll be hard to attack too.
I think the defense will suggest that the Martin family was heartbroken and didn’t want to face the thug side of Trayvon. They didn’t want to face the SPD’s ” wise” decision to not arrest GZ. Crump was taking advantage of them by stirring up the black community by telling lies.
I think they will open with that story, and ask questions in line with that story.
Go with the story that this is a political prosecution.
A docket sounding order has been issued for April 2nd:
Click to access Notice%20for%20April%202%202013%20Docket%20Sounding.pdf
This is a typical notice from the court. George will have to appear, and the purpose is for the court to formally recognize all the players that will be in court for his trial in June.
If you want a laugh, read what GZ’s supporters are trying to make out of this. Some claim the purpose of the hearing is to dismiss all the charges against him, now that “Dee Dee lied,” etc.
Sure, Crump and Sharpton tried to stir up a lot of anger. Even they may have been trying to take advantage of Trayvon’s family. Even the photo of Trayvon might have been from when he was 11 years old.
So what?
That was NOT the cause of GZ killing Trayvon. That came first and that is why GZ is being charged. So they try whatever nonsense they like, it doesn’t undo the MURDER.
I know and they don’t have a case. What I am suggesting is that this may be the defense’s strategy. Create confusion. Turn the trial into a sideshow. The prosecution should just be prepared for that.
I think the defense would want to present this case as a political case. The prosecution can present the evidence and at the same time lay out why this is a solid case. Get Serino and Singleton on the stand early on in the trial. Play the interview where they confront GZ with his 911 call. It is very obvious in that interview that they don’t believe GZ, and GZ is at his worst in that interview.
Have Tracy and Sabrina on before DD. Have them explain how they found DD, contacted her and convinced her to do the interview with Crump. Let them explain what they discussed with her and that they were in the room when Crump interviewed her.
I think that would help to undermine any attempt by the defense to muddy the water.
All that is well and good, amsterdam. The prosecution still has to prove the crime itself. I think it’s relatively easy to show GZ was lying to the SPD about his movements before getting out of his car, and I think his explanation for his motivation for leaving his car is extremely suspect as well.
But how do the prove what happened in the dark, in the missing minutes? That’s the hardest part. I think the best they can do is present a lot of circumstantial evidence, and W2 before they bring out Dee Dee.
They also have the mother of the teen to declare it is her son calling for help, and it won’t be possible for experts to say one way or the other if she is right or wrong. To me all this leads up to a jury finding GZ guilty of a lesser charge, manslaughter. But I think it was murder. I just don’t have faith that they will get there until I see their strategy in the courtroom. Color me skeptical.
I see the strategy as convincing a super-majority of jurors to vote guilty on M2 but using various strategies to convince each one using a separate set of reasons, in groups or else individually. There are at least si ways to make a strong case for M2. I hope they use them all and get the full conviction that way. One juror may believe W2 saw a two person footchase. Another may be more convinced by the ballistics, and yet another simply finds GZ not credible for various reasons. There are plenty to choose from.
The defense needs just one juror as a holdout to hang a jury. That might be their best bet.
I do agree that the defense can “beat up on Crump” where it would be foolish to attack the teen himself, or the parents, or Dee Dee. People use the term “dog whistle” to describe subtext that speaks to racists, and I expect the dog whistle sounds to be loud in the courtroom. The defense is already pandering to a fringe element.
Florida’s mandatory sentencing guidelines require additional jail time be added to manslaughter sentences under certain conditions, such as the use of a firearm. IIRC there’s also another one that applies to the Martin shooting though I forget what exactly. But I do recall that if GZ is convicted of manslaughter, he will serve 30 years in the pokey, where murder 2 is 35-to-life, So, not that much difference, most likely.
Willis
Of course they have to proof the crime. But just forensics isn’t enough in a high emotion case like this one.
I don’t think the defense doesn’t have much of a case. Unlike what many people at TL seem to think, I don’t believe that MOM stating in his opening statement that GZ killed Trayvon in self defense, will be enough. If they don’t put GZ on the stand, all the jurors will know is that they heard GZ jumping out of his car, and mumbling fucking coons. They’ve heard DD saying that Trayvon told her ” he is following me again”, and how she describes the beginning of the altercation. W11 describing the verbal exchange followed by the horrible screams, the shot and the silence.
Where is GZ’s story? Who is going to testify to his state of mind?
Of course it is a jury trial. I am not to worried about fringe elements in the jury. I think the prosecution should be able to identify them. I am worried about the kind of people, who emphaticly claim not to be racist but do think a black teenager wearing a hoody, was “asking for trouble”. You know them too at Dkos. I am worried about a side show like OJ Simpson’s trial. But I also think that the prosecution can prevent that from happening.
@whonoze
I tink there is additional jail time, because Tayvon was a minor.
@ amsterdam, I “tink” so too. Sorry, couldn’t resist your typo, 🙂 but I concur (albeit, still not as a lawyer).
@wsi
Supid of me. 😜
Recall that we don’t know all of what the prosecution has for evidence. Some things have been sealed to the public, such as GZ’s phone records. The defense thought it was crucial to get those sealed, as it was among their first motions before Judge Lester. If GZ had made only a few trivial calls that day, I doubt they would have bothered to ask for the records to be sealed. (Their claim was that the phone records contained private matter not material to the case, and therefore should not be divulged…) But if GZ did contact someone before or after the shooting, or if someone contacted him just before he left home, the prosecution would have those names. So they MIGHT be able to establish that he was ‘tipped’ to TM’s presence. If so, unless the tipster was part of some unlikely conspiracy, I doubt that person would perjure themself when asked about it. “Yes I saw a young man walking through the rain, and then loitering by the maiboxes. I thought that looked odd, so I called our NW captain to let him know, in case he wanted to check it out.” That wouldn’t get the caller in any trouble, but ti wouldn’t be so good for GZ…
Also, the defense subpoenaed recordings of Trayvon’s voice, and apparently received something i response to their request. No recordings of Trayvon have been released to the public IIRC. But if the prosecution does indeed have smaples of Trayvon’s voice, that might allow a voice recognition expert to conclude not just that the screams are a mismatch to Zimmerman, but also that they are a much better match to TM, by a statistically significant margin…
Where did you get that they got voice samples of Trayvon?
I think the prosecution probably has corroborating evidence, placing Trayvon at the mail shed around 6:54. An eyewitness, gps data or both. I think they have phonerecords or texts from GZ that may show he got a tip about Trayvon. They may be able to show that GZ didn’t leave his house until 7:06 or so. If they have that, and I think that is likely, they have GZ over a barrel. It would proof he lied, and that he left his house to go look for Trayvon, and that he brought his gun with him.
It would also validate DD’s narrative.
My understanding is that’s because a deposition requires attorneys from both sides of the case at hand to be present. Since a representative of the prosecution is in the room, there’s nothing to discover, so nothing gets made public.
BTW video depositions are quite common, as I’ve known a few people who make a living by shooting them. They’re ‘documentation’ generally not well lit or well shot.
Sure video depositions may be common but it seemed like only the most recent ones of DeeDee and the Martin family were videotaped and not of other witnesses.
Maybe they all were, and this is the only one where they’re mentioning it. “Hurray at last we get to see what DeeDee looks like”. “Yah we can start searching for her on FB”.
New thread up: