Too bad they can’t grill him on his unsubstantiated charge of a cover-up conspiracy between Wolfinger and whoever.
I’d love to have seen him have to put up or shut up on that, and if Wolfinger has a civil attorney, I bet he or she’d be very interested as well.
But strictly much more disappointing to see how easy it is to dictate people how to look at matters, as Tschoupi’s comment below shows.
Beyond that I can easily explain and did explain to you how it could have happened. And it is still a fact that Wolfinger at least somehow stalled.
Maybe you tell me why it is significant. But don’t return to a general misinformation statement. What about O’Mara’s much more obvious recent lies in this context? Nothing to worry about? Always good to feed the grand conspiracy theory of the other camp, to feed the rage?
I had a closer look to the phone records and pictures and have to say that my initial reaction may have been too harsh on TM. I may have been missing some stuff though as it is hard to line up all those pieces of texts.
1) As Amsterdam told me 0.38 refers to pot.
2) Txt about owning a gun are from somebody else. It is clear that TM is curious about that but it is someone else claiming to have a gun.
3) The picture of the gun may actually be what triggered the discussion mentioned in (2). In other words, it is not clear whose picture it is. It may have been sent into TM’s phone triggering the discussion.
I was a bit down too but not so much because of pot and guns, tattoos and finger flips, which except for the guns, in the UK go with today’s rap, gang and goth culture/fashion prevalent among teens of all colours here, and which we already knew Trayvon was in to, but because I am always worried the prosecution will be unable to surmount all the hurdles of the case. There are many unknowns and although the clubhouse videos could unravel a lot I fear a jury may not understand their significance. I also worry MOM & Co will find some medical “expert” to testify that any silly knock to the head can cause SBH or rarely even death, which is mainly due to my experience with a friend who is now epileptic from a really nothing event, and after seeing the prejudice on the Horn case I am never sure GZ will be convicted while I am sure he had no reason to pull that trigger. So with all the problems I felt this was one more the prosecution just didn’t need and that put me down for a while.
Tchoupi, sorry misspelled above, I cannot tell you how sad your comment made me.
O’Mara’s simple trick is that we ultimately have to guess about who sends what to whom, and may not pay close attention. My suspicion is that the specific method of getting statements into the news as Trayvon’s statements, although they clearly weren’t, was to a certain extend as deliberate as his statement concerning Trayvon taking a video of friends beating up homeless guys.
They already saw the clip, as a letter by West to BDLR shows before September 19. They added this letter to at least three motions, the first challenging Nelson’s decision concerning Crump, the second concerning discovery violations by prosecution, the third time you’ll find it in the appendix of the writ of certiorari, where it starts at p. 252, if I remember correctly.
O’Mara no doubt was fully aware of what he did. And he was fully aware that people, at least the vast majority would only look at matters to confirm what they were told. Would he claim it otherwise?
Yes he clearly would. Start to protect yourself against his psychops and attempts at shaping public opinion.
Keep in mind another comment he dropped. Trayvon took a photo of an underage girl. It’s all about planting insinuations that he hopes will somehow stay. He needs the most diverse ones to shape not only the public mind but also especially the juror’s.
Good to hear you looked at it again. I had to force myself doing it too. This was the first time we heard Trayvon’s own voice, and I do think we’ve made him somewhat into a one dimensional character. What the messages show he was a regular teenager.
Couple of notes:
There is only one extensive exchange about an actual fight, and that is on the 2nd report.
That specific report has sender/ receiver information blacked out, so you can’t tell if it is Trayvon telling about the fight or reading about the fight. The fact that the person who was in the fight also states he has been suspended for that fight, make it less likely it was Trayvon since there is no record of Trayvon ever being suspended for fighting.
We also know from the messages why Trayvon transferred to another school. He was moving in with his father.
We also know what the reason was for Sybrina to have Trayvon move in with his dad.
My mom just told me I got to mov with my dad
Why?
Da police caught me outta skool
Lol really dude?
Yeah
So you just turning into a lil hoodlum
No not at all
I think if his friends think that Trayvon’s truancy is a first sign of becoming a hoodlum, he couldn’t have been much of a thug to begin with.
Another example of what a thug Trayvon was. Here we get Sybrina txt with Trayvon.
Sybrina: Pack up ur clothes now
Sybrina: I know you read my txt.
Trayvon: Yeah i was already doin it and i was tryna finish
Sybrina: Ok and clean up ur rm and the living room. I love you but I think u being w/ ur Dad is best.
Trayvon: Ok love u 2.
Another thing I noticed is that he may have an interest in guns, but he appears to have a better realization about the dangers of guns than most gun nut cases, including GZ.
There appears to be two conversations going about guns with two seperate people. One of them is DeeDee. It is a bit difficult to tell for sure which txt belong to which conversation, but in both conversations, he appears more concerned about gun safety aspect of owning a gun.
Trayvon: U got heat??
Trayvon: U got heat??
Trayvon: O aigh
Trayvon: Umhmm im tryna tell u
Friend: wat
Trayvon: Ntn b safe man
Trayvon: -_- Bae bullets dnt hav eyes
Trayvon: U got a gun??
DeeDee: it my mommy but she buy for me
Trayvon: She let you hold it??
DeeDee: Yea
Trayvon: But she keep it??
DeeDee: Yea
Here is another statement the tools of the Sentinel attributed to Trayvon but was not said by him.
Trayvon: Wat make u 1??
Friend: Duh way I fight nd duh golds I had last year.
It looks as if Trayvon shared some of his tender feelings for DeeDee with his cousin, and his cousin relentlessly teases him with it.
cousin: have fun talking to dat girl I hope y’all happy together
Trayvon: fuck u cuz i neva text ha 2 day i made that shit up so u leave me df alone about it
Cousin: Text me tha address again SHE HAS MY HEART(T)
Trayvon: ….Retreat View Circle…. u bout 2 slide??
Cousin: Ya I’m bout to come SHE HAS MY HEART(T)
The defense has nothing. All they can do is stir up racial fears by disseminating bullshit to the public, with the help of that kapo at the Orlando Sentinel and the ratings crazed cable networks, in the hope to poison the jury pool.
They have nothing to present at trial.
Amsterdam, can you be sure the last exchange is with his cousin? I was wondering, if that was Tracy. I wondered if he usually took him there before and now Trayvon has to go there by bus. And Tracy wants to be make sure he has the correct address.
An SMS could slip into an exchange in between an exchange with someone else, how could we tell we tell? I occasionally checked the times. But not even that ultimately tells us something. We could only be sure if we could see the cell phone number of the senders.
I would guess that genuine gang-bangers don’t text about their illegal activities amongst their friends. If the defense is claiming that these text messages show TM had a ‘prediliction for violence’ or whatever they’re calling it, their definition of that term is so broad as to be absolutely useless. Teenage kids get into school fights. Boxing and martial arts are considered legitimate sports. The distance between any kind of consensual fight and the kind of aggravated assault on a stranger GZ is claiming is a gap of light years. Teenagers also pose, exaggerate and lie, and kids from a tough neighborhood have good cause to pretend to be more badass than they are, lest they not look weak to the predators surrounding them. And, for some reason text forms of ‘new media’ seem to up the ante of BS and hyperbole among just about everyone, thus further discounting any ‘woofing’ TM may have done onto a cell-phone keypad.
What would be required to establish the validity of even the relatively innocuous activities discussed in the text messages would be eyewitness testimony: someone who would go on the record as saying, ‘Yes, i was in a fight with Trayvon Martin.’ And even this would have no relevance (and as IANAL, I’m not referring to admissibility) unless there was also testimony that Trayvon picked a series of fights, or was particularly brutal in the course of them. (I didn’t read the whole file, but I believe I saw one reference to him not faring well in one of the scuffles he was in. He doesn’t seem to have been much of a pugilist.)
As far as I know, no evidence whatsoever has turned up that Trayvon was ever physically aggressive with strangers. I find it ludicrous to think that a kid would begin a career in assault by attacking a scary-looking bouncer who outweighs him by 50 lbs. If TM had become the kind of kid who WOULD double-back looking to pick a fight with a guy who had been following him, then he most certainly would have committed some similar behavior before, picking on someone smaller or younger as bullies generally do. If TM had been ‘into violence’ then there would be victims of his thuggery somewhere.
In the absence of actual testimony, the texts only show us things we already knew: that Trayvon had lost interest in school, started cutting classes, had been smoking pot regularly, liked ‘gansta’ rap, had a fake ‘grill,’ amused himself by taking ‘gansta’ poses to his cell phone in the privacy of his room, etc. The correlation between these behaviors and criminal aggression is so low as to not be worth discussing — unless you’re a desperate defense attorney with a guilty client trying to poison a jury pool with appeals to the most base forms of racism.
@whonoze Very well said. There is nothing known in Trayvon’s past which predisposes him to such a savage attack (as described by GZ) for no apparent reason.
More: There is nothing in the NEN call that points to it.
More: On the contrary, Trayvon seemed to be scared.
More: The difference in weight is not the only problem. Trayvon had no idea who was GZ. He could have been an undercover policeman. He could have been some kind of maniac (which is still possible!).
More: GZ could have been armed.
More: Trayvon surely noticed that GZ was on phone when he was in his truck (or later like some say). It means that GZ could get help very quickly.
Attacking an heavier stranger for no apparent reason when there is so much unknown takes a lot of nerve or unconsciousness. And it is senseless to pretend that marijuana can be the cause, specially among regular users. Anyway, Trayvon had slight traces only in his blood.
But even if “a priori” it looks unlikely, the possibility is still there, over the reasonable doubt. So the prosecution needs more. Too bad that your very estimable work about the ClubHouse cameras and the position of the truck does not seem to be recognized. This gives a penetrating light on the first part of the call.
Because the trial begins in two weeks, can we consider that the prosecution has no more hidden card? Except maybe from GZ’s phone data. No ballistic study?
Quickly. GZ is difficult to grasp. For example, less than 24 hours after the shooting, he describes the scene very quietly and had many hesitations. When he should have had no hesitation at all and be much much more emotional. After all, he had just supposedly escaped a nearly fatal vicious attack.
On the other hand, with Singleton minutes before the stress test and also during interviews with Singleton he did not seem nervous. While he should have been a lot, since he was preparing (according to us) to lie big, very big.
Keep in mind we are dealing with a life-long casual liar who grew up molesting his cousin. He lies very easily and often and has lied in open court after swearing an oath and taking the witness stand. BDLR asked him At the very first bond hearing in cross examination after his so called “apology” if it was true that his statements to SPD were inconsistent and contradictory and he said “no” without hesitation several times.
He’s got exactly zero credibility and the jury will be shown this fact many different ways.
The voice tests (and traditional lie detectors) are meant to measure physical signs of STRESS when the person lies. The stress is presumably caused by a fear of being found out.
For this reason the “baseline” tests were a total joke. He was told to give the wrong colour for the walls of the room. That won’t stress anybody. He was also TOLD to lie about some traffic conviction. Again, if you’ve been TOLD to lie, there’s no fear of being found out.
As for the rest of it? if you really believe the BS you’re saying, what’s to be stressed about? he’s also used to everyone else believing his BS, so……
Exactly, the kind of behavior the defense would like to have us believe from these text messages, is unsupported by anything that would allow us to interpret or understand what is actually being talked about. Trayvon does not text about who the next victim will be, what he does about his own injuries, what he will do to the next guy or the same guy next time, etc., as you would expect of someone involved in fighting and generally making a menace of himself.
Of course, a teenager being around his mom all day, gets a false image of what a man really is, because it comes from him and his peers watching tv and gangsta rap cd’s. He needed to spend some time with his dad, to refresh his memory about his goals, and dispel this illusion that “real men”™ are Bruce Willis, Rocky Balboa and John Wayne.
thank you for # 10 post; follow please; character evidence/prior bad acts of victim is not admissable- MOM stated in interview – he wont go there if the state doesn’t go onto george’s prior bad acts- but those are different- he has arrest records, etc., AND prior bad acts admissable to show propensity & modus operandi…. judge will ule on these issues- but MOM now already has leaked to/ prejudiced juror pool. they will have to consciously avoid considering evidence learned outside of trial-=hard to do, not impossible, but hard
HEY! I’ve been working crazy hours and I do try to keep up with Dispora along with some other blogs, but this is a must read. I see alot has happened, but alot remains the same. Interesting about the texts, I felt bad for Tchocpi for not understanding the “lingo” in the text messages. 🙂 If I have time to break down or translate for him I will this weekend. Amsterdam seems to have a great handle on it. I miss you guy. Life is not the same without you guys.
@aussie – whatever “results” were acquired by administering a “voice stress test” are 100% in admissible in court. I’m fairly certain the ONLY purpose of having GZ sit for such a. Bullshit test was to keep him cooperating and making additional statements that “can and will be used against (him) in a court of law.”
Just as important (that’s by it was recorded) as the so called “test” was the long period before where GZ is left to wait in uncomfortable silence with a female investigator and so he breaks the uncomfortable silence with chit chat, including the loaded remark about how people ” respect authority” or don’t.
Then GZ is asked almost casually by the test administrator as an afterthought to run thru his story again, which he does. It here he most adamantly claims he wss knocked backwards to the ground by an initial sucker punch. These are the sorts of inconsistent ad contradictory statements that convictions are built on every day.
Again I feel very strongly that the ONLY “results” that will be heard by a jury regarding a voice stras test
Whoops – the only “results” that a jury will hear about what appened regarding a voice stress test will be the character – revealing statements about “authority” and the inconsistent and contradictory tale he’s peddling about self defense
The “voice stress test” is a very rich and rewarding investigative tool, since anyone who’s aware of lie detection science will have to think “Wha??? These cops are dumber than I thought!” Which is exactly what you want a suspect to be thinking! Because while he’s being impressed by how abysmally stupid the police seem to be, he’s not thinking about his right to remain silent or that he might need the assistance of an attorney. Who needs an attorney when the police are this dumb? 😆
Well, I can’t begin to express how happy I am to see you’ll rethink TM’s texts. I have admired each one and your high level of critical thinking skills, especially you tchio(sp.?) and to read you saying you have changed your opinion of TM and especially he is as bad as thugboat, simply caused my heart to feel so sad.
Contrary to Zimmerman’s attorney trying to paint victim as bad apple, they show him as an exceptionally gentle, sweet natured barely 17 teen. Where is the cussing or even a hint of anger in his texts? Not one FU. Not one asshole. Not one shit. His mom and dad are enacting a severe, to a teen, discipline making him leave his friends for the full 10 days. For a teen, 10 days away from his friends is an eternity bordering on torture.
So, where are his cussing, name calling, refusing to take responsibility words. You would fully expect them -90% of teens would be ranting about what an asshole my parents are! How could they! I hate them!
Now, let’s look at Zimmerman’s anger. He calls the 911 to complain ” the dog is gone but I WANT IT NOTED it took a full 30 minutes for someone to respond” I mean he is calling on dogs in his neighborhood every month and not strays but pets. So that is an anger problem but who takes the time to call the police to complain they weren’t quick enough, by god!!
There are still two instances that trouble me in TM’s cell phone texts:
2/18/2012 11:16:15 PM : Read : “You want a 22 revolver”
2/20/2012 12:49:04 AM : SENT : “Tell fool i got 80 4 him right na”
One thing about the line about the 22 revolver. It is in a language that I can read without too much pain that’s called English. However, like for the 38, is it a reference to pot? If not, it pops up like that randomly, with no contest and the only possible reply from TM is “Wat shoota??” which I can’t understand at all.
The reference to 80 comes a few time. I guess that’s MJ too. It looks like TM sold some too. That’s not good at all if it’s the case. Can anyone translate to me?
They don’t even line up to each other. One is the 18 th and one the 22nd, four days later. You make them sound like someone is selling a 22 and TM is saying he has money. That is what O’Mara is attempting to do, pulling a text completely out of context and totally at random to the preceding text.
2dogsonly, I never claimed that those lines come in a sequence. To clarify, those are the two lines in the whole set of texts that I find disturbing.
amsterdam1234
May 27, 2013 at 3:58 PM
Tchoupi
These messages are out of context. Maybe this was a classmate sending out txt to a whole bunch of people. I can’t find reply messages to that particular message that made sense.
Maybe something happened to a friend, and they were talking about how they were going to defend themselves.
I can go on and on.
If someone were to check my social media and pick out sentences, you would think I had an arsenal at home, I haven’t touched a gun in my life. But I’ve been talking and researching guns for this case. I’ve commented extensively about guns, after the Sandyhook massacre.
Do you realize that the defense added photos, claiming they are Trayvon, that are taken from social media sites. One of them from a video of which Trayvon’s brother had said over a year ago that is not Trayvon?
The defense knows this stuff is never going be entered into evidence. O’Mara pretty much admitted to that. The stuff is never going to be tested for what it actually meant. Its sole
purpose is to sway public opinion and to poison the jury pool.
You want to know the real Trayvon. Read the exchange with Sybrina again. That is Trayvon with the person who knows him best in a complete exchange.
He wasn’t high when he was murdered. In his previous tweets, not texts, released by nutters, he says he’s not going to smoke anymore because it gets him in trouble. He also says Rt if you love your mother.
You are disappointing me, tchio. Step back from being so judgmental. Again, he did not have a gun when he was murdered, his THC level was so low it would not have even keyed on an employment test, and finally no one who is buzzed buys one package of candy.
Male teens use bravado to explore their new masculinity. This is as normal as teenage girls swooning over celebrity crush. Now, everything is out in public. But this was a sweet natured boy and it shows in his tweets, texts,and the many pixs. No violence in his history. Fight was a boxing match two years earlier. And he lost. Not much of a fighter at all.
Someone sending a text about a 22 means nothing. Him responding he has an 80 could mean anything in teen code. But his tweet clearly says he’s quitting smoking cuz it gd u in trble..I don’t know where they are but he was recognizing he needed to grow up. And his parents were making sure he got on the right path.
My views are from a white grandmother. I am kind of astonished at your intolerance of young teens. Do you not have children?
Again for context if highly recommend a recent two episode series on the radio program THIS AMERICAN LIFE about at-risk high schoolers called “Harper High” that is available on free podcast.
Kids like Trayvon don’t have a similar background and youth to anything anyone over the age of 30 would recognize. When the Columbine school massacre occurred Trayvon was four years old. He and kids like him SWIM in a culture awash with violence and handguns. Yet he was a good kid, and had zero history of violence.
When I was his age I smoked marijuana on an almost daily basis as a relief from the boredom and monotony of suburbia and substandard public education. The year I started college and was finally intellectually challenged I quit for good. What I wanted was to be treated like an adult, and when I got it my “rebellion” took other forms quickly.
I strongly suggest everyone in this forum listen to both hours of that radio documentary. It’s incredibly well produced and they took a year to make it, speaking to dozens of kids who grew up amidst horrific everyday violence and “gang” activity that is nothing like what you might think it is. You don’t know high schoolers today if you aren’t one.
After reading again the texts, I realized that my first impression was probably excessive. However, I cannot close my eyes on instances that may suggest attempts to buy a gun or attempts to sell MJ. I want to make sure I understand correctly those texts.
So, you should calm down, 2dogsonly, and read again my post. I’m just asking for help to understand what those texts are about. I’m not used to the lingo I and need to get a translator.
I spent hours lining up all the texts to see if something would come out of it. I could makes sense of most of it but the two lines referenced above. At first reading those lines suggest:
1) Someone proposed a 22 revolver to TM. But, there is no contest to that text and the only text that could be TM answering to it makes no sense to me. Moreover, I find it curious that this line is in clear English.
2) TM has a buddy he calls “fool” that he cannot text to directly. He asks someone if “fool” can meet him at the gym or asks someone to tell “fool” that he has “80” for him. I have no idea what “80” is but it comes a few times such as during his trip to Orlando while on the bus.
The one about meeting fool at the gym, is I believe put in an incredulousness way. It is followed by a remark indicating that he is not in Miami, so he is obviously not going to meet fool at the gym.
The kid was a pothead. Then again between 50 to 60 % of Americans have smoked pot. I have used recreational as a teenager, but it made me paranoid when I got older, so I stopped. Most of my friends did, most of them stopped when life didn’t allow them to just hang around, listen to music, say brillant things they couldn’t remember 5 minutes later, and eat enormous amounts of disgusting munch food.
It is what teenagers do. Teenagers of all social economic classes and of every color.
My ex who was from a nice white middle class Beaver Cleaver family, supported himself during his college years at a Ivy league university, by selling pot he had grown between the corn plants in his parents backyard. Trust me, nobody would’ve thought him suspicious and call the police on him.
I’ll feel like Ahab going below decks to ask the pagans to deliver the great white whale by nefarious means, but is there a link to all these text and twitter messages that is un-redacted? If we are to be subjected to the defense’s version of them, it seems fair game to see what they saw and what the state’s investigators have seen.
amsterdam1234
May 27, 2013 at 6:45 PM
No there isn’t. And not only are they redacted, they are selections of messages, without it being clear what the selection criteria was, or on some reports not even clear which messages were send by Trayvon and which messages he received. Everybody in the media and the blogs are commenting on the group of messages describing a fight and attributing those words to Trayvon, while in fact there is no way for us to tell, if he wrote them.
TM was in Miami on Saturday Feb 18th, when he txt about meeting “fool” at the gym. He would leave to Orlando on Tuesday Feb 21st in the morning.
I understand that those texts are rather typical of a teenager.
I looked it up, Tchioupi. Here it is:
Do u want a 22 revolver is do you want to be a revolving door in & out of HS until you are 22?
Have an 80 4 you. Is –I have a wake up call for you. Stop being a dummy.your Dad and I will be having an intervention with you.
I know this is correct translation cause I asked my children what it means and they swore this is correct.
Please Tchioupi, you are way too smart to even be concerned with this bravado from a barely 17 yr. old trying to grow up.
I would take this 17 yr. old AA kid as my neighbor any day all day long over that redneck psycho any day of the week.
I have been amazed at your analytical skills, maybe over anyone else’s, for over a year. Please let me continue to be educated by you. The stupidity on the web is breathtaking but you have been inspirational.
So stop this silly time and return to being a frigging genius.
Thanks for the complements. I really appreciate as I spent a lot of time on the case.
The 22 revolver text, is weird on two aspects: 1) it is in plain English , & 2) it has no context. The only text in plain English I found are from TM’s parents.
I don’t read the media, they have their own strategy, “pump up emotions, to pump up sales or ratings”. I will try to locate the relevant part from the hearing for you. Nelson is not looking at redacted stuff the way we are, and basicly what she said was, “defense first authenticate the stuff you got, then you have to get past the hearsay rule, if you pass all that I may let you use it as evidence”. The reason there is no send/ receive information on the fight messages, is because they don’t originate from Trayvon’s phone, but from a social media site. The same for the videos and some of the photos. They do not originate from his phone, but have been floating on the internet for more than a year. They have not been authenticated as having originated from Trayvon as of today.
amsterdam1234
May 28, 2013 at 1:31 PM
Here is the first part.
amsterdam1234
May 28, 2013 at 1:33 PM
And it continues in this video.
amsterdam1234
May 28, 2013 at 1:35 PM
I set a begin time for the first video, but it didn’t work. It begins at 5:28.
In response to the fight, Judge said if everyone was viewed as unfavorable because they watched a fight ( one of MOM’s motions as to prior bad acts) then there are a lot of bad people. I think the nettles lady writes a lot of his motions because they fail to cite cases and they are bordering on embarrassing for their client.
All texts and other media is verboten. No continuance granted.All motions granted in victim’s favor. Three noteworthy moments:
1) Judge denies one of Wes’s motions but Wes continues to stand. Finally, Judge asks “anything further” (meaning could you please sit down) and Wes responds:”Just trying to process” and stands for another second or two. I think he’s thinking ” well, I earn 350/hr. so I just earned 50.00.
2) MOM has motion to force voice expert to lower fee, of course it’s denied and Judge suggests Skype. BUT, from his seat, MOM says “he only makes 20k /yr.” Thereby, ensuring expert will not be lowering his fee, thank you very much.
3) MOM threw Wes under the bus when judge chastised them for breaking her order…saying ” it was Wes who gave that pressor…I never would have violated it”.
4) MOM screwed up by including standard clause to include any and all prosecution witnesses not listed on defense witness list. This brought Shellie into the fray as she could have claim spousal immunity. May not have been totally successful as spouses don’t have immunity where privacy is not assumed. Her attorney is first rate but now she’ll have to return and plead 5th and hope it’s accepted. At least, this keeps her knowledge away from prosecution until trial. She can’t really flip on hubby until she knows he’s going away. would be too dangerous for her.
5) Sanctions against state for not turning over 3 items that make victim look less angelic. They brought in a surprise former state attorney employee who had called MOM asking if BDLR had turned over these items? BDLR looked stunned. Judge called halt as this guy is giving heresay testimony and they need state attorney employee who actually has direct knowledge. This state attorney employee will be testifying at 6/6 or 6/7 hearing.
6) BDLR daughter is getting married. Daddy is so happy, he stupidly said this in open court.
Summing up, Wes is po’d at Mom
BDLR is really po’d at his employee, can’t remember his/her name but they will be looking for another job.
BDLR’s daughter is po’d at her Dad
Left out one. Motion to have jury visit scene, denied. Mom argued they could actually DRIVE onto dog walk and T to view murder site. They could do this in a blacked out windowed van so no one could take their pixs. They did not offer how they would NOT be breaking numerous laws on trespassing, property damage,etc.
This was Mom’s answer to questions concerning protection of jury identification.
Judge: How would you prevent residents and overhead media from taking their pixs.?
O’Mara: They could drive onto the property in a blacked out van.
Judge: What about recreating the weather conditions, rain? How would you do that?
O’Mara: crickets
But of course, that would have done it nicely. The nation and the world, would have been treated to the sight of six kkk clad jurors walking RATL, how positively lovely.
They’ve started a trial watch group on the Daily Kos. I am one of the blog editors of the group. I am going to work on some primer posts. I think it would be great if some of the great work done here, could be shared with a larger audience.
Any volunteers? I know Willisnewton has an account. Willis I think this is the time to share your car to pedestrian tail.
Tchoupi, Whonoze I don’t know if you have accounts at the daily kos, but a proper introduction to the clubhouse videos with the video, would be a great primer.
One of CNN lawyers said BDLR’s Motion in Limine to keep out texts, pixs, was a very bad move as any attempt at trial to enter any prior bad acts would be immediately blocked by rule of law. But now every media report is leading with “Judge approved motion to keep out TM’s drug use, fight, etc. which, of course, makes everyone acutely aware of them.
Further, the refusal to issue gag order allows O’Mara to go on every media site announcing Judge refusing all ………of TM over and over and over again.
Apparently, BDLR’s lack of turning over 3 items is a serious error, even if it was accidental and could, but probably won’t, result in new trial. But definitely a lot of fireworks at next hearing.
As far as I understand, the defense received all of the data from the phone, including the photos. They just received it as raw data, which was the way they requested it, and they didn’t want to pay for an expert to extract the information.
They asked if there were more reports generated by the prosecution expert, BdlR said no to that. BdlR followed that up with ” they can hire their own experts”.
So the complaint in their motion is basicly ” The State owns software and hired an expert, we want them to do our work for us”.
Way way back I had an exchange over on bcclist about the alleged burglary tool (a screwdriver) in TM’s backpack found by a security guard at the school. I made the comment something to the effect of “Let’s bring it all out in the open and then we’ll see who looks better in the light of day.” You’re right, the mere suggestion that the prosecution is “hiding” something is worse than what the true facts are.
Hey Amsterdam- I’m working on a post for daily kis but I’ve been swamped this week with work.
I’m hoping that the prosecution covers all the “they went that anyway” stuff at trial but you never know. My secret nightmare would be that they lose the trial by virtue of not ever having figured out what the BCC list consensus came up with months ago.
The case for murder 2 IMO hinges on the state proving “depraved mind” status of the defendant. You could argue that point to a jury with a deaf body,an empty shell casing and the NEN call recording alone but I’m not sure you would get a unanimous vote. You might convince a majority that GZ profiled and pursued an unarmed teen into the proverbial dark alley but demonstrating what happened next is not something a skilled defense attorney couldn’t sow some reasonable doubt upon.
IMO it’s the car to pedestrian chase plus the lies to SPD that prove the killing was enacted with a depraved mind. Why lie about how you arrived at a scene unless you have a darn good reason to lie? He established (IMO) a PATTERN of lies that can be shown to a jury. When in doubt he left it out; what he did he blamed the kid.
The “doubling back” was something George did after trolling the mail kiosk. Leaving this out speaks to his intent. If he had good intent why not relate the story as it happened?
How did goers travel south of the T? IMO he leaves this out.
That’s the pattern to me that a jury would use to make up their minds about what really happened in the missing minutes. George left out some actions he’s hiding. But I feel the prosecution could establish he already exhibited a depraved mind or at least aggressive action and bad intent. Forensics and circumstantial evidence would be enough for jurors to unite behind the idea rant this man is guilty once all that is demonstrated. He’s got no credibility and a pattern of lying where it counts. The rest is just in getting a jury to unite on these issues and a preponderance of the rest. Some may believe it’s trayvon yelling, Others may feel the bullet trajectory is key. But they don’t need to be unanimous about these side issues, dee dee included. Just the lies and the pattern of lies, an the understanding that he drove after the kid and the jumped out to follow him. The rest is just what one would expect – a man who would lie about the little things isn’t to be trusted on the big things.
I recommend ignoring O’Mara and the media that’s making hay of out his allegations. The jury will be comprised of six people, and it’s unlikely that any one of those six will be so swayed by these tactics that they will ignore their responsibility to judge the evidence presented in court. While I’m angry at what O’Mara is doing, I’m also amused if this is pretty much all he has to work with.
The state has the evidence to prove Murder 2, and I now trust that the prosecutors have a good strategy in presenting the case. O’Mara’s dependency on showing Trayvon to be a violent pothead not only cannot be proved unless he has witnesses who testify to Trayvon’s behavior (like, he’s aggressive on pot, or he likes picking fights rather than enjoying watching/participating in refereed sparring matches), but such an allegation has nothing to do with the events of that night. In the early evening of 26 February 2012, Trayvon was nothing but a 17-year-old high school junior who had walked to a 7-11 to purchase a can of soda and a bag of Skittles candy, and who then walked back towards home – while talking to a friend on his cell phone.
But… he was SWAYING! And… he had a lighter and a tan bag and forty dollars! Imagine what McGuyver could do with all that!
I’m not in the least but worried about M’OM’s tactics. I’m worried that the State won’t prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt to the jury.
If GZ had a defense it would be that he acted in self-defense. He’s already given up on that idea, IMO. He’s just hoping that the state can’t prove it’s case.
Yep, TM was swaying, but then again maybe all the customers sway since the clerk didn’t even remember anything about TM or anything remarkable that way. But seriously, what is the swaying that he’s talking about? All I remember was when he was up at the counter, he leaned up against it a couple of times.
unitron
May 31, 2013 at 9:29 PM
When that 7-Eleven video first hit the web, whatever was done to change it from their surveillance system’s digital format to whatever was used online “had issues”, with the result that it did not run at one second of playback for one second of original recording–it would drag and then hurry to catch up (you could tell by watching the time-stamp), which exaggerated movements.
Once you see it run at the correct rate, the swaying pretty much disappears and all you get is leaning to one side when he’s digging in his pocket for exact change.
Obviously you don’t patronize many convenience stores, as a general rule they have music playing, since studies show that people buy more when they hear their favorite hits.
wassointeresting
June 1, 2013 at 3:56 PM
What? The first sentence of my comment was sarcastic, in line with and as a response to willisnewton’s comment. Maybe I should have noted that. I did follow up with a “But seriously….” Anyway, I didn’t see TM swaying to music or anything at the 711 at all, other than his movements at the counter which, as unitron noted, was just him digging into his pants for change.
Sorry, I didn’t realize you’d be so sensitive about being accused of not patronizing convenience stores, I guess I should have added a smiley. 😀 Lots of people I know
would consider such an accusation to be highly complimentary.
Anyway, I thought I’d just toss the music meme into mix to confuse and confound the treepers.
wassointeresting
June 2, 2013 at 5:13 PM
@Lonnie, ha! you’re right, I wouldn’t be caught in a 7-11, no way!!!! That’s just because I’m cheap and can’t see myself paying $2-3 for a soda when I can buy a full 2 liters at the supermarket for $1.
Yeah, our Grand Parents called this type of thing “abject stupidity Chile”, of course we new age people knew better, it was what we call “upscale/avant garde” and/or “jiggy with it”.
All of which sounds very upscale and “with it”, “hip” and “cool”, except for the fact that pay 2 or 3 dollars for less than half of what you can for 1 dollar, is patently stupid, no matter how one dresses it up. Of course, that’s why the commercial whizz by so quick that nobody gets a chance to think about the fact that it’s a super athlete multi millionaire whose leading the “burger jockeys and entry level paper shufflers” to slaughter.
It’s hard to believe that the trial will begin in a mere 10 days, although frustrating to know that the first week or two will be taken up by voir dire. Perhaps we can take this time to review the evidence, at least that which has been publicly released. I think we should first realize that character issues are not likely to be brought up; the state will focus all its attention on the events of that night, and, perhaps, to Zimmerman’s behavior in the days afterward.
What evidence suggests Zimmerman’s criminal profiling of Trayvon, and how this state-of-mind led to his subsequent actions? What evidence suggests that Trayvon consistently behaved in such a manner that would lead a reasonable person to persist in believing him to be suspicious?
What evidence supports or contradicts Zimmerman’s statements as to why he followed Trayvon? What evidence belies his assertion that he merely walked to Retreat View Circle and was attacked just beyond the T as he walked back to his truck?
What evidence suggests Trayvon, at any time, showed aggression towards Zimmerman, or that, if he did punch Zimmerman in the nose, that such an act was or was not reasonable?
What evidence suggests that, when the struggle began, Zimmerman made no effort to retreat, and that he, in fact, sought to restrain Trayvon? What evidence suggests otherwise?
What evidence supports or contradicts Zimmerman’s assertion that he had no choice but to save his life by killing Trayvon?
“What evidence belies his assertion that he merely walked to Retreat View Circle and was attacked just beyond the T as he walked back to his truck?”
One huge piece of evidence is that map that GZ personally drew paths upon. The path back from RVC to the T is worth looking at. It doesn’t go past the T and on to(wards) his vehicle at all. Instead it seems to cut across right where the dog waste station is, and then heads south a little towards John/W6’s back yard but doesn’t quite reach that far, much like GZ himself pantomimed his “stumbling” less than half the actual distance to the body.
Then of course there is the clock itself. He must have CRAWLED that distance on his belly if it that’s how long it took him to only go that far.
And again, there’s that map he drew on. In his walk thru “re-enactment” he stops short of the street. On the map he crosses the street to the opposite side. Which was it, George?
I see that map as a keystone piece of evidence against him, mostly for the car-to-pedestrian chase it suggests, but also for the “missing minutes” paths he drew.
Everything gz said about FT’s and the clubhouse was made up out of whole cloth.
But the most critical lies of all are about the actual confrontation, gz’s version is certifiably a lie, made up out of whole cloth, which my last link above demonstrates.
Well, from the evidence we have here GZ is not the neighborhood hero who was attacked at the Tee, but the cowardly criminal and lying stalker who shot a helpless kid in cold blood!
I tend to think W11 is just mistaken. Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable.
Then again we just don’t know. What’s clear is that someone closed a gap between these two people. Either it was the unarmed teen who had just run away from a menacing car, or it was the hot-tempered, violence-prone wannabe cop with a loaded gun who had just told theNEN call taker that he wasn’t going back to his car after all.
YES! By saying ” umm just have them call me and I’ll tell them where I am”, he informed NEN he was not returning to his car. So, jury,WHAT was his plan? Consider his options, jury members.
A. continue with his grocery shopping?
B. Return home.?
Neither of these make sense as NEN had his cell number as Shawn stated it and GZ last words were : ” yes, you got it”
Instead, he said you have my contact number and I will tell you where I am when cop gets here.
That is as pure a line of what his intent was as I have read. And it keeps it to the KISS principle.
I don’t think W11 is wrong when she states that the initial yells were coming from the T area. This is the only way to explain why those initial yells are heard only by the witnesses living by the T (including W18). This is also the only way to explain why there is a clear gradient of what was heard going south from the T. For example, 3 houses down, they heard the cries for help but not the initial yells. Then, 4 houses down, (Mary & Selma) they barely heard the cries for help but still heard the gunshot. Then, 5 houses down (W19), she heard the cries only after opening her back porch sliding door to walk her dog.
I’m sure W2, on which the analysis is mostly based, is the unreliable witness. In fact I believe she simply lied during her 1st interview with Serino outside her house. Indeed, she starts with claiming doing and seein what her sister, W01, did and saw. Then, she states seeing things that she will later recants.
Finally, LLM misunderstood W01’s drawing. If you look to her map as you listen to her interview, you can’t miss the fact that she swapped north and south in her map, and that what she flailing hands she describes are occurred by JohnW6’s house.
That said, I find more significant that there was a loud argument started between the T and TTL as W11 seems to indicate. That suggests that the 2 were coming from TTL which can only go against GZ. There is no claim from DeeDee about where it started and where TM walked. There is a claim from GZ that is that he was just 1 step past the T when TM called him out and punched him. If GZ’s story is to be believed, it is rather difficult to understand how the 2 ended up rushing down the dogwalk.
wassointeresting
June 1, 2013 at 10:16 PM
Somebody’s gotta make Jeremy spill the beans.
amsterdam1234
June 2, 2013 at 3:41 AM
I agree with you Tchoupi, it started near the T. W1, w2 didn’t speak with Serino that first night. There was a neighborhood meeting one or both of them attended, where they told an LE they may have information. I think w2 was trying to hide the fact that her daughter witnessed the entire event but that she felt guilty about it and pretended that she was the one witnessing a footchase. She just wasn’t prepared to answer the details like, which way were they running.
Why would they release an anonymus tip, that didn’t pan out anything?
I am not sure about the rules concerning a minor child’s testimony, but I can imagine it wouldn’t have been difficult to get an agreement to keep that kind of information out of the public domain.
wassointeresting
June 2, 2013 at 4:27 AM
@amsterdam, Wait, what? I’ve been out of it, so please bear with me. Are you just speculating or has there been some new information regarding the 8 year old female witness that may have seen the whole thing according to the anonymous tip? Does witness 2 have a young daughter that some suspect to be the “saw it all” witness or is this your own hunch? Sorry, that comment just caught my attention, but I’m unsure of the context. Thanks for any clarification.
amsterdam1234
June 2, 2013 at 6:16 AM
@wassointeresting
That is my deduction of the facts. You can judge for yourself.
Here is the memo
Notice that they didn’t return to W1 and W2, because they’d already been there.
W1 and w2’s porch was screened in. I’ll add a link to an image in the next comment.
This is from w2’s statement.
I took my… was… My daughter and her friend was here. They were upstairs talking. I talked with them for a minute. Then I went into the bathroom and I took my contacts out.
This is from w1’s statements
Batchelor: Who all was home with you that night?
W1: It was me, my neice, my sister, and her little girl friend.
and later in her statement
In the meantime, my neice and her friend was looking out the front. And I guess the cop cars were already there because they were looking out through my neice’s window. They didn’t see anything that was going on in the back. They were looking out in the front. So, they didn’t see anything as far as anything that happened in the back.
Notice the over emphasis on “the kids didn’t see anything”. Over emphasizing a fact is usually a warning signal for deception. It bothered me before I knew about the kid that supposedly saw it all.
I first thought that w2’s first statement was mixed up with her sister. When I realized she completely changed her statement, I started to put 2 and 2 together.
wassointeresting
June 2, 2013 at 6:41 AM
Intriguing. If true, I wonder if the young mystery witness could be brought forth at trial, and if so, what would that ever mean in terms of credibility if W2 stated in the first place about her not seeing anything.
amsterdam1234
June 2, 2013 at 6:40 AM
@wsi
and here you can see w1 and w2’s porch is screened in.
wassointeresting
June 2, 2013 at 6:52 AM
@amsterdam, thanks for the detailed explanation of your theory and the link. I had dismissed any of the original witness’ residences as being where that potential young eye-witness lived, but this deserves a second look.
amsterdam1234
June 2, 2013 at 6:41 AM
And now with a link.
amsterdam1234
June 2, 2013 at 7:04 AM
@wsi,
How many anonymus tips that didn’t return anything of value have been included in the discovery? I think it is there to validate what ever statements were recovered at a later date.
If it is true, the defense would know about it. The information would’ve been kept out of view of the press and the public.
I can’t blame w2 for wanting to keep her child out of it. Here is this guy, who lives on the complex and was set free after murdering a teenager in your backyard. I can understand not wanting to put your child in the position of being the only eyewitness who saw it all.
What we do know for a fact is that a female child was living in a house with a screened in porch, within sight of the murder scene. We also know the footchase was part of the original charge. GZ was charged in april. w2 changed her story on the 20th of march.
We’ll find out at the trial. If the child saw it, she’ll be testifying. It may very well be part of the evidence the prosecution couldn’t make public.
LLM gets a lot of things wrong, sadly. His videos are a testament however to the power of persuasion using motion pictures as a medium. He gets plenty right, as well. But were his various theories and opinions presented as a paragraph in a comment section of a blog, like this is, they would carry less weight with a general audience.
I hate to harp on my pet theory (because it’s no more valid than another) but again I have to point out that the only PHYSICAL evidence we have of where TM went is the location of his body and cell phone. So it’s possible that he never went anywhere else at all.
I could see a scenario where GZ did all the wandering around in the missing minutes and TM essentially stuck around John’s back yard on the phone, pacing in a small circle until eventually edging up towards the T to see if the stranger on a cell phone was going to return from the direction of RVC, only to be surprised by GZ approaching from the south.
Many things are possible. What GZ claimed happened is not possible.
amsterdam1234
June 2, 2013 at 1:56 PM
@willis
At least drop John’s backyard. I think John was the only person with a porch light on. I agree with you that everything is possible, but it doesn’t make sense to hide in the only spot where he could easily have been seen.
Hmmm, I don’t know whose map that is in the video but I did get the impression she did draw a map. If so, she’s about as mistaken as the guy who swore he saw MMA punches that never happened either.
It’s like the lady at the check out counter, sure she make mistakes now and then, but if the “mistakes” are always in her own favor…. what do we think then?
The other piece of evidence is George’s failure at understanding the risks involved with playing cops.
In an earlier instance, GZ would also have gone after the suspicious person he was reporting to dispatcher, if it was not for Shellie to tell him not to. http://www.wesh.com/blob/view/-/15490530/data/3/-/d4lnkj/-/Call-1.null
And her objections that time is why I am 110% convinced she was NOT with him this time. Lot of other reasons, too, but going on that occasion, she’d not have let him do it. There is no sound of her objecting during the NEN call. She wasn’t there.
Trayvon was able to see GZ was a white dude and he was talking on the phone. Hard to imagine he could’ve missed Shellie sitting next to him. I don’t understand why people keep insisting she was in the car with him.
It keeps coming up because of the sounds heard on the NEN tape. It is a truck, so she could have been laying in the rear seat. It has tinted windows, and GZ claims to have rolled the window down and been asked if he was following, to which he says he replied no and rolled the window back up. Of course this story is a crock because he’d have been on the NEN call by the time “He’s coming towards me!” The NEN call is continuous with no drops.
So, there is no way that Sean could have failed to have heard this exchange.
Of course… It occurs to me that gz’s claim that he rolled down the window, may just be another one of his ways of covering up things that he actually did, by saying that it was done for another purpose. Perhaps rolling down the window was part of his terrorizing Trayvon, to get him to run, so in case someone saw him roll his window down, or in case, by this time, he knew Trayvon had been talking on the phone, gz was seeking to cover more of his actions.
Just a thought.
amsterdam1234
June 4, 2013 at 10:55 AM
@lonnie
I think GZ is a coward. Serino described him as a softy with a hero complex. His ex fiancee described him as the last person she would expect to put him self in danger. I think the most succinct observation about GZ’s personality came from the middle eastern co-worker. He said that he didn’t think GZ was a racist, but that he was a bully who would pick on anyone he’d considered weak, just to make himself popular with his peers. He also said that he thought if Trayvon would’ve been a 30 year old man weighing 200lbs, GZ would’ve never gone after him.
I heard him in one 911 call, where he called in about a mature black male, telling the dispatcher, he wasn’t going to go out there.
I’ve listened to some of the calls between Shellie and GZ. They are playing their roles. Shellie plays the weak woman and GZ the strong man. But it is all roll playing. It is Shelle’s role to stop him from doing things, he would never do anyway, but now he can continue to feel masculine. You know, the old ball and chain keeping him back.
Taking Shellie with him while doing manly stuff, doesn’t fit in their relationship pattern.
I think GZ had been drinking that evening. I think he soiled his underwear when Trayvon was passing his car on his way home. GZ must have seen, he was only dealing with a thin teenager carrying a 7 eleven bag. I think he must have known at that point Trayvon wasn’t a threat to him. When Trayvon started to run, he knew Trayvon was afraid of him. He got out of that car, because he found a victim he could bully and make himself feel more masculine.
Okay, I got that and it seems to be on point with the persona I’ve captured of him, so I’ll scratch the theory that Shellie was in the car with him, based solely on your validation that she’s a check on him, even if only for things he wouldn’t do anyway. I also doubt he could either keep her quiet or get her to lay down on the seat.
But, that said, he does need to know that people will be with him if he’s going to do something. The evidence we have so far of the way he moved that night, still suggest that he had someone out there keeping an eye on Trayvon and probably tracking him. Those three guys he met at the 711 seem to be the key, they did have a car. They’d be the ideal candidates for tracking Trayvon’s movements. If that car passed him twice on the way back, he’d almost certainly be paranoid and cut off the road through Colonial Village, if only to gain some peace of mind.
I still believe he goes to the kiosk before gz has a chance to leave home. Tchoupi’s track of the vehicle that comes down RVC close to 7:08 or so fits too nicely not to be gz’s truck. It’s not like there’s a lot of traffic to confuse it with and while he’s making his first and second pass at the mail kiosk the cctv’s at either end and the front gate pick up no interference at all.
So, what we have is Osterman’s car missing in action and Shellie’s car on TTL near the back gate. The thing that gets me is, the guy who was checking plates seems to get to gz’s
vehicle before he gets to the HOA presidents truck and it should be the other way around if gz was parked where he says it was. Because the officer seems to have been moving north on TTL. So why should he come to gz’s vehicle first if gz’s vehicle was parked further north?
Right?
A possible explanation I see would be if Shellie picked him up at the MI bank and drove him in. But then, why would she do that if they weren’t already tracking Trayvon? One possible explanation would be that when gz left home, in the condition he was in, and in response to a call, Shellie might have begun to worry about him and when Osterman called she told him what gz was doing, and that he was armed Osterman would know better than to bring his car in while the hunt was going on. Knowing how erratic gz could possibly be.
Maybe they were out there trying to stop him? But by time they heard the screams and knew where he was, the gunshot came before they could get to him and MO advised Shellie and possible Taaffe that they’d better get away from the area and not be caught there at all.
Anyways that’s all speculation. The only reason to speculate this way is, because if there is something in the records we have, we’re likely to miss it’s significance if we have no theory at all. In much the same way we’ve all missed the stain on Jon’s garage door frame. I think long ago some one pointed it out, be we had no idea that gz could have gone that way, so we simply dismissed it. We still don’t know that it’s a blood stain, but we do have an eye on it now and so, if something else comes along that can be tied to it, we’re unlikely to dismiss it so quickly. Of course, none of this is necessary since we already have enough to know that gz is guilty as sin.
More than half of what we’ve developed over the year, probably won’t even be used at the trial.
And, even more important evidence probably still remains hidden from our view.
amsterdam1234
June 6, 2013 at 8:05 AM
Lonnie,
I admire your energy and imagination, but I use a complete different method for putting together my theories. I just collect every piece of information I can find and store it without categorizing it. All these pieces of information form patterns. If a certain pattern appears 2 times, I start paying more attention to it, at 3 times I will start testing it against other pieces of evidence. If too many pieces of evidence are pointing away from the pattern, I drop it unless or until other pieces of evidence lead me back to it.
If other pieces of evidence affirm the pattern I start developing a theory.
Based on my method your theories don’t pass my requirements for calling it a theory. Doesn’t mean I am right and you are wrong. It just means that from my perspective you are creating a path and distributing pieces of known facts along the way to see if you have enough pieces. I just don’t think that is a very reliable and effective method. You are helped by your imagination, but you are also limited by it. In other words, if you can’t think of it, you will never find it.
I just note the coordinates of different pieces of evidence, then take a step back and watch the bigger picture to see what paths are lighting up.
I work the way I do because I know there’s lots of debris floating around always. Some of it means something while a lot of it doesn’t. But, what you don’t see is that I know my limits, which is why I put out theories that may seem half baked to some. I don’t work within my limits at all, but I put things out there so that other can either attach their own info, or knock the theory down with critical points. That’s called “working with others” not working alone. You’ll note that once someone gives a good challenge, if the theory can’t be fixed I drop it and move on. As opposed to people who “invest” in their theories and then tend to defend them at all cost. I consider my theories to be mostly dismissible until they aren’t.
But we need people working by different methods, when we finally all, or most, come together on something that’s how progress is made.
Originally back when NLME posted his map and timeline, I looked at the element of what gz would have had to experience, to see Trayvon by Taaffe’s and it didn’t make sense to me, because there were too many elements that would have been coincidental, while others did not fit the natural work flow of driving in the rain on a dark night with a well defined mission or chore at hand. Okay, when I put these gossamer elements together to theorize that gz was lying about that segment of the saga, I was challenged, and although I had to concede some portions, there was just not enough of a challenge to knock the whole thing out. That’s when NLME took another look and decided that there was something to the theory. Of course later on tchoupi’s cctv work put the final nail in the coffin of the FT meeting. But the theory survived in the interim because, the timelines when looked at more carefully didn’t support the claim either. Now we’re on the same page with that, Trayvon may have come by FT’s place, but gz was nowhere around when he did.
But it took all of us working together to get to the final version of that. You were there, so I think you know how close and far afield some speculations about it went before we were able to get on the same track.
So, while we’re still working with unknowns in a large “debris field” there’s plenty to speculate about and many attempts are needed to even select which of it is relevant or not. So it tales a village still. We’re all trying to find the theory that passes the acid test and doing so by different means. We’ve all succeeded and we’ve all failed on various points. That’s the struggle.
amsterdam1234
June 7, 2013 at 2:34 AM
@lonnie
I appreciate what you are doing. It took me a while to understand why people think and work in different ways, and that all those different approaches are just as good. When I look at some of your theories, it is a confrontation with my own limited view on how a problem should be analyzed.
In Carl Jung’s psychological typology, you would represent the Intuitive type and I Sensation. These types are 2 sides of the same coin, both collect information and perceive, they are called the irrational functions, because they don’t judge, they just perceive. Intuition perceives what could be and sensation perceives what is.
The other 2 types are called the rational types, they are Thinking and Feeling. They decide and judge. They also form a pair and are each others polar opposite.
We all need to be able to perceive and judge. So if both of us bring in what we perceive, and we then can use our judgement functions to weigh that what we perceived, we can work very well together.
So let’s get to work, you throw out your theories, I throw out what I perceive and then we decide and judge which parts can stay and which parts should go.
Now you’re cookin… But, it’s better that we work our best thing and let those who are better at judging have a look and tell us what they think. The goal, after all, is not to arrive at something that convinces us, but to create something that convinces others.
I chose to work my way a long time ago, when I realize I could easily convince myself of what ever I wanted to be convinced of. As you can see, it only makes matters worse when you have two people doing this same thing to themselves. Convincing themselves of what they agree to be convinced of. This is why I say “It takes a village”. 2000 years ago, one man would have decided this case. 50 years ago it would have been 6 jurors a judge and two lawyers. Today it’s millions of people working in the same direction.
I don’t think W11 is wrong when she states that the initial yells were coming from the T area. This is the only way to explain … why there is a clear gradient of what was heard going south from the T.
I think this analysis is TOO neat. No one in Jon’s house appears to have heard anything before the gunshot. John does not seem to have been aware of anything until TM and GZ were actually scuffling in his backyard. There are too many other factors besides distance that would affect audibility.
W11 has a motive to be less than truthful, as she is an officer of the HOA. W11’s and W20’s statements also do not match well with the audible evidence of the 911 call. “Jeremy, get IN here!” strongly implies he was out on the screened in porch.
I think perhaps the only consensus we could arrive at is that all the residents missed seeing and hearing the start of the altercation, and that whatever each of them witnessed, no one could give a clear picture of what actually occurred. (Maybe the anonymous 8 year old exists and maybe she doesn’t. If she isn’t testifying at trial, it matters not to a jury.)
I wonder about the W11 / W20 “bend a corner” description but doubt they were that quick to coordinate a false narrative with GZ unless he himself laid it out to them in the moments after being handcuffed, which no one else seems to say happened. But who knows, maybe that’s what Osterman accomplished while he was on the scene – helping to coordinate a false narrative somehow by speaking with GZ as he was sitting in ofc Tim Smith’s car and then casually explaining to the HOA officer “what happened here was…” But that is pure speculation and in essence the definition of a “conspiracy theory.” The HOA officer would be sticking his neck WAY out for what’s essentially very little potential gain. Would you lie about a murder that others seemed to have witnessed? They had to have seen Jon /W13 out there, and they had to assume he saw and heard as much or more than they did. Think of all this person is risking if they were deliberately coordinating a false narrative with a killer. Many things are possible.
No matter what really happened precisely, I do tend to think there was something of a “quarterback scramble” that occurred briefly somewhere, and the two may have run in small circles or slung one another around as GZ grabbed at Trayvon’s hoodie trying to detain him. Looking at the photos, the tree closest to the T seems trimmed to high up to have been the cause of the scratches on GZ’s face, but the tree that is closer to TTL and W11s side windows does have low branches. In some versions of what’s possible, this tree could have caused the “struggling in the bushes’ sounds that someone ( I forget who) reported hearing, and the scratches on GZ’s face and possibly also the bloody nose.
I’m just not able to take ANY resident’s story and make myself certain that they are right about what they think they saw and heard. It all happened fairly quickly and in a dark place where no one was directly focusing attention on for very long at all. Eyewitnesses are simply not reliable. This phenomenon has been studied extensively. Everyone wants to help, and everyone thinks they can form a narrative.
I also tend to doubt the resident’s ability to judge the direction of sounds from inside their units. Imagine yourself at the base of a long T-shaped hallway corridor. Someone makes noises as they approach the intersection from either the left or right of the top of the T, but they never quite arrive at the T, or else they do and you don’t see them because your eyes are closed at that moment. Do you think you could reliably say “they came from the left” or would that just be your own first impression clouding your brain? The units at RATL are essentially shotgun shacks, each with a narrow view out the back. That’s why w18 is so different – unlike most others, she had a clear view of the whole “field of action.” The rest were essentially wearing blinders, privy only to what passed them by in a straight shot out the patio doors or screen porch unless and until they went all the way up to the window/door.
I think you should listen again to the statements given by the Manalos.
To sum it up, they claim they first heard someone yelling like a howl, then they heard the cries for help, then the gunshot.
I agree with you that they heard less than the W11, W18 & W20 in the sense that they did not identify a loud argument. However, there description of what there heard is somewhat closer to W06’s.
I agree with you that there are many parameters influencing what people can hear. That said, there are many witnesses that you can put on the map and rank per what they heard. You’ll immediately see the gradient that is that the ones near the T heard more than the ones further south. It also fits well what JohnW06 said when explaining his experience on how noises made by people on the dogwalk are heard. When asked about how he knows the noise was further away and coming toward him, he answered that noise sourced two houses away are fainted. I cannot neglect people’s experience of their own places.
Concerning Jeremy going out. I obviously don’t know if he went to his backporch. That said, you have to remember that the houses at the ends of each house block have a locked screened back porch. In that situation, you can argue what outside means. The sliding door going to the back porch were open in the case of W11 & W20 (1211 TTL). This is why we could hear the cries for help. But, the backporch itself could not lead outside. In short, I don’t know what Jeremy could have done or seen from there.
What I find interesting though, is that the end houses also have a different layout with the kitchen
window giving to the side. In the case of W11’s kitchen, it is opening to the section of the cut through between TTL & the T. Is it possible that’s the reason why they heard the initial argument coming from there? I don’t know, but it is likely.
I think Jeremy went “out” onto his screened-in porch, not outside that. But had he been on the porch, he would have seen more than he claims. He claims he saw nothing. He also claims he was in the kitchen, which is at the FRONT of the house, looking for a knife while W11 was yelling at him to come inside.
IIRC, W11/W20 are the only witnesses who claim they heard the altercation moving North-to-South. I am not suggesting the argument moved South-to-North, only that it all occurred in the vicinity of W11 and W6’s backyards, and was never actually up by the T itself.
Also, don’t forget, it’s very easy to simply say you saw nothing until… whenever and it would be hard to prove you knew more, unless someone witnessed something. But, who would have witnessed them receiving phone calls and looking out windows? Making phone calls? While there was no disturbance happening to attract anyone’s attention, nothing would be witnessed at all. If no one wanted to talk about anything they did, before anyone else knew anything or even to look, we’ll probably never find out. Which is why little slips and mismatches led to suspicions of more going on but not being revealed.
Remember BDLR claimed in early hearings the state has witnesses (plural) to a foot chase.
This could mean W2 and Dee Dee, I suppose or it could mean something else. But note Dee Dee is only one person, and W2 is only one person. Dee Dee didn’t “witness” a two person foot chase, she heard about one while on the telephone. This hint about plural witnesses is something I felt at the time, and still do, as probably as close as we’ve come to seeing behind the curtain into the prosecution’s strategy.
People characterize W2’s later statements as a “recanting” of her earlier tale of seeing a two person foot chase. I don’t see it quite that way. It’s more like she avoids the topic and is vague. No one presses her directly to confirm or recant anything directly. Again, almost in an odd way they don’t press her about the foot chase, the most significant thing she claims she witnessed. I have opined in the past that perhaps it dawned on her that the state or the SPD saw her as a “star witness” and she didn’t want the role, so she tried to play down her involvement.
Certainly the niece/daughter/playmate visiting story is intriguing. Thank goodness the trial is soon, I’m growing weary of all the things we don’t yet know.
But riddle me this: If the state put W2 on the stand and asked her point-blank if she TOLD THE POLICE she saw a two person foot chase, is she going to say yes, or no?
Or, perhaps at trial she will be put on the stand and THERE she will admit to the court that her daughter and/or the daughter’s friend saw the whole thing, and that she lied to cover up their presence for their own protection. Then, as a surprise witness the state calls the 8 year old. That would be a dramatic moment indeed.
I feel bad speculating about this however as there is possibly somewhere an eight year old girl who could be at risk to threats or assault by some very low characters.
W2’s first statement to the police, is completely different to what she told in her second interview. I actually thought they mixed up her recorded interview with that of her sister. In her first interview she basicly told the same story as her sister. That she was in the kitchen cooking and not that she was upstairs. She can’t be used by the prosecution.
I’ve kept my speculation about the mystery witness confined to this site because I do feel some concern. Maybe I am mistaken, but sometimes I think we are the only people willing to read lengthy comments with lost of data. But I guess I shouldn’t fool myself.
I just want this tral to get started, so we can get some answers.
That’s the thing about W02 that I hate. Because she told two different stories, she cannot be used by prosecution. She may have told the truth about a 2 person chase, she will be fried by defense if she’s called as a witness. Her sister’s story is much more consistent and in that story, she states that W02 was upstairs and did not even realize a fight was going on right by her bedroom.
amsterdam1234
June 2, 2013 at 2:05 PM
She can’t be used as a witness who saw a foot chase, that is for sure. The question is, why would she lie about it. They didn’t contact the police that night, they stayed out of the media, they don’t appear to have any connection with the HOA, GZ or the Martin family. That is why I think she may have wanted to get the information her daughter may have observed to the police, without having to expose her daughter.
The State has handed all the witness names and depositions to the defence. They can’t “surprise” them with a mystery 8-year-old. So how come O’Mara hasn’t breathed a whisper about it? I can see them not wanting to admit to an actual real witness, but can’t they have started some excuse for some doxing? they did with everyone else.
Even is the State calls her Witness X all the way through, if her evidence is what she saw from the window, it wouldn’t be hard to work out who she is.
Then I can see the kid being ripped to shreds with “who told you to say this?”
Fascinating stuff, the mystery goes so deep on each level.
You guys aren’t answering my question: if the state put W2 on the stand and asked her if she told SPD that she saw a two person foot chase, what would her answer be? Yes, or no?
I feel like she’d have to answer yes. After she said that, I’d turn her over to the defense for cross-examination and simply hope for the best.
I admit the defense could have a field day with her on cross examination but I’m not sure a jury could ever shake the idea that she FIRST said she saw a two person foot chase. Her later statements to me seem like those of someone who is reluctant to be saddled with the job of being a star witness for the prosecution. And if she were asked about this reluctance, or duplicity, whatever her answer would be, the QUESTION, if posed by the state (on re-direct, or after being called again) would cover a lot of territory for jurors, who might imagine themselves in a similar position – sitting in life-or-death judgement over a person. I’d tend to think the jury would be sympathetic to her, even if she admitted to some flip-flopping that occurred LATER as the weight of the case started to sink in. The jurors are going to feel like they are in the same boat as she was. It’s a tough case with slim hard evidence where it counts most it seems.
Willis,
She is as tainted as John is. Not good for the prosecution to have your witness exposed as a waffler. You don’t just harm the witness, you damage the prosecutor. If the jury feels a lawyer is not being honest in how he presents the evidence, it will hurt his credibility.
Tainted or not, John/W6 will be called by the defense I’m betting.
I agree that W2 might damage the prosecution’s seeming position of authority and veracity, but they are going to face that same problem with W8/Dee Dee and her “hospital visit” story. Should they also not call her?
Sometimes bad choices are the only choices you have available. If she (or her daughter) saw a two person foot chase then she’s a star witness in my book, no matter what else she did or said. I think the defense could impeach her character and pain her as a “waffler” like you say but I’m not sure a jury would be convinced she invented from whole cloth the story of a two person foot chase. The reasons for waffling all seem to skew towards a reluctance to be the star witness, or perhaps a desire to protect the 8 year old, not covering up for an invented tale about a foot chase.
The state could put W2 on the stand and pro-actively ask her all the tough questions about her “waffling” in advance of the defense doing so, and gain some ground back by admitting she is a reluctant witness and giving her an opening to explain why she might be reluctant and why she seemed to back off – but never deny – having seen a two person foot chase.
In any case we’ll soon see.
And, just to satisfy my curiosity, what do others here feel W2 saw and didn’t see?
Maybe she is covering for a daughter. Maybe she heard something that sounded like a foot chase and didn’t really see anything at all. Maybe she saw a foot chase but didn’t want to be a star witness. Maybe she made the whole thing up and quickly regretted it. Personally, I see them all as possible / likely except the last one. I don’t think she made something up out of thin air. It doesn’t make sense.
amsterdam1234
June 2, 2013 at 2:52 PM
Willis
Please read Screamin Jay’s transcripts of W2’s statements. It is not the waffling, she completely changed the story.
DeeDee is a completely different story, I think almost anybody can understand DD’s lie. If there is one kind of lie almost all of us have told at some time in our lives, it is one like that.
If w2 lied to protect her daughter, I think that is something people will also understand.
One thing GZ’s camp always confuses is witnessing a fight and witnessing an aggression. JohnW6 saw a fight at best but he never saw the aggression. There is no need for john W6 to know that there was a fight as one guy is dead and the other had some wounds (although shallow).
The fact that TM was seen on top doesn’t mean anything about who started that fight. And who through the 1st punch doesn’t matter much as the prosecution will remind the jury that the fight occurred because GZ made the wrong step of going after TM. TM was stalked and was defending himself.
GZ didn’t realize that the law says, you cannot cause a person to fear or become concerned for their own safety, and then claim self defense if a fight ensues, whether it leads to death or not.
Obviously gz thinks that he’s the only one with any rights out there that night, because of his NW status. But that is not true, because of his NW status, he actually has fewer rights than an ordinary citizen would. While an ordinary citizen might, credibly believe he had a right to keep an eye on a suspicious person, not so for a NW’er who are trained not to follow suspicious people, but to report them and wait for the police.
When GZ decided to exceed his mandate, he became a criminal in the eyes of the law, no longer was he a NW’er, but a criminal stalker engaged in assaulting a child.
Maybe she is protecting the daughter. Maybe she got threatened. Maybe only in the safety of a court-room will she feel able to say so, especially if the threat seemed to come from cops ….
We’ve all had experiences in life, so we know the difference between someone who is lying outright and someone who is merely being flustered by questioning by a silver tongued lawyer.
If she comes across as adamant about what she saw, but confused as to how it should be said to close off any doubt, and the defense is seen taking advantage of the witnesses ability to simply speak clearly, they going to reject him and his offers. It’s like Archie Bunkers wife Edith, even when she didn’t say what she thought, you knew what she was thinking!
Anyone seen this? The docket showed this week that the defense filed their fourth supplemental. However it never showed up on the website. Apparently someone at crimewatchers dug up this story inOrlando Sentinel by Stutzman in Google cache. The story has been deleted from the Sentinel website.
Interesting. It seems according to the generally favorable towards the defense Rene Stutzman that a video the defense claimed in open court of Trayvon filming “his buddies beating up a homeless guy” is actually just a video Trayvon shot of TWO homeless people arguing (drunkenly possibly) over a bicycle. Trayvon is heard laughing from behind camera.
If the defense actually filed this, we’ll learn eventually what was in it. But more intriguing to me is the idea that, as most suspect, Mark O’Mara leaks items in advance to Rene Stutzman at the Sentinel as a means of currying favor and injection his spin onto evidence as it is made public.
I’m speculating here but what may have occurred is that MOM told Stutzman he was about to turn over this video as discovery, and she filed the story, having gotten both the video, or the opportunity to view it and some off-the record words from MOM for her to frame the story with. I also think this sort of back-scratching is going on between these two. But here, this one time, she couldn’t give him the spin he wanted. The facts were just too far off from what he wanted printed and she or her editors put their foot down and wrote the story in a straightforward manner. Then MOM read the story and decided NOT to actually file the video into discovery at all, leaving her with egg on her face and her paper needing to retract an item. Again, time will tell.
It is on the record what O’Mara said about the video. If she saw that video, she has no excuse for withdrawing that article. The defense has acknowledged it by posting an apology on their website.
wassointeresting
June 2, 2013 at 5:36 PM
I don’t know if many here had watched the Seinfeld comedy series, but this just reminds me of the last episode when Jerry and his friend Kramer watched and laughed while they videotaped an overweight man getting carjacked and did nothing about it. The man wasn’t hurt but he called the cops on the “do nothing witnesses”. The episode ends with the whole group of friends sitting in jail because they happened to be in a small town with a Good Samaritan law and were charged with not helping a person in need. They had a trial and in walks all the characters throughout the years that had been slighted by these guys. Everybody’s claim was of course just “all a misunderstanding” but funny because it was just so ridiculous. Now mind you, no one was getting “beat up helplessly” in the video on TM’s phone, and there was no obligation on his part to “help”, but it just speaks to the voyeur in all of us and how ridiculous it is to define a person’s whole character by snippets of online tweets to a handful of images and videos (highly selected of course), and of course by inaccurate descriptions by defense lawyers who never met the kid. So what was that video doing in the discovery in the first place??????
amsterdam1234
June 3, 2013 at 12:17 AM
So what was that video doing in the discovery in the first place??????
Exactly. I think O’Mara knew damn well, that none of that ” evidence” would be admissable. He got what he wanted. The media jumped on it as if it really did show Trayvon as a violent thug, and O’Mara got to bloviate about the videos and texts in court, in front of a national tv audience and the local jury pool.
That shows one more time that GZ’s defense won’t hesitate bending the truth to make TM look terrible.
There is a huge difference between filming buddies beating up a homeless man and filming two homeless men beating each other up. This is even worse than the suggestion TM swayed at the 7-11 and in the same level of dishonesty as the suggestion that TM discussion about buying a gun.
MOM’s tactic is disgusting and I wonder how far he can go. Can he be deposed?
The last hearing was a real shellacking for Defense. They looked so unprofessional when the Judge Nelson reminded them of the rules of evidence, or the rules/conditions of jurors sequestration, or about the feasibility of the jurors visit of the crime scene. They also looked pathetic when MOM threw Wess under the bus about the release to the public of TM’s texts and pictures. I’m amazed about how low they are ready to go.
Isn’t it nice how Stutzman gets to see the filing and the video, before anybody else. And when the defense doesn’t like what she wrote about, they just delete it.
I wonder when they will make an apology for stating as a fact Trayvon can be seen refereeing in an other video. There is no authentication that that is Trayvon. Trayvon’s brother has stated a year ago, his brother was not in that video.
More to the point, the tall, thin boy (who is referred to as “Trayvon” by the cameraman) does not “referee” the fight. As the clip starts, he is in the back of the crowd. After awhile he has worked his way closer to the action, and just happens to be standing to the point where one of the fighters is knocked back into the onlookers. The other fighter starts to follow after him, and the tall, thin boy puts a hand out, indicating ‘no, that’s not fair.’ That’s not being a “referee”, and whoever the tall thin kid is, he did nothing to be ashamed of.
Interesting Amsterdam because I seem to recall last year reading that it had been confirmed to be Trayvon by someone there, so I or the source must have got it wrong. Certainly from the abysmal quality it is impossible to tell if it is Trayvon or not, except if present or knowing Trayvon personally (his brother would), but all the hullabaloo about a tattoo on the left upper arm proving it can’t be Trayvon because Trayvon’s tattoo is on the right is IMO simply that, hullabaloo, because I parsed the video frame by frame and although the still from MOM’s disclosure LLMpapa used for his video to point to a tattoo on the wrong arm, shows mottling on the left upper arm that could be mistaken for a tattoo, IMO it is noise because in most of the other frames where the left upper arm is visible there is no mottling just clear skin.
I personally thought the youth in the striped T-shirt COULD be Trayvon because it fitted several known parameters as well as what I found, but what I have never been able to fathom is why certain pro Trayvon bloggers deny even the mere possibility that it COULD be him with nothing to back it up.
I mean, so what if Trayvon refereed a fight, or even if he participated as a pugilist? How does that prove a tendency for violence? Does Trayvon have to be so “angelic” in order to win the case he can’t even be in a boxing or wrestling club, pose flipping a finger or wearing a gold grill, all part of today’s teen culture? I find denials per se of images of him doing innocent acts, disturbing, as even if intending to protect Trayvon to me they appear racist even if unwittingly and well intentioned. I mean, if Trayvon were so pure that he couldn’t even participate in the sort of club that over here in the UK are considered beneficial both mentally and physically for young minds, i.e. sparring with your peers without violence or anger, and letting off steam in the process, how does that leave the other youths in the video? If Trayvon were “incapable” of participating in “such things”, IMBW, and I hope I am, but couldn’t that be tarring all the other participants in the video, especially black, as potentially violent thugs?
I don’t know where you got all that from my comment. I didn’t see anything thuggish in that video and I don’t think that is what I said.
What I do think is thuggish, is a lawyer misrepresenting the truth in court. If that kid in the video is not Trayvon, I would call that a misrepresentation.
Who identified Trayvon in that video? What known parameters did you use to identify Trayvon in that video, and what else did you find that identified the kid as Trayvon, other than that another kid calls out the name Trayvon?
Jahvarius saying that that is not his brother kind of convinces me, if you have evidence to proof him wrong. I would like to see that evidence.
Amsterdam, we seem to be on a cross and you have misunderstood.
I don’t know where you got all that from my comment. I didn’t see anything thuggish in that video and I don’t think that is what I said.
I was not referring to YOUR comment, I know you never said there was anything thuggish about the video, and I didn’t say there was, at least that was not what I meant or intended, but as you understood it that way I apologise.
I too find it convincing if Jahvarius said that it isn’t Trayvon. As I wrote, the video is such poor quality that IMO only persons there at the time or that knew Trayvon personally (clothing, style, posture, gestures, etc.) could really tell if it were him or not, because from the video you hardly glean any facial features. You are right about the lawyer’s thuggish behaviour too.
“Who identified Trayvon in that video?”
”
I am sure I read around a year ago that one of those present had confirmed it was him, but I wasn’t sure which video they were referring to, so I imagined it must be this one as I only saw two and from the text the daylight one seemed to fit best. I have NEVER “identified” the youth as Trayvon, merely said that it COULD BE him by age, height, physique, colour, and there is something about his posture in certain parts which reminds me of photos we know.
All I was trying to say in my previous post, badly it seems, as I was NOT referring to you, is that some seem to just deny per se that an image even COULD BE (please note I stress COULD BE) Trayvon without any other other data to back it up which I feel makes him sound sometimes “too good to be true” when I believe he was a normal teen as Syrina tells. And I think people who deny without any more than intuition, they seem to fear that it will link him to thuggish behaviour, when I think all the images so far show a normal teen, and vehemently denying anything with or without any basis has the counter effect of being derogatory on those teens that did join in the club “fight”, do flip a finger, do have a tattoo, and do pose with gold grills.
Don’t know if I explained myself, amsterdam, but I sure tried and it may be I’m the only one who sees it that way anyway.
amsterdam1234
June 3, 2013 at 5:13 PM
I am sorry gbrbsb,
This case is getting to me, and I am walking around with sharpened teeth and nails. I am just so sickened by the onslought of character assassination of a murdered kid, but that is no excuse for lashing out.
I
Thus screw up could cost O’Mara the OS support! They had to pull the article and it’s all over the internet, making them look terrible! O:Mara’s learning to be toxic just like george!
One thing we have to be prepared for is, the evidence won’t be given in a neat straight time order. They’ll try to give it in an order that build up the picture. But experts, in particular, will be squeezed in out of order, depending on when they’re available. Or if another witness drags out for too long, they may be interrupted to fit in an expert.
Short statements to set the scene will be way out of order, eg police telling about arriving at the scene and their activities there will probably be quite early in the trial.
They might not use all the resident witnesses but I don’t know who they’ll leave out. John6 Jon13 and Selma18 have to be in, for sure. She saw more than anyone else, and a bit more than she’s been saying.
In other news… they’ve set aside areas for protesters at the courthouse. I wonder if there’ll be any problems during jury selection? The media have apparently agreed to not film the jurors IN THE COURT ROOM. So they’re free to film them entering or leaving. And so are “protesters” free to heckle them as they do so, I imagine………. does this court have an underground car park with internal entry? will jurors be allowed to use it?
How long before there are pictures of the jury, sitting there, taken with a cellphone from the public gallery? anyone want to hazard a bet?
Nelson said that the jurors won’t be seen outside the courtroom. I don’t know how she is going to manage that, but the court was pretty good in moving people in and out of the court room without being seen, in the Jodi Arias trial.
In the UK all jurors are completely anonymous and the law has made it a criminal offence for anyone, press or public, to “publish” any detail, picture, etc. of the jury, or for a juror to disclose his acting on a particular case, so much so, I personally don’t recall ever hearing of any juror’s details being out there as whoever did so they would face very serious charges with a prison sentence at the end, for sure.
Selma is W16. W18’s first name is Jayne. I assume you mean JayneW18 will be called. Why do you think she saw more than she’s saying? Her disguised interviews on CNN seemed to cover what she saw, and what she didn’t see, pretty well.
Yes, Jayne. Just the feeling I got from the very first time I heard that call.
She moved to the other window to “feel safer” and the shot was fired while she was on the move. She said. You don’t need to “feel safer” from two guys fighting 50 feet away. You do need to “feel safer” from someone who has a gun, has just used it, and may notice you watching.
Then she totally fell apart asking why? why? why?
And she knew from that distance that the kid was dead. And didn’t she lawyer up?
MOM puts a retraction/apology on his website and Rene has her story to file….
“On Thursday, in preparation for the anticipated release of the fight video, an Orlando Sentinel reporter drafted a story describing it, intending to publish it once the video had been made public. A web producer prematurely posted it to OrlandoSentinel.com Friday but quickly took it down after discovering the video had not been released. The story correctly characterized the video. After readers found a cached version of the story online Sunday, Zimmerman’s attorneys released their statement and decided against posting the video.”
Note that by “an Orlando Sentinel reporter” Rene Stutzman actually is referring to herself. The cached version of the story carried her byline, just as this story does. Way to take accuntability there, Rene.
Kinda like how O’Mara apologized in the third person “Mr. O’Mara misstated….(yadda yadda)…For that, Mr. O’Mara apologizes.” on his website. But it comes off sounding like a faceless webmaster making the apology. Will he not come right out and admit his “misstatement” was HUGELY misleading and probably permanently cemented bias in some blockheads out there?
I wonder if Rene moonlights as his web-mistress. (eye bleach! eye bleach!) lol
wassointeresting
June 2, 2013 at 9:02 PM
Forget the eye bleach, I need to gouge out the part of my brain harboring that ugly image (not calling either of them ugly mind you, just….nevermind…going for the lobotomy now….)
I would guess, as a police beat reporter, Stutzman is close to her sources in the SPD, and her pro-GZ bias comes from those relationships. So maybe she’s ‘in bed’ with Tim Smith and Michael Wagner, and MOM’s just a ‘friend with benefits’ for this occasion. Or maybe we’ll find out something else in the tell-all book Mark Osterman is sure to self-publish when the whole affair (I mean the trial and other legal stuff) is over. 🙂
whonoze :
I think Jeremy went “out” onto his screened-in porch, not outside that. But had he been on the porch, he would have seen more than he claims. He claims he saw nothing. He also claims he was in the kitchen, which is at the FRONT of the house, looking for a knife while W11 was yelling at him to come inside.
IIRC, W11/W20 are the only witnesses who claim they heard the altercation moving North-to-South. I am not suggesting the argument moved South-to-North, only that it all occurred in the vicinity of W11 and W6′s backyards, and was never actually up by the T itself.
JonW13 also described how the two moved. However, we don’t have any visual of what he described. This is the part of JonW13’s interview that is of interest concerning what movement was heard:
“W13: Well, we just heard some loud noises like it was a dog barking. I didn’t hear anyone say anything recognizable at first. Towards the end I heard, “Help”. And as soon as that gunshot went off and my wife says, “Oh, my God, somebody’s been shot” that’s what draw me outside… that’s what drew me outside. That’s pretty much it. I mean, that’s what brought me out there.
Veaudry: How long do you think the… when you first started hearing him… the person scream for help, how long was that?
W13: It couldn’t even have been a minute. It was very quick.
Veaudry: So, you heard this… you heard the sound of what you thought was…
W13: Right. It sounded like it started over here. And then it ended up over there. It was very quick. And before I knew it there… we heard gunshot. “
I just want the trial to start. I just was engaged in the communal fight at Daily Kos, where for more than a year the same people have been waging the same battles. Enough of pet theories, I want to know what the prosecution knows, and I want justice.
I agree. I’m tired also of arguing with “true believers” of GZ.
Lets see the GPS info. Let’s hear the experts. Let’s learn who George called and texted, and what was said. Let’s find out who had turned stated evidence in exchange for immunity. Let’s hear Mark Osterman cross-examined. Let’s watch the defense try to introduce the concept of self defense without putting the defendant on the stand. Let’s see what the judge says about “rolling in” an immunity hearing in the middle of a trial. Let’s see where the buck stops.
Let’s let a jury decide what is fact an what is fiction.
It appears defence is to be allowed a limited deposition of attorney Crump:
Finally, although not a basis of the trial court’s ruling, we reject any suggestion
that Crump’s affidavit would serve as an adequate substitute for a deposition. See
Patrick v. State, 104 So. 3d 1046, 1057 (Fla. 2012) (“Cross-examination is the principal
means by which the believability of a witness and the truth of his testimony are tested.”)
In concluding that the trial court erred in denying Zimmerman an opportunity to
depose Crump, we caution that any deposition of Crump is to be limited to inquiry of
circumstances surrounding the interview of Witness 8 and the contents of such
interview. Defense counsel may not inquire into Crump’s mental impressions regarding
Witness 8, nor may counsel inquire as to the reasons why Crump conducted the
interview in the manner in which he did. Additionally, we believe the work product
privilege precludes defense counsel from making inquiry as to the reason(s) Crump
attempted to locate Witness 8 and the methods employed to do so.
The deposition contemplated by our opinion should be relatively short and
straight forward. We are confident that the trial judge will be able to take the steps
necessary to ensure the deposition is limited to the subject areas described above.
The OS points to two pieces of evidence:
1) GZ applied to be police officer in Prince William County Virginia,
2) GZ trained in a gym that specializes in boxing and kickboxing
Interesting that the state got RZ’s phone records for Feb 26. I would understand having Shellie’s but RZ’s? I always thought that RZ didn’t talk to GZ until the next day. But then again, that was based on RZ on Piers Morgan, when asked “when did you talk to your brother”, he gave kind of a funny answer that was something like “I’m willing to say within twenty-four hours.” Like why couldn’t he give a precise time. Can we speculate he was the one GZ called? I just can’t imagine though that RZ would be the first person on GZ’s mind after the shooting. Then again, it could just be that Shellie called RZ and so the state wants to know about their conversations that night. In effect, they can make Shellie talk about her conversations with the rest of the family because it would not be a “between husband and wife” thing.
Remember what JonW13 said? When he walked toward the T it sounded like GZ was on the phone.
We don’t know if he really was talking on the phone but there’s a chance that he at least tried contacting someone. For sure, we have a picture of him with the phone in his hand as if he was on the phone. We also know that GZ later asked JonW13 to call his wife. Since JonW13 was not GZ’s buddy I guess GZ had to either hand him over his phone or give his wifes #.
All that to say that the zim’s phones went busy pretty quickly.
What caught my attention is the data part. I’m not sure what they mean by that. Did they get texts, internet & gps data?
wassointeresting
June 4, 2013 at 9:35 PM
I doubt it’s GPS data. I think “data” could mean just a list of incoming outgoing calls and phone numbers and times on that day. It would be nice to get text messages too, but I’m not holding my breath. Actually, didn’t the family claim that GZ texted his SISTER about going shopping? If that is true, then where are HER phone records?
Isn’t GZ’s brother a lawyer or studying law or something? If he is then that would answer why GZ would ring junior before anyone else… “Hey bro, just shot an unarmed teen, what do I do?” sort of thing. On the other hand just because he rang RZjnr doesn’t mean he spoke with him, GZ could have left a voice mail or sent an sms but not talked to him and that could be why junior was evasive about answering… just pondering.
I agree “they can make SZ talk about her conversations with the rest of the family” without spousal privilege getting in the way, but unless that rest of the family divulges such conversations exist and what was said, I’d say there ain’t much chance of SZ telling of them.
wassointeresting
June 5, 2013 at 12:42 PM
Nobody really knows what he does or did. I don’t think he’s a lawyer. He MAY have worked for a law firm but then again that may have been confused with his sister who I’m not sure is a lawyer either. There are paralegals, admin assistants, mailroom clerks etc who all work at law firms but aren’t lawyers. According to a CBS article “Zimmerman, a classical singer who said his music has taken a back seat to his role as a spokesperson for his family”
Oke, i am sick of fighting with GZ supporters, but I feel obligated to continue to rectify outright lies. I sure could use some help at the Daily Kos. Lots of good people there, but a little short on details. So if you have an account and feel inclined to enter the arena, please join me.
I found the question that shuts them up a long time ago. Ask them where the two were when GZ had the “by the clubhouse now / yeah now he’s coming towards me” exchange.
They can’t answer this without realizing he’s lying and contradicting himself.
They will change the topic or, of their initials are JM they will ban you from their website but they can’t answer it.
amsterdam1234
June 5, 2013 at 9:41 AM
It is just the same bunch of users. These aren’t particular well versed in the details, I don’t even really think they care. They just want visibility for a set of talking points, mostly dealing about the legal issues. So I am trying to hit them where it hurts, by continuously posting the relevant statutes and challenging them on that.
I just read the comments feud you had. I understand your pain but what do you argue in the 1st place? Answer to their post with facts and stop there.
They have a very different world view (http://iaiwm.wordpress.com/). There is little you can do about that.
Thanks Tchoupi
I appreciate what you are saying. I am not trying to change their minds. I want the record straight for passersby, who may not know to much of the details and are bombarded by bad reporting in the media. You leave it alone, it becomes the truth.
I don’t know if GZ trained there for fighting but given that he wanted to be a police officer, I think it is highly possible. It would also explain why the prosecution puts it in the evidence.
It must be a reason why GZ chose that specific Gym. It might be close to a place where he used to go (work, Community College, …).
I don’t know where he used to work. Geographically speaking, the Gym is closer to the gun range and the family practice than it is to home or Seminole CC or Mark Ostermann’s.
One of the the fighting diciplines they teach is submission grappling. That seems to fit with his police obsession. We can check the other gyms nearer to his house to see what is on their menu.
Thanks Amsterdam. This is a great job. I love when we can do the job in collaboration.
So, you answered to the question I was asking to myself. Why did GZ chose that specific Gym of all the options he had? It is hard to believe that it was not to learn fighting:
1) It looks like something interesting to the Prosecution,
2) He wanted to be a cop, so it would have been a plus on his resume,
3) This is the ONLY gym with a strong emphasis on training to fight and it is not particularly close from home.
Yes, I always liked that about the bcclist crowd. Give us a project to work on. It also helps me contain my anger. I get so frustrated with GZ defenders.
It seems obvious to me. That is not a fitness school, it is a fightschool. Can’t wait to see what is in those records the prosecution got.
Wondering if Mark Osterman has/had any connection with that gym, and whether he may have recommended it to GZ as a place to learn various cop-like maneuvers…
So after the huge gaffe made by O’Mara regarding the homeless men fighting over the bike video, here the defense is waving their hands over to the side to distract us all.
If I am not getting it wrong, I think K’s testimony has settled the GPS questions and why it was missing on the 26th. It was only tower based anyway so no where near as accurate as the satellite based I’ve used with dedicated software that records data every minute or three or five or whatever, depending how you set it up. I am not surprised and never held my breath but it’s a disappointment nonetheless, because it would have been very useful.
Below I paste the comments I made in the lounge yesterday during the livestream…
_____________________
chi1224 says:
June 6, 2013 at 2:09 pm
So they are using a scientific audio expert to debunk the science of audio analysis?
—
whonoze says:
June 6, 2013 at 2:24 pm
Not debunk the whole field. They want to use him to distinguish between audio analysis methods that are well accepted in the field, and produce results considered “robust” within the research community, and methods that are more controversial, and produce findings considered “fragile” as Dr. Nakasone used the term earlier.
They haven’t gotten to any substance yet, (listening to this is like watching paint dry), but I can’t see how his testimony would go to admissibility rather than weight. But, perhaps we’ll see (or rather hear)… If we all can stay awake…
– – – –
crazy1946 says:
June 6, 2013 at 2:54 pm
BDLR should have objected to the change of order for the witness…
—
whonoze says:
June 6, 2013 at 3:12 pm
Assuming the State has done its homework, they would know pretty much what Dr. N. is going to say. If they let him go first, I would guess they are prepared to counter him on cross.
IANAL, but I still don’t see anything in his testimony that goes to admissibility. However, he might be a formidable rebuttal witness at trial. He seems to know what he’s talking about. I would assume the argument will be that his standards are too conservative, and the State will argue that their experts’ conclusions have a measure of validity even if they don’t meet Nakasone’s criteria.
– – – –
whonoze says:
June 6, 2013 at 3:22 pm
I would guess [Dr. Nakasone’s] assertion that any speech that has been stepped on must be disregarded will be challenged by the State’s experts.
– – – –
whonoze says:
June 6, 2013 at 3:40 pm
In my NAL estimation, the prosecution sufficiently countered Dr. Nakasone’s statement to meet the standards of admissibility.
– – – –
whonoze says:
June 6, 2013 at 3:47 pm
Nakasone just screwed his own pooch by replying ‘Yes,’ to the State’s query as to whether he had ever disagreed with the majority of the scientific community.
– – – –
whonoze says:
June 6, 2013 at 4:15 pm
When all is said and done, it seems to me that Dr. Nakasone’s opinion is rather generic, and based on his very stringent standards. His opinion of the 911 recording comes down to, “We have to throw out everything but 3 seconds of screaming, and no-one can tell anything from 3 seconds of screaming.” His opinion of competing experts comes down to, “Anyone who would claim they can make a positive ID from 3 seconds of screaming is a quack.”
First of all, this doesn’t address the bulk of Reich’s testimony, which is about what words can be recognized by scrutinizing the recording, not who said them.
Second, it sets a clear standard for the State’s voice ID witnesses. I would assume they found more than 3 seconds of the recording usable for their purposes. They will now clearly need to explain their rationale for including the additional material in their analyses. If they can’t do that well, then they SHOULD be disregarded. But I would guess they are armed with arguments as to why their method is valid, and that those arguments will be less generic than Dr. Nakasone’s, but rather refer to the specifics of the recording(s) in question. Something along the lines of, “well, yes, there is a lot of cross-talk, but that doesn’t totally rule out identification IN THIS CASE because of (tech factor x, y, z…)”
– – – –
whonoze says:
June 6, 2013 at 7:31 pm
My guess is that, in the long run (e.g. when the Frye hearing resumes) West and O’Mara’s stalling tactics will backfire. Based on his general cluelessness regarding the tech issues surrounding the audio of Crump’s interview with W8, I suspect Don West doesn’t know enough about audio to effectively cross the State’s experts. Perhaps if Dr. Nakasone were sitting by his side, he could come up with some more pointed and effective counters, but I’m thinking even Tom Owen will be able to run rings around him, not to mention Alan Reich who has a PhD and was a professor at a well-respected university. If West and O’Mara hadn’t wasted most of the day chasing BDLR about that discovery BS, they’d have been able to hear some of the State’s witnesses in the Frye hearing and have Dr. Nakasone respond to them point by point. Now the shoe is on the other foot.
But then, I doubt MOM and West actually expect to win any of their motions, either on sanctions against BDLR or on the Frye hearing. (They have to know Dr. Nakasone’s testimony will go more to weight than admissibility.) So, the whole point still seems to be to aim a rhetorical assault on the jury pool and the media: to get HLN or whoever to run sound sound bites of Don West saying “We caught you!” and Dr. Nakasone essentially calling the State’s experts dangerous quacks (though I’m not the good Dr. is quite as sound-bite friendly as they’d like…)
To me Dr. Nakasone more or less confirmed my understanding of the state of the art of speaker recognition. So, my conclusion remains the same: Machines still don’t beat humans in the domain of speaker recognition today
Here is what I got:
1) Automated speaker recognition is a clear goal,
2) The automated speaker recognition technology is still in its infancy but is growing fast and reached the point where the FBI just decided to adopt it over other methods based on spectrograph.
3) The automated speaker recognition tools are still extremely sensitive to the quality of the recording making it useless in situations like the one we have with W11’s 911 tape.
4) There are other methods of speaker recognition but they require human intervention. Some are based on spectrographs.
5) The spectrograph methods were used for decades by the FBI untill last year.
6) To be efficient the spectrograph methods need a trained examiner [per Dr. Nakasome’s testimony]
One can compare the evolution of speaker recognition to that of other technology moving at replacing humans.
Chess computer programs., 30 years ago would be beaten by nearly any human with a minimum of training. 20 years ago, computer would beat most of humans. Today, there are computers that nearly no human can beat.
But chess is a world with narrow rules. If we look to robotic walk, it took much longer for a machine to get to walking like a human and we’re still beating them up today. It won’t last, but it will take quite some time before a robot beats a tennis player.
From what I saw, automated speaker recognition look even more complex and it will probably be years if not decades for it to really be efficient.
It’s amusing to read news reports about this case…ABC says “During testimony Thursday, Zimmerman looked down at his lap as the 911 call was played in court for Nakasone, the FBI voice examiner who had worked on the case.”
GZ was looking down at his lap texting like he always does during the hearings. They made it sound like he looked down at his lap as if in shame or had an emotional reaction to it. It didn’t seem like he was listening to it at all.
Would anyone here care to summarize what’s actually “news” to is bloggers of late in this case as far as evidence that can be considered?
Yesterday someone let slip that there was a photo of what appeared to be an underage girl who was naked on TMs deleted photo section on his phone.
ABC news broadcast short clips of Trayvon’s voice from a video that was on the phone- perhaps possibly the video of two homeless people fighting over a bicycle?
Out of all these latest hearings that’s all I’ve discerned as “new to us” as far as what might be considered by bystanders. But maybe I’ve missed things?
I’d also like to observe that I still don’t have a strong opinion about who or what is heard on the 911 call. I see it as a possibility that GZ called for help in illegally detaining the teen. I just don’t really have a strong opinion in that area.
Many things are possible. What GZ claims happened is not possible.
No kidding. Plus of course all this stuff on his phone has already essentially been ruled inadmissible by judge Nelson.
Then there’s the rather obvious fact that Trayvon was also “underage” at the time of his death. I he’d had pictures of an ADULT naked woman no doubt the prosecution would have tried to charge him with “reverse statutory rape” or something.
wassointeresting
June 7, 2013 at 2:18 PM
It’s all rather stoopid really. Note that they found it in the deleted section. Of course it doesn’t matter at all, but if anyone wants to go there, let’s do a dump of GZ’s phone and home computer while we’re at it and see how many underage images pop out. Just kidding. I have a sensitive stomach as it is.
@willisnewton
A bit tardy but your comment struck me because I posted the same about statutory rape on a blog somewhere except I imagined the police trying to find out who the female was to charge her! It is so ridiculous!
But, as a passing thought, and I just don’t have time to read the Florida Statues on age of consent and the exception laws, etc. but could it be DD’s fibbing about her age, (if she did and it wasn’t Crump’s gaffe), and her being kept incognito, have anything to do with this, more especially if they had dated at a point in time when Trayvon was still 15 and she had turned 17.
But IDK and IANAL so just putting it out there if someone knows.
wass, it’s about playing on the stereotype that black males are hypersexual and violent.
wassointeresting
June 21, 2013 at 10:53 PM
@ Rod, perhaps, but I’d rather bury my head in the sand and not think that the defense is slimy enough to go down that road. (i know, i know, somebody out there is yelling “too late!”)
roderick2012
June 22, 2013 at 12:11 AM
Of course and they continue with Trayvon had a picture of ‘the underage girl’ in an attempt to neutralize George’s ten years of molesting his female cousin.
Ignoring that Trayvon was ‘underage’ when he was murdered in cold blood.
Without any trace on Trayvon’s hands means gz was never under any attack at all, he was superior and in control the entire time they were close to each other. It is murder 1 to kill a child without provocation of any kind, one has to think about it and decide to kill anyway and that is premeditation!
I’m going to speculate that the abc news release of two short samples of TMs voice were not released to Matt Gutman by the FDLE or the State Attn’y.
If I had to make a guess however i am wondering who had access to it? If it was taken from a deleted video I’m not certain the Martin family would have access to it.
Then again tryavon may have shared, backed up or duplicated the video at home or through email, social media etc.
I’m further speculating that this video might be the same video spoken of recently in court and in the news- of two homeless persons fighting over a bicycle with the teen commentating on it humorously as he filmed it with his phone.
If this is the case it might behoove the family to leak these small clips at this time as something of a “limited hangout.” The public can discuss and comment based on the sample that is free from judgement about whether it was socially appropriate to make fun of “drunken bums” or not.
Today’s Frye testimony mainly reinforced my previous opinion of the voice experts, except I now think even less of Tom Owen’s credibility. His voice ID ruling out GZ as the screamer does not pass scientific rigor by a long shot, and his explanation of his techniques struck me as fundamentally flawed. Dr. Alan Reich on the other hand, though much more of an old coot than I had pictured in my mind, knows what he’s talking about. I think he’ll be an effective witness for the State, all the more so because Don West is in way over his head on this stuff and doesn’t have a clue how to cross Reich (or even Owen, for that matter) effectively.
But i have to say I don’t think the State is putting much stake in the audio experts to make their case. They didn’t bother to commission their own studies. Owen just rehashed what he had done for the Orlando Sentinal, and Reich stated he started researching the audio questions just out of his own interest (just like us!), and only later took a modest retainer from the Seattle Times to assist in prepping an article on his findings for that paper.
I had the same impression concerning Owen: More pretension than skills.
Nakasone is definitely an expert in speech related domain. However, don’t make the mistake of thinking that he is deeply involved in building those models, algorithm or tools. He does not have the math background, the neurology background, the bio-mechanics background. Ph.D. does not mean you can do all of this. He is deeply involved in scientific committees (conferences, publications) as I was at some point. So, he is aware of what happens in his field. At best he has a team of researchers with the math, computer science background to create and develop the algorithms and methods he talked about. I actually check 4 of his most recent papers from the past 10 years or so. As I suspected, he is not 1st author. Usually, 3rd – 5th authors are enablers meaning they are in a hierarchy position that allows them to demand that their names be on the paper written by author #1 on a work executed by #1 & #2.
My impression of the last two days of hearings? a total snooze Fest.
Anyone else see something different?
At issue supposedly is whether or not the State’s experts will be allowed to testify as expert witnesses during the trial. It seems to me that they qualify and them some.
The defense tried a lot of ways to paint them as quacks but seemed to fail completely to my ears.
Not a total snooze to me. I’m enough of an “audio guy” that it’s interesting to me to see what these guys have (and don’t have).
I hope Dr. Reich gets in, as I’d like to see him get it on with Dr. French during the actual trial (though I’m not sure the defense would be able to bring French across the pond… or whether the court would allow another Skype hook-up…).
One fight I can see arising is the 16 bit vs 8 bit argument. The last defense guy claims the recording IS 16 bit but that only 8bits of data is available to evaluate.
George Doddington was def. expert. Very hostile and came across as an alcoholic. Trashed peers, lots of I don’t knows.Very large chip as no one RSVPed his conference, except he did say Dr. French did have the decency to decline. But no one from outside his group attended.
He said no one can id without minutes, I think 10, of sound so he along with Dr. French refused to Id GZ as screamer. He worked with NIST but he’s only an electrical engineer. Not even a doctorate. Never testified in court.
I received tweet NIST plans to buy biometrics software….fbo.gov/index?s=opport…
The third defense expert abruptly cancelled. There was a break as O’Mara said he needed a few minutes for witness. Five minutes later court announced witness was stuck on Tarmac.
Judge just gave a look of right, sure. Court adjourned till Monday 9:00
West asked for GPS call in to be set aside but Judge said he is to call in 8-9AM. Both attorneys are very disrespectful to her.
Whonoze, can not wait for you to watch Doddington’s testimony and get your opinion. You know Trent already has it up on you tube…state of the Internet. Seriously, he was SNL parody material. Wait until you hear him list his school…”xyz Stanford” well, I mean “it’s in Stanford”. Yes, he actually said that. By the time he was done, I was thinking he meant xyz in Sanford 😉
I have always thought if state and family would accept a plea this would be outcome. O’Mara hasn’t found one voice expert to say it was GZ and state has two who place probability it was Trayvon. This may be why O’Mara cancelled his last voice expert. May be a plea in the works.
The state just released fight gym pix and no voice expert to even give a probability chance it was GZ screaming.
I could not see it all. That said, I saw enough to know that the defense got some real punch today.
From what I saw, the discussion about speaker recognition did not turned enough around machine vs human.
I realize that automated speaker recognition is tough with today’s technology and requires amazingly good conditions to be efficient making it not applicable in this case.
But what I also know, and I believe the defense expert briefly mentioned it, is that a man doesn’t need 16sec of clear speech from an unknown to be compared with 1min of a known to make a decision on whether the unknown and known speakers are the same person. To put it simply, I can ID the voice of someone I know in a relatively noisy environment.
That’s the discussion I would have loved the prosecution to bring up. Defense experts discussed at long about how computer aided systems cannot work in this case. I haven’t heard any discussion on whether humans would actually be better or not at the job.
Wanted to add what French said. Almost at end of his part, West decides to inquire about puberty.
WEST: “Could you tell if Trayvon was in puberty?” There was a bit of explaining how voice changes after puberty
FRENCH: ” No, because all his KNOWN vocals were high pitched.(my emphasis)
WEST: (thinking OMG, did not want him to connect TM w/ high pitch) asks “You mean in the videos sent in?”
Problem, is the 2 short videos just submitted do not have Trayvon vocalizing in a high pitch.
FRENCH: Yes, those
Also, French testifies he does not hear the word ” asshole” which, of course, is plain as day and even Serino brings up GZ saying that and pointing out he seems confrontational/ stressed on his NEN call.
There were other words French couldn’t hear that others could and he didn’t hear any words uttered on 911 call but to testify he didn’t hear anyone use the word ” asshole” shows his bias quite clearly.
Also, George Doddington failed his doctor of philosophy in information technology at Madison.
You made exactly the same mistake I did, and I had to go back over the tape 3/4 times to get it straight as I was absolutely gob-smacked and elated when I thought I heard him say that he couldn’t hear “assholes” because I thought great, how easy for the State to disprove him.
No, he only uses “assholes” to locate one of Reich’s words or phrases in the recording and he says, iirc, or something very similar “…and after assholes…” I don’t have the link or know the marker but I can assure you, much to my disappointment and as sure as I can be, French did hear “assholes”.
You have to admit O’Mara is a dedicated advocate for his client! I’m pretty sure the Judge has made her desire well known – she wants this trail to begin on Monday.
I’m wondering if GZ is going to try to make a break for it. He has to know he is guilty; and he has to know that his chances are not good for an acquittal. If he were ever going to try to flee justice, now would be the time since scrutiny is only going to get higher as the trial begins.
He is never going to get much of a head start since he would have to sever his GPS monitoring device first, but I’d guess the best way to start a flight from justice would be for him to sever the device while he is in transit, such as on his way to or from court or his lawyer’s office. I’m wondering if he has anyone he trusts enough to help him, however.
We don’t have any clear information to know if he and his wife Shellie are still together – she faces perjury charges on his account and her interests are different than his now. IMO he never told her the whole truth about his actions involved in the killing, so to think he has done so by now or will do so is hard to guess. I do think she helped secure and hide the second passport and was involved in hiding money from the court but she may have done so believing that he was being “unjustly persecuted,” and was helping an innocent man. Would she feel the same way if she was asked to aid a guilty man? There is a ticking time clock there I feel. As the trial progresses any allies George has are going to wise up to the fact that he killed this unarmed teen in cold blood and lied to THEM about it all.
Would his brother help him? Would a stranger/ internet pen pal? Not unless he levels with them, at which point “true believers” have to get over the fact that he wasn’t attacked by a thug, etc. He may WANT to flee but lacks a good plan or any allies. His father would lose his house possibly. His supporters would lose face.
Perhaps he will wait until the prosecution presents its case. Running is tantamount to an admission of guilt, but if he does it NOW he can claim he felt he was being unfairly prosecuted and somewhere someone will believe him. If he waits until the the first half of the case is presented, and if the prosecution presents a strong case, then to run then won’t really fool anyone.
I’m fairly certain he had a concrete plan to flee justice that was denied at the end of the first bond hearing when he was fitted with a GPS monitoring device. That was his best chance foiled right then and there.
The state’s 17th supplemental discovery is posted to the defense website. Curiously the inventory includes reference to Shellie’s phone records (as well as brother Robert) but only Robert’s is included in the pages attached.
It appears the only calls Robert received in the relevant time period are around lunchtime, and then the next was at 7:55pm, which seems to rule out the idea that GZ called him while having his “bloody head” photo taken.
No info on what texts he received or what voicemail he got seems detailed, but I’m just starting to decipher the records.
Again what is odd is that Shellie’s records are listed as being included in the inventory cover letter but are missing from the actual records posted by the defense.
One could speculate that the defense is responsible for losing them, but maybe the state didn’t send them. Who knows, as the blog says.
Also included is the electronic records for Trayvon’s purchase of skittles and Watermelon flavored drink. He paid cash.
Many months of records from the gym are included. He signed up weighing 255lbs and wanting to learn self defense, lose weight and law enforcement training.
Some suggestion is made that the reason he didn’t pass the scrutiny for being a trainee cop in VA is that he had collection agencies after him for bad credit. It’s unclear however if that is right or not. Look at it yourself and form your own opinion. The grammar is pretty vague there.
Okay, on the inventory when Shellie’s phone records are listed it says “copy previously provided” which may be why they were not included here? Curious. The defense has not posted them previously to my knowledge.
Someone from the media should complain/ inquire of the defense and to the state that these records are not yet public.
Here we are on the eve of the trial and we still don’t know who called GZ (if anyone) at or around the “tipoff time” and who GZ called during the bloody head photo.
Regarding phone records, my hunch is that they’re supposed to show that Shellie and RZ talked to each other that night. Since they can’t get Shellie to talk about her own conversations with her husband, they can possibly get her to talk about what she told RZ that night. No husband/wife confidential privilege there. If course I don’t know for sure since the records don’t show who called who but if we ever see her records, we might be able to match up their phone calls.
That’s a good point. It’s the possible tipoff call that I keep hoping to discover there is evidence for. But your theory makes a lot of sense.
We still don’t know if Shellie and GZ are currently together as a couple or not.
IT’s POSSIBLE she has agreed to turn state’s evidence against him. We just won’t know until trial.
It’s also possible that others in the loop over the hidden PayPal donations have been secretly indicted as conspirators and have agreed to testify for the prosecution. It wouldn’t surprise me.
I’m getting anxious now that we are on the eve of learning so many hidden things.
I don’t believe there is much useful GPS “they went thataway” information forthcoming, but that’s another possible thing we might see at trial.
We are possibly going to learn what W2 has to say for herself, I hope, and I think of course we are going to see Dee Dee/W8 take the witness stand. It’s going to be like opening up presents on christmas morning…
The state is either bluffing about having a strong case, or they DO have a strong case for M2. I’m guessing it’s more the latter than the former but I’m not sure yet why. I think we may be in for some big surprises.
The logic of this case says that, if you think the state is bluffing, then you must also believe that gz is telling lies to conceal the fact of his innocence. Oh wait, maybe Wolfinger was hiding in John’s house and stepped out with gloved hands, to shoot Trayvon, then hand the gun to gz with a promise. Nope, I guess not, scratch that theory. GZ is toast.
What Shellie and RZ talked about is HEARSAY and not admissible.
RZ did not GET a call at 7.55. He MADE 3 calls, one of them lasting 44 minutes. And same again after 9 p.m. They may have been made in response to some land line call he received, all the forwarded calls indicating he has a LL somewhere.
The second batch was after getting an incoming forwarded call.
The phone records could be used, for example, to prove X and Y talked, if they are denying it. The most they can say about the content of the calls is something along the lines of ” she told me something, as a result of which I proceeded to such and such a place”.
I’d say the phone with the interesting or relevant calls was Shellie’s, but they got Robert’s as well because he was on the other end of one or some of them.
Oh another possibility, that RZ’s phone was being used by someone else. But considering he was estranged from GZ and everyone, not likely Shellie or anyone else would have been using his phone.
Yeah but… The Prosecution knows these things and the significance of them as well. If the Prosecution has found the person whom gz was talking with, within 3 minutes of the “fatal beating”, some additional light might have been shed on just how tremulous an experience this near death brush had been. I’m pretty sure Omar would object if BDLR tries to use the phrase “near brush with death”, to describe gz’s claimed experience. 😆
Maybe the State should also motion for some words/terms to be barred as incendiary and biased, i.e.
“Pounded/slammed into concrete” when referring to what happened to GZ’s head;
“Near death experience” when referring to the “fight”;
“Beaten up”, something GZ wasn’t;
“Fight”, when all it was a scuffle;
“Broken nose”, when to date all it is is a “likely broken nose” and based simply on GZ’s explanations;
… and I am sure there are more
GZ trained at Kokopelli’s Gym for 16 months prior to the killing. As suspected, one of his goals was LE prep.
I agree that there is not much from Robert Zimmerman’s phone record.
They may have forgotten to hide RZ’s home phone #. It shows an area code from Orange county FL. You’ll also find the personal telephone # having an area code in VA. I’m not sure they were or they are his phones #s.
Initially, I was not sure whether those records are from GZ’s father of from GZ’s brother. The DOB (Xmas 1990) shows it is the brother.
There is no text information.
The 1st call that could be related to the killing is at 7:55pm. So, GZ was indeed already in custody. The thing is that, RZ made that call. So, if he was informed of anything, it was not through that phone.
7-11 records show the lighter was not purchased at that time.
We don’t really know if GZ “trained” at the gym, only that he signed up and paid. The fact that he had a few months where he DIDN’T pay seem interesting to me. It appears he signed up for automatic payments via credit card; I’m guessing that it’s possible the months he didn’t pay were months where he was broke and had no more credit.
But when he starts up paying again, it may be because he wanted to attend – or just that his credit was good again.
Could any of the State’s witnesses be personnel from the gym who could presumably testify whether he trained or not and exactly what he was taught, etc.?
I forget… When did gz get that 18,000 cash infusion from the law suit? I’ll guess that he trained because he was serious about becoming a cop. He did put in an application.
Can someone here explain the various theories and what-not surrounding the “three stooges” aka the trio who were at 7Eleven, and who has been looking into this and why, etc? I’ve always tuned it out previously but now finally I’m curious enough to ask.
The Three Stooges were seen on the video going into the 711 not long after Trayvon, and Trayvon hung around outside while they were in there. They purchased “two or no make it three” Black & milds. Allegedly they talked again with Trayvon when they left, and Trayvon then walked off to set out back to RATL.
The mildest theory is they purchased one of the little cigars for him. The next step up is they already knew him from before and may/may not have picked him up in their car outside, afterwards. Possibly to do a deal out of 711 camera range.
The heaviest theory is Trayvon sold them $40 worth of weed (accounting for the $40 found on him) keeping some for himself to put into the cigar (which was NOT a blunt so not really suitable, but…). He then smoked this on the way back/under the mail shed awning.
Buying the B&M for him is vaguely possible, but I don’t see him having smoked it while jogging in the rain on the way home. The $40 of course was change from the $100 his dad gave him the night before. Tox shows he didn’t smoke weed that day.
The 3 Stooges are just a circus sideshow invented by CTH. Don’t think I left anything out.
“The 3 Stooges are just a circus sideshow invented by CTH. Don’t think I left anything out.”
Well, you failed to mention the theory that circulated in the lounge that they were somehow involved in setting Trayvon up to be stalked and killed by Zimmerman.
Is there ANY proof for any of these theories or are people just stupid?
unitron
June 10, 2013 at 1:02 AM
None of them are my theories, so you’d have to take that up with those who originated them.
My only theory about Larry, Darryl, and Darryl is that they came into the 7-Eleven later than Trayvon did and at least one of them bought something there.
But I thought that it deserved mention that there were theories involving them “on both sides of the aisle”, so to speak.
Oh yeah, thanks unitron.. Yes they were suspected of having set Trayvon up or tipped someone off about his impending return to RATL. Also accused of such tip-offs were 2 women, also seen at the 711, one of whom was claimed to look like Shellie, the other like Sondra.
In no case was it explained how, seeing Trayvon at the store, any of these people would figure he was going to RATL.
Waaaay back before the videos came out there was also speculation the actual 711 clerk may have tipped someone off. Again the question arise3s, why would anyone think this customer (TM) was heading for RATL? In the event, when interviewed, the clerk didn’t remember Trayvon at all.
The problem with the 3 stooges is, when Trayvon leaves the store they are not there. Trayvon doesn’t start for home immediately upon leaving the store. Instead he waits outside for about 30 seconds before the 3 stooges arrive. The way the place is configured, if Trayvon had not waited for those 30 seconds, and had started immediately for home, he’d have been some 100 or so feet away from the store by the time the 3 stooges arrived.
Why would he wait if he wasn’t due to meet someone?
If trayvon was meeting the three stooges one would assume he needed to call them at some point.
If he waited around outside maybe he was throwing away the receipt or looking at the weather or else speaking on the phone with dee dee.
seems far fetched to assume much of anything happened here. Certainly none of these three people seem to have been listed as witnesses for the defense to my knowledge.
I’m satisfied to “fugettaboutit”until something confirmed arises.
My guess is that most people would forget about it, even me, if I wasn’t attempting to notice the little things that could lead somewhere. With a theory in hand, people are more likely than not, to notice if anything else turns up that can be connected to this.
I notice that when Trayvon is in the store he isn’t speaking to DD. he begins a new call with her on his way back. Also, I’m not sure, but I seem to remember that when he leaves the store he steps to the west. His destination is to the east. If he wasn’t meeting those 3, then he should have started east the minute he left the store. That’s what he did after the 3 guys came back out. So, obviously, they were the only things holding him there.
As far as when and how they could have made contact with Trayvon, that’s something we may never know, they would not need phones, Trayvon was there in Sanford for several days, Burgess lives at 2500 RVC and according to Rene at least one Ransberg lives on the cul de sac just outside the rear gate. So, they could have just walked up to him and talked when he was outside. No matter, it’s just a matter of having an idea of what to keep and eye peeled for. But the matter does seem very suggestive of something.
For anyone interested (if you haven’t seen it yet), and thanks to yahtc at the lounge, the full bicycle video Trayvon filmed and narrated on his phone. Some laughs & screams of delight of his. too.
Video didn’t work so here’s a link uploaded by TrayvonGeorge. Curiously it’s 2:31 long same as DMan’s but notes it is two videos combined and “redacted”, when afaics is the same as DMan’s who must have a direct line to MOM!
We look at it and think wtf, but it is intended as a dog whistle. It is not about Trayon’s part in the video, it is an opportunity to confirm biases against AA people in general. Lookie here, black people fighting.
One thing about the video, that voice is a young voice, and it is the same voice as the one in the 911 call. In both you can here the voice is still changing.
Right amsterdam, I also look at it and think WTF! Since when is a small scuffle, a push and pull, a few wrestles, equivalent to a “beating up”. HTF could MOM reach that conclusion.
It appears that Trayvon’s screams and laughter are the samples the State’s experts used for their comparisons.
@Willis says “Keep in mind this is the video MOM described in open court as Trayvon filming his friends beating up a homeless person.”
I have a sneaking suspicious that the video MOM was referring to in the courtroom was not this one about the bike that was released. The bike video came off of TM’s phone so there’s no question of it’s authenticity. Those guys don’t “look” homeless to me. I think it’s a smokescreen because he couldn’t actually release an unauthenticated video circulating in treeper world. I’ve seen a video being discussed by the treepers that show a group of young AA boys/men harrassing a homeless man on a bus. In that video, there was a tall skinny kid wearing a striped shirt (not the same as the schoolyard fight one), It’s grainy but he looked nothing like TM in my opinion. However, it fit much better the description of “two friends beating up a homeless man”. MOM probably knew it was not of TM but wanted to keep it as “unauthenticated” and just barely in the public consciousness in order to seed doubt. Now was this an intentional “switcheroo” of videos? I don’t know. Maybe Rene at the OS thought that the bike video was what MOM was talking. When MOM realized she was reporting it that way, he couldn’t say, oh no no there’s ANOTHER video, because then he’d actually have to show it and probably be laughed out of town for doing so. So he opts to give a soft third person apology on his website. Of course I don’t know any of this for sure. Like I said above, just my sneaking suspicion…..
willis, my apology for “source” was not because the video hasn’t been authenticated but due to the first link that failed having been uploaded by diwataman.
As far as I am concerned the video must have been authenticated considering that a part of its soundtrack was played in court the other day by one of the state’s audio experts as it is appears it was the recording they used for Trayvon’s voice, and either Reich or Owen noted how it had been the source for the high pitched screams, or something like that.
Haven’t checked if the defence has it on their website but don’t think they need a pretense because if the state is using it for sound material I’d say they have a right to use it too.
Much sense to your words concerning where you find information but prefer to warn should anyone take umbridge. I didn’t know it was on gzlegal so thanks for there.
My general concern is just that/ general. If the defense posted this are they claiming its evidence THEY have submitted or is it “discovery” that was “provided” by the state in the .bin file, etc. This relates to the defense motions about the state allegedly hiding evidence or withholding evidence from them etc.
The potential for hypocrisy exists here if the defense Is providing evidence they extracted from the deleted sectors of the SIM card but then wants to complain about not getting discovery materials.
Clever thinking willis, and BDLR went along a similar line this morning during the motion for continuance. MOM had said they needed more time because the State had only given them the .bin and BDLR replied that defence experts had found data even the State’s experts had missed in a “so what are they moaning about” sort of way.
Just pondering, but if I was asked to analyse an image to see if it had been manipulated or retouched, (photoshopped), if I was just given the .jpg to study, unless there was something so glaring that any reasonably observant person could spot, it would be arguable that my opinion, if I could actually make one, would be invalid.
I think it is certainly arguable that the defence was better off having the .bin rather than having to be reliant on what the State had found, but whether they can argue as well that the State should have turned over both the data found and the .bin, or whether that will be deemed work product and therefore the defence’s problem to do their own work on the file, I suppose is what JN will have to decide. Will be interesting to see her reasoning when she does.
Are we to assume that there will be no more discovery materials/ data / pictures / reports etc from now on? It seems impossible to me, but I’m not a lawyer or even an experimced trial buff. Shouldn’t the Audio experts finish their “final” reports eventually? I assume they hold off until the last so that the other side has lass time to scrutinize…
has the defense shared all it has or not? Are their pendingotions regarding tunromg ober discovery materials still? I am not a lawyer and now I know why- too much to try to keep straight in one’s head!
I am still wondering if the prosecution will make any use of the clubhouse videos or not. Perhaps investigators from the FDLE would be called to present that evidence in the form of observations they made after handing in their initial assessment. I just don’t know.
There was a pending motion filed for a continuance as O’Mara’s last voice expert got “stuck on Tarmac”. judge denied it and put off her ruling against BDLR for sanctions till after the trial.
I meant motions regarding discovery…. i see a huge typo above. Stupid me, silly iphone. I think that’s supposed to say “turning over discovery” but now that I’m thinking about it all, most of the motions were whining about money for compesation/ sanctions, whatever, not real requests for data.
Here is :
1.GZ’s Fight Club Contract,
2.Letter of denial for police academy
3.Phone records for 2/26/12.
Please scroll down as previously only the itemized list was provided.
This is the actual contract GZ signed to train in MMA, boxing, submission, kickboxing. There is no pool, normal exercise equipment at this club. This is a SERIOUS FIGHT CLUB. As such, I imagine steroids are sold behind the counter. Remember how concerned he was about Shellie getting his computer and bag from O’Mara.Perhaps Steroids were either on his computer or in his bag.
The Fight Club requires a waiver as noted on p. 2 as there is real physical contact resulting in real physical injuries and is a very real possibility.
There was a drastic body change from 2/26/12 to just two mths.later, I mean much smaller before the weight gain. My feeling has always been “roid rage” even his voice was different.
The fight O’Mara said TM engaged in looks like a you tube put on as there are no punches, another car stops, and TM says ” we need a backdrop”.It wasn’t even between two homeless men but clearly two teens pretending to brawl. Finally, one kid just pedals away. You can hear Trayvon’s high pitched laughter which further shows his voice pitch was still prepuberty and it was his high voice heard on 911 call.
I just don’t understand why O’Mara wanted to highlight Trayvon’s fighting when his client trained as a real MMA, submission fighter. Did O’Mara not know GZ had been training as a real badass? Did he miss seeing the payments to this “number 1 Fight Club in Central Florida”? Located 11.5 miles from GZ’s home and further than more than a few normal exercise gyms. GZ’s doesn’t even advertise itself as am” gym”…
He didn’t say “backdrop”, he said “a behind-the-scenes”.
And those two guys scrapping look like it’s been awhile since they were teenagers, although on a little 3 or 4 inch wide youtube video there’s not enough detail for me to swear to it..
Hi Unitron, I meant a silly video made to put on you tube, think “Tosh.O”. There is a car that pulls up and no one looks hurt or hollers cuss words. It just looks staged for fun. Not sure if they had actually put it on you tube.
My real question is why O’Mara would want to even shine a light at all on fighting when GZ was a member of a serious fight club. There’s a pix of him ringside at this club before he became a skinhead so he didn’t just sign up and blow it off like most, including your truly.
Did he not have one of the nutters that help him so much, double check his credit card charges and checks? I would think fighting would be the last thing he would want to call attention to.
Watching West interview the potential jury members is painful. Asks the same question 3/4 different ways ,he starts off asking if they want water(trying to connect) but it seems obvious and not natural. BDLR connects with each one very naturally and some were dingy and one this afternoon was horrible to TM’s parents:it was parent’s fault son was killed.
I just don’t understand why O’Mara wanted to highlight Trayvon’s fighting when his client trained as a real MMA, submission fighter. Did O’Mara not know GZ had been training as a real badass? Did he miss seeing the payments to this “number 1 Fight Club in Central Florida”?
You just answered your own question. Just like many believe that much of what and much of what George has stated that Trayvon did to George, George actually did to Trayvon.
O’Mara and his computer minions have known from the beginning that the fact that George was training in boxing and kickboxing would mean that he had an alternate method of self-defense that night other than lethal force so that is why O’Mara has gone on this media crusade to convince everyone that Trayvon was some super ninja.
I think that the Martin family understands the “they went thataway” aspects of the case and probably agrees with the consensus here, with special regards to the car-to-pedestrian chase on the short section of Twin Trees Lane that we’ve deduced together.
I realize I’m reading into this statement more than is precisely there, but check out this part of the written statement:
” George Zimmerman was an armed adult who followed Trayvon down a street, pursued him and then shot him.”
It’s the “followed Trayvon down a street” portion that strikes me as agreeing with what the consensus here believes happened – the car facing the mail kiosk, Trayvon walking past and then GZ moving his car to follow behind, causing the teen to run away.
While the prosecution has worked hard to shield their strategy, we’ve never had a real clue made public about what the State will present at trial as the true events of the evening in question apart from a vague “profiled, pursued and killed” statement and the “witnesses (plural) to a foot chase” that was mentioned early in the case. We’ve only seen a lot of the raw evidence they will call upon. Using this same evidence and rigorous peer review and the combined efforts of so many of those here, I think we’ve pretty much reached the same conclusion as the Martin family has just stated. Let’s hope the state feels the same way.
cross posted w. The Lounge:
—
I may be one of the few folks following the case waiting eagerly for the resumption of the Frye hearing (Don West drone fatigue notwithstanding). I’m wondering how Tom Owen will attempt to rehabilitate himself, and whether he’ll have anything new to bring to the table. I also wonder, from a legal strategy standpoint, whether the State really wants to get their experts in, or is just going through the motions to burn up energy from the Defense.
Here are two issues I’m going to look for in particular.
One might condense the Defense experts’ central critique of Owen as, ‘It is impossible, by any method known to our science, to make a valid speech identification comparison, for inclusion or exclusion, between shouts or screams on one hand, and “normal” speech on the other.” One question neither West NOR Manthei asked the Defense experts: ‘Would it be valid to compare screams or shouts recorded from a distance via a cell phone with known exemplars of screams and shouts also recorded from a distance over a cell phone?”
This question is pertinent because the State possesses exactly such an exemplar from George Zimmerman. When Owen did his initial workup for The Sentinal, he did not have this recording because it had not yet been released in the discovery documents. But, if the State really wants him to do an analysis for trial, you’d certainly think he has a copy now.
Certainly both Manthei and West are aware of this recording, which is why it’s interesting neither of them posed a hypothetical that would cover it to the Defense experts. Had West asked them the question i posed above, they surely would have said, “No. 1) There isn’t enough screaming on the 911 call to form an adequate sample for analysis; 2) Of the screams that can be isolated, we cannot be sure they all came from the same person; 3) The lack of fidelity of both recordings introduces too high an error rate.” But West DIDN’T ask them about comparing shouting to shouting.
Thus, when the Frye hearing resumes, there’s a chance Manthei can ask Owen, ‘Dr.s Nakasone, French et. al. have argued that science cannot make a valid comparison between shouting and regular speech, how do you respond?’ And Owen could possibly reply, ‘Actually, I’ve now been given an exemplar of Mr. Zimmerman shouting, re-run my analysis using that, and the results affirm [or possibly strengthen] my original conclusion.’
Of course, the State now also possesses a voice exemplar of Trayvon Martin. And while he is not exactly shouting or screaming in this exemplar, it’s not normal telephone speech either. He’s calling out rather emphatically “We need a behind-the-scenes!”
The other question neither West nor Manthei asked the Defense experts is “Given that Mr. Owen’s method might be suspect in matching or excluding two differing samples of speech allegedly from the same person, might it still be of utility in determining which is the most likely speaker out of a universe of two, given voice exemplars of each, even if the exemplars involved are less than ideal?”
Or in more plain language, ‘If I just give you the 911 call screams and George talking, maybe you can’t tell me whether the screams are definitely George or definitely not George, but if I give you the screams, George AND Trayvon, you can tell me which one of the two men’s speech the screams most resemble, and how much of a difference the software found between the two?’
Again, if Owen and the State have done their due diligence since Owen last appeared, Owen should be able to give a good answer to a question like that. If Manthei doesn’t ask something like that, nor Owen offer it, I’ll conclude that he and the State aren’t really making a serious effort to get his testimony included at trial.
I don’t know if Don West gets a chance to bring his witnesses back in to rebut the State’s rebuttal, but if he’s stuck crossing Owen by himself (I mean, the Frye hearing can’t go on FOREVER, can it?), and Owen brings in any new results along the lines I’ve mentioned, I don’t think West knows enough about this stuff to undermine him effectively.
When the 911 calls were released i thought for sure that voice recognition would solve easily the problem. This is disappointing. On Leatherman’s blog , some wrote that they should let the jury decide who was screaming. I disagree. Let this happen without expert advice is not my conception of a fair trial.
Here some fast points.
— I don’t know the instructions GZ received when he made some samples of “help me” but they differ from the originals not only in tone but in intensity and were also much shorter in time. The distress were totally absent in the samples.
— There is about 3 secs hidden in the 911 call to protect to caller identity. There was screams at the same time. Maybe we are missing something important.
— Dr Reich said that he could hear GZ says “but not on me” after “they always get away” and “i’m begging you” at the begining of the 911 call. If he can show that with great certitude it will have a strong impact.
This is a confusing issue, isn’t? I agree letting the jury decide without expert assistance is foolhardy. They have to be guided at least in knowing if the experts can even say if there are one or two different voices. That issue alone would be enough to question GZ if indeed he claimed to be the “only” one screaming (which I’m not sure he said that but at least implied that after the initial confrontation, the only only thing that came out of TM’s mouth was “you’re gonna die tonight MF” and “ow” after being shot.)
ada4750
June 20, 2013 at 11:05 AM
Yes it is. At first glance, it seems easier to say that two people were shouting that identify these people.. But if i understood well the cotton balls concept showed before this week (which i listened on and off) is not actually easier.
This is why the “I’m begging you” can be very important. GZ never said that and therefore it has to be Trayvon.
GZ, according to himself, only answered “No” once and that’s it. Furthermore, it is hard to imagine GZ pronouncing these words.
ada4750
June 20, 2013 at 11:24 AM
More exactly GZ admitted having talked to Trayvon once and it was to answer “No, i don’t have a problem”
I wasn’t expecting a great jury and so I’m not surprised we have an all white jury. I just don’t see any of these as a totally indoctrinated plant so I’m hoping they can do the job of weighing the evidence.
I cannot WAIT for the prosecutions opening statement… It’s been 16 months. I gotta know..
Did you hear during the Frye hearing that Reich was working on the background sounds in the nen call? I think it should be possible to tell what gears GZ was shifting to. That may give us our answer about GZ’s movements on TL.
That would be great to know but I don’t know if reich has the wherewithal to get a Honda ridge line to compare to. I hope he does.
Were I in charge of prosecution if have prepared tests of the security cameras for comparison as well.
amsterdam1234
June 21, 2013 at 1:03 PM
I can’t imagine the state won’t use the clubhouse videos. The information that’s on it, combined wit DD’s statements about Trayvon taking shelter at the mail boxes, GZ’s Google map drawing and who knows what else they have, will show GZ was lying about everything, even before he got out of the car.
I don’t know if you heard Guy saying today that the State’s case is that GZ confronted Trayvon and that they have the evidence to proof it.
ada4750
June 21, 2013 at 1:37 PM
I heard that. I think it was the last thing Guy said and he said it very shortly with low volume. It passed almost unnoticed but that was maybe the most important statement of the day. It looks like they have a concrete direct proof (other than GZ inconsistencies) that GZ confronted Trayvon. I can’t wait.
I also heard Guy’s comment. I’m still anxious to know what it is that the State has.
Concerning the clubhouse videos, I don’t believe it will be part of the trial. We would have already seen a fight of experts as we saw about the cries for help in W11’s 911 recorded call.
I’m not disappointed with the makeup of the jury, except that it is weird not to have even one male on it (other than the alternates). However, I think that whatever verdict is rendered, I think there would be less blame on these jurors. They can’t be viewed as white or hispanic males looking to protect their own, or black jurors hellbent on convicting him no matter what. Some people express concern that they might be “soft” just because they’re females. I don’t think so. They’ve got brains and would be able to follow the courts instructions to consider the evidence.
Whonoze, I hope you listen to the Frye hearing today. Apparently, Dr. French trashed an article he said was by Owen. But at today’s hearing, Owen never received article and when West showed him it on skype, it was NOT by him. and he had never seen it! West said there was no author or anyone signing it.West could not attribute it to anyone. Like just some article copied from someplace with no author, publisher, or name.
Mantai was ready for West, he looked like the cat getting ready to pounce. Apparently, West had asked for the Frye to be moved to today but then asked Judge to delay it again. She was very abrupt with him, saying No sir, you asked for this date and time to be set aside. She angrily left the bench saying we will have hearing as YOU requested at 2:15 today( 6/20). Mr. Owen has scheduled this time as has the court and state.
I watched it live but the odd thing is when I went to rematch it on state of the Internet you tube, it was redacted. His video shows jurors being thanked and told to return Monday and then the seal comes up.
The next pix shown was Judge asking GZ if it was his choice to not be present at the hearing and GZ, MOM and family leaving courtroom. Then West and Mantai setting up Skype with Judge and Owen.West crossed, then Mantai then West said he hadn’t prepared his concluding argument. Judge insisted this was it, proceed. West wasn’t totally disorganized but he whined about how Owen wouldn’t lower his fee and taxpayers were being charged 70k.Don’t think that is relevant to Frye hearing.
The best comment from Mantai was him saying if they had an expert who would say it was GZ, they would not even be asking for a Frye hearing.
Judge will rule on it tomorrow 9AM.
It was quite a priceless bit of how not to argue a Frye hearing as brought to you by a high priced private attorney. Probably will be used in law classes everywhere.
O’Mara and West have probably become the best examples of what poor lawyering can do. Law Schools everywhere are taking clips to insert into their lessons.
I missed the first half of Fridays hearing. It seems GZ wasn’t there but that his lawyer forgot to ask permission for him to be excused? That seems like a serious matter to me in a mirder case when te defendant fails to appear- serious as in revoke his bond serious.
Also there was some issue brought forward about the defense wanting some statements admitted via an exception to a rule? I think that may be relating to GZ speaking about self defense but I’m not sure and wondered if there was an actual motion filed with the court and if we will get to see that motion etc- what was all this about ? Seems important.
The prosecution had a motion in limine granted that prohibited the introduction of self serving hearsay statements by the defendant. It was a broad general motion against hearsay.
West today, wanted Nelson to exclude certain statements from that order under what is called res gestae rule. As I understand it, those are hearsay exception rules such as excited utterances. West however, hadn’t bothered to put anything in writing and had not given the State the statements he wanted Nelson to exclude from that order.
Nelson got really irritated with West after she told him numerous times, the prosecution had a right to have the weekend to review statements and that she wasn’t going to rule on anything that wasn’t submitted to her in writing.
So BDLR spends the weekend making a list of “excited utterances” by GZ that he specifically wants excluded? Or is it the defense who had to request in writing what utterances they want to be able tote lol the jury about without hacking to put George on the stand?
From what I saw I felt it was the latter but the way you just put it I’m unsure.
Also all this action I am assuming is going to revolve around what he allegedly said to w13/ Jon about “he was bearing me up so I had to shoot him.” But what about what he may or may not have said to the EMTs or to mark Osterman or Tim Smith? I don’t trust any of them to be truthful.
amsterdam1234
June 21, 2013 at 3:04 PM
I am sorry if I wasn’t clear. You got it right, it is West who has got to do the work.
I am sure Bernie will fight to keep those ” self-serving hearsay statements” out.
Judge adjourned court around 10 saying she would have ruling on Frye Monday. West asked if she could fax her opinion and, wait for it, she said she doesn’t have a fax at home.
West is extremely disrespectful to her. He is known for setting up issues for appeal so maybe that is some type of good lawyering and he’s trying to accomplish a mistrial. How she keeps her cool is close to saintly.
She ruled on motion to prohibit certain words, so profile is in (racially is out). Self appointed NW is out but initiated NW interest is in. Appointed to head of NW is in but self appointed is out.
Agreed to preserve testimony of Gordon Pleasants who was GZ’s professor at Seminole State College. This ruling is done when a witness may not be available at trial scheduled date.
Thank you for the recap. I was able to watch part of today’s hearing. Since it lasted less than an hour, I didn’t miss much. Does anyone know the procedure to sit in court on any given day of this trial? I will be in Sanford for about a week at the end of this month.
I wish you could see opening statements but I’m guessing that day will be quite crowded. Too bad there isn’t a bigger courtroom for the trial. I have no clue as to how to get a seat – first come, First serve? A lottery? Ask marinade Dave maybe. Best of luck and if you visit the RATL please take a photo from the pool cam position for me!!
Link to State’s Motion to Hear Witness who is vital.George Pleasance was GZ’s teacher in college. As always, hope it’s blued for everyone http://www.flcourts18.org/page.php?129
wassointeresting
June 21, 2013 at 8:28 PM
Really, the prof is the state’s witness? I initially thought it was a defense witness who might tell us what a good boy GZ was. Wonder what he’s suppose to testify to. The fact that GZ was a wannabe cop (oops can’t say that word can they?) but didn’t make the grade?
“I think he will be asked about whether GZ knew of SYG, based on the curriculum.”
Well, he could testify as to whether he taught it, but not necessarily whether a particular student was paying attention and learned it at the time, but since SYG had nothing to do with this case and this case has nothing to do with SYG, what would be the point of having him testify about that?
The State is emphasizing Prof. Pleasance (formerly police lieutenant) as a definitive witness. I’d speculate that it might not be about SYG by name, but perhaps a course lesson on Justifiable Use of Force, and/or questions raised by Zimmerman in class or in private conversation.
@unitron, you’re right, he can’t directly prove that GZ learned about SYG, unless he had a copy of an exam where GZ answered questions about it. The defense might move to strike any questions relating to it because they’re not using SYG, but on the other hand, GZ did go on the Hannity show and said he had never heard of SYG at a time when his attorneys had not taken it off the table yet. So the prosecution might make say that it damages his credibility.
Judge Nelson has ruled on the Frye hearing issue. It appears that there will be no expert testimony regarding the 911 audio.
I’m not surprised. I had thought that we were going to hear opposing experts during the trial but instead we had a Frue hearing instead where we heard opposing experts.
Either way what I had written last year was that the FBI seemed to have laid down a “voice of authority” backstop when they seemed to say that the poor quality of the 911 call precluded any scientific certainty of answering the question about who was seemingly calling for help.
Instead what I said last year was that the prosecution would have the victim’s mother take the witness stand in an emotional high point of the trial and testify that she hears her son’s voice, and that a jury will be moved by this. Keep in mind now there will be no defense expert to refute her, only a Zimmerman family member who will be open to cross examination about their credibility. Preciously we had the father but at trial maybe it will be GZs mother. Either of them can be asked about thier role in money laundering and presumably background questions about their son’s overall credibility as well as their own which has hardly been exemplary.
“Is that your sons voice? And my next question, is the national basketball association a racist institution?”
I have to admit that I’m not surprised either.
I was not really convinced by Dr. Nakasone as he mostly referred to his semi-automated system that would fail ID’ing the voice of someone spelling his name, DOB & address. However, Dr. French was really convincing to me.
What concerns me is the additional momentum it lends to the defense.
The defense releasing of TM’s phone content really created that momentum and I believe it is not a surprise that they did it just weeks before the beginning of the trial.
The defense countering the states strikes of PJ’s E-6 & B-76 got me speechless. The defense argument was that the state should not strike 4 white women in a row. The judge answered that the race/gender thing is hard to argue given the make up of the PJ population. But then she decided to go with defense on E-6 & B-76.
Finally, if her conclusion is that no audio expert can testify then there is a risk of giving people and Jurors who are not sequestered yet the general impression that Defense is strong.
BTW. I’m too busy to watch the trial but I can read your live comments. So, I want to thanks you all for that.
Just one more comment:
I believe that there is another reason for the state wanting to strike E-6 & B76. The two jurors next in line were the 2 alternates B-72 (M young & bi-racial with knowledge in gym & wrestling) & E-13 (F, young & white who works as a surgical assistant).
B-72 would have been a major win for the state. Defense would possibly not have been able to strike him has they already stroke many black PJs.
the judge seemed to take a “wisdom of solomon” approach to the issue of “too many white women” by in essence deciding to split the baby in half. Of course the real Solomon used that trick as a ruse to draw out the real mom, who offered to give up her child rather than see the infant dismembered. Here, we just got a dismembered baby as the result, I fear.
It seems ironic that the state didn’t think to argue after that, that she had created a defacto situation where the whole jury, save one was made up of all white women. It would have perhaps given her pause to wonder if she were not “as guilty” of creating an unbalanced jury.
I’m sad there are no African Americans on the jury. I’m not sure if the state could have tried much harder however. Luck of the draw.
Lots of things that could have gone differently, but this is the jury we are stuck with. Let’s hope it’s sufficient to the task of weighing the evidence fairly. I don’t see any grand conspiracy at work.
I’m also optimistic that the slight pro-defense bias shown by a few of the jurors will vanish once they have been presented evidence in a courtroom.
Just as well. I was not impressed with the state’s experts, especially the one who said he could hear phrases like “these shall be” or something like that. But is the jury allowed to listen to that tape over and over if they want to dissect it out for themselves? That is, would they only be able to hear it played during court if at all? Perhaps during deliberation, they’re allowed to ask to see or hear recorded evidence again, is that right?
It actually is an order to exclude Owen & Dr. Reich. Does it mean that the other experts are admissible?
The FBI (Dr. Nakason) said that they would not make any conclusions.
But what about, Dr. Harry Hollien & Dr. James D. Harnsberger of Forensic Communication Associates can the State bring them to testify? If they can state that some of the cries match TM this is good enough.
Another cross-post from The Lounge:
—
Going back to my post from a few days ago… I argued that if the State really wanted to get their expert testimony on the screams admitted, they would have to bring more to the table on rebuttal than they did on direct. IMHO they should have been able to do so, but failed utterly. Owen offered nothing beyond the preliminary and scientifically weak analysis he had prepared for the OS. Reich’s report was also preliminary, and void of any key detail. In short, the State did not commission any original, rigorous study of the voice exemplars, but relied on some rather sketchy analysis that had been handed to them on a plate (and a flimsy paper plate at that).
Either the State didn’t really care about the voice ID, or they were grossly overconfident that JN would stay within the very loose standards established by Frye. If they really wanted to get expert testimony on the screams admitted, they would have forseen the possibility of JN’s ruling. It appears that Dr. Naksone and his colleagues have a long-standing beef with Mr. Owen. A bit of research could have uncovered this, and the potential effect the credentials of Nakasone, French and Wayman would possibility have on a judge.
What we did NOT hear from either of the State’s witnesses was a comparison of vocal characteristics of the screams to both GZ’s “Help me! Help me!” exemplars and the voice sample of Trayvon from his cell phone video, conducted with proper scientific controls for ‘researcher bias’, resulting in a valid relative probability of match between the screams and the two possible sources. Perhaps the State was reluctant to commission such a study for fear it would be inconclusive. (?) But going by my own ‘critical listening’ test, I would have been more confident. To my ear, the timbre of the screams sound much closer to Trayvon’s “We need a behind the scenes!” than to GZ’s “Help me! Help me!”
Reich did testify that he made a ‘critical listening’ comparison between the screams, Trayvon’s exemplar, and a variety of samples of GZ taken from the many recordings of his voice now available. His conclusion was that IDing the screams as far more likely to be Trayvon was simple and more or less obvious. This statement seems to have made no impact on JN’s ruling, which strikes me as a bit odd. Perhaps it got lost amidst all the other ‘noise’ of the Frye hearing, especially since it was mentioned only in Reich’s oral testimony, and not in his written report. Reich seems to have been disqualified in toto due to the skepticism over his word identifications: “these shall be”, “but not on me” etc., which do seem a bit ‘out there.’ If the State had gotten him to stick to the COMPARATIVE voice ID question, explain his methodology thereof, put it in writing, and leave out the word ID stuff, I think he would have had a much better chance of surviving the Frye hearing.
I would also guess that the Defense will attempt to introduce expert testimony that it is impossible for anyone using any method to accurately match the screams to their source, in rebuttal to Sabrina’s expected testimony of ‘That’s my son!’ I expect they will argue that JN’s ruling only prohibits expert testimony on the specific question of experts attributing the screams to either TM or GZ, not on the more general question of the science of speaker recognition by humans (as opposed to computers). If indeed the defense takes this route, I wonder how JN will rule…
“Why didnt any of the prosecution’s experts examine the car sounds?”
They can say, hey the defendant says at this point he was doing this but we hear him doing that, and to us it sounds like he’s parking the car, do you agree? But then that’s highly leading and I don’t know if they’re allowed to tell the experts all they know or think because that could cause bias. Of course, I have no idea how these things work legally.
The state’s 18th supplemental discovery list includes emails from the defendant and what appears to be a couple of textbooks. Do y’all think that the emails are to the college professor and these were his course books?
Intriguing, but I expect “y’all” will be right, but can’t help wishfully thinking if when GZ was trying to contact Corey to talk, he sent her a few emails giving us a couple more versions of his innocence for good luck !
Now this is a 319 post thread, wonder if whonoze will start a new one for trial… hint hint!
Today in the UK we awakened to another whistle blower, a police investigator, who was pressured into spying on the parents of our Trayvon Martin, Stephen Lawrence, a studious black teenager, hoping to become an architect, murdered some 20 years ago by 5 or 6 white supremacist thugs, only two of which were able to be brought to justice last year and only thanks to police reforms to deal with racism and changes to the UK’s double jeopardy law apropos of this case. Apparently the police wanted the investigator to dig up dirt on Lawrence’s parents and best friend to justify their actions. A quote from wiki:
The case became a cause célèbre and one of the highest profile racial killings in UK history; its fallout included profound cultural changes to attitudes on racism and the police, and to the law and police practice, and the partial revocation of double jeopardy laws, before two of the perpetrators were convicted almost 20 years later in 2012.
Lawrence’s mother reached out to Sybrina soon after Trayvon was shot and the Martin’s visited here last year to meet the Lawrence family and pay homage to both teens. A tragic story, as Trayvon’s, but with a silver lining too.
Anyone interested, “The murder of Stephen Lawrence”, wikipedia entry covering all that had to change here to bring even two of the killers to justice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Lawrence
GZ could see the kid just fine when he trolled the mail kiosk, and when he chased him down TTL with his car.
I think possibly Guy was ready with this opeing and BDLR was ready with the KISS opening, both in preparation for which way the judge ruled on the “excited utterance” exception business.
wassointeresting
June 24, 2013 at 10:55 AM
GZ is looking kinda worried about West’s meandering opening statement.
He’s worried because, although West says gz wasn’t following Trayvon — and everyone knows that it will be established that he should not have followed Trayvon — West starts gz at Taaffe’s then has them come together again at the clubhouse, and finally he’s over on TTL getting out of his truck and running after him.
Looking at the audience, who are watching the jurors, I don’t feel that opening went over too well with the jurors, who probably saw the 1, 2, 3 and are now waiting to here the defense try to explain no. 4. Things can only get worse for gz when the jury learns of the distances involved. Obviously gz wasn’t headed for the store when he passed the main gate, and since Trayvon was walking, it took him several minutes to move distances gz should have moved through in seconds.
West wound up saying that gz was at the clubhouse when Trayvon started running. Because he could not put gz’s care behind Trayvon walking on TTL. So he had to keep gz at the clubhouse to make his “not following” work. Not a good thing at all and gz knew it, you could see he wanted to crawl out of his skin.
wassointeresting
June 24, 2013 at 11:19 AM
There you have it, an admission of car to pedestrian following.
Opening statements do not argue the case, it’s just a brief summary of the “story” each side believes the evidence will show. They each have a theory that proves their case, they’ve got to focus on getting the supportive foundation into evidence, so they can tell a convincing story in their closing statement. In closing they cannot use anything that has not been put into evidence. So, that’s the focus, our focus is much wider than what the trial will contain. Lots of nuances and things we’ve discovered will not be used.
Now that we have these new times:
1) GZ’s NEN call ended at 7:13:43pm
2) TM’s call with DeeDee ended at 7:15:44pm
So the 911 call began at 7:16:11 so we have only 27 seconds of
activity unaccounted for. Where we once believed there was as much
as a 70 second gap.
During the 911 call gz still has a dominant voice, portraying him as
the dominant person in the superior position.
You could have simply said that one is not new, but is now confirmed. Must you always be argumentative? There are no “points” to be won attempting to appear to have superior knowledge, all you accomplish by doing that is, collecting ostracism. That doesn’t play well with people of consequence, because they’ve got to be careful about who they alienate.
“Is there anything he said that was coherent?” is more the question. He’s echoing vaguely GZ’s false narrative and he’s presented nothing new nor novel of any substance. He is leaning heavily on John W6’s MMA “ground and pound” and the two photos that show some blood.
Like GZ, he’s used misdirection and bullshit to elude the movement from clubhouse parking lot to near the cut thru.
Only new thing is that the defense has a resident who say GZ’s car in the end position allegedly. No word on which way it was allegedly facing.
WSI – i sorta missed that point about how West explained the move from clubhouse area to cut thru area. Can you describe it better?
If he admitted that, he’s an even bigger idiot than I thought. And trust me, he’s in a freefall for the bottom of a bottomless pit already with this rambling opening.
@willisnewton, oh I forget now, it took West so long to orient himself to the picture of RATL, it’s as if he was just handed it an hour before the trial. Through his rambling, he mentioned three main spots, GZ seeing TM over by the Taaffe cut-through where according to him no resident uses to get into the complex (guess he didn’t see the news video of kids cutting through there after school), parking over by the clubhouse and then following TM as he moved quickly away to where GZ finally parked. Kinda weird how he made such a point of having a witness seeing GZ’s truck.
West working on the “grand conspiracy” theory here. Blames city managers for some unnamed but perceived malfeasance since “law enforcement was not present.”
Whonoze – i think you may have a good working theory of the defense strategy, as posited over on leatherman law blog. It could be that the defense intends to draw out the prosecution into using it’s best arguments and evidence up first and thus “have the last word” in essence by limiting the defense presentation to opening and closing arguments as much as possible. The less the defense presents when their turn comes up, the less the state can destroy them with rebuttals.
Instead they have tried to fight the case in motions and pretrial sessions and everywhere but in the trial proper.
It seems clear that IF the prosecution has some “best evidence” they didn’t allude to it specifically at opening remarks. Let’s hope they actually have the ammo, and that they can present it at rebuttal to directly refute GZ’s defense LATE in the trial where it will have a big impact.
I also see the defense strategy as one set to sow confusion and misdirection as much as possible. It keeps the focus off the substantiative issues.
What are the real issues? Who did what where, why and how? Or in this case, where were they, and what did they do? It’s a simple case if you look at it that way.
“They” were by the clubhouse, then “they” were on TTL in a car to pedestrian chase, then they were separated in the dark on foot. Then someone closed a gap, and someone shot the other person. Since the defendant is provably lying about every aspect up to the gunshot, it shouldn’t take much to convince a jury he’s lying about the reason he fired his gun as well. Some circumstantial evidence of any kind ought to be sufficient.
But keeping the jury focused on these issues will be a challenge, given the “Secret weapon” of lawyer West who is a one man blizzard of bullshit.
Interrogating the evidence in high-publicity 'hate crimes', and the way it has been used and misused in the media, and by parties to the matter..
This site also has a broader goal: in the tradition of the Errol Morris film "The Thin Blue Line" it aims to use the specific case at hand to shed a bit of light onto broader questions of epistemology: how is it that we come to think we 'know' something, and what kinds of errors lead to bad conclusions? This site also has a more specific interest in what can an cannot be concluded from audio/visual media, and the many mistakes of omission and commission commonly made in the interpretation of A/V material
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whonoze 
notification activation
Interesting to see, you found your diverse oases for your obsessions:
But strictly much more disappointing to see how easy it is to dictate people how to look at matters, as Tschoupi’s comment below shows.
Beyond that I can easily explain and did explain to you how it could have happened. And it is still a fact that Wolfinger at least somehow stalled.
Maybe you tell me why it is significant. But don’t return to a general misinformation statement. What about O’Mara’s much more obvious recent lies in this context? Nothing to worry about? Always good to feed the grand conspiracy theory of the other camp, to feed the rage?
🙂
Thnx a thou.
I had a closer look to the phone records and pictures and have to say that my initial reaction may have been too harsh on TM. I may have been missing some stuff though as it is hard to line up all those pieces of texts.
1) As Amsterdam told me 0.38 refers to pot.
2) Txt about owning a gun are from somebody else. It is clear that TM is curious about that but it is someone else claiming to have a gun.
3) The picture of the gun may actually be what triggered the discussion mentioned in (2). In other words, it is not clear whose picture it is. It may have been sent into TM’s phone triggering the discussion.
Glad you rethought Tchoupi.
I was a bit down too but not so much because of pot and guns, tattoos and finger flips, which except for the guns, in the UK go with today’s rap, gang and goth culture/fashion prevalent among teens of all colours here, and which we already knew Trayvon was in to, but because I am always worried the prosecution will be unable to surmount all the hurdles of the case. There are many unknowns and although the clubhouse videos could unravel a lot I fear a jury may not understand their significance. I also worry MOM & Co will find some medical “expert” to testify that any silly knock to the head can cause SBH or rarely even death, which is mainly due to my experience with a friend who is now epileptic from a really nothing event, and after seeing the prejudice on the Horn case I am never sure GZ will be convicted while I am sure he had no reason to pull that trigger. So with all the problems I felt this was one more the prosecution just didn’t need and that put me down for a while.
Tchoupi, sorry misspelled above, I cannot tell you how sad your comment made me.
O’Mara’s simple trick is that we ultimately have to guess about who sends what to whom, and may not pay close attention. My suspicion is that the specific method of getting statements into the news as Trayvon’s statements, although they clearly weren’t, was to a certain extend as deliberate as his statement concerning Trayvon taking a video of friends beating up homeless guys.
They already saw the clip, as a letter by West to BDLR shows before September 19. They added this letter to at least three motions, the first challenging Nelson’s decision concerning Crump, the second concerning discovery violations by prosecution, the third time you’ll find it in the appendix of the writ of certiorari, where it starts at p. 252, if I remember correctly.
O’Mara no doubt was fully aware of what he did. And he was fully aware that people, at least the vast majority would only look at matters to confirm what they were told. Would he claim it otherwise?
Yes he clearly would. Start to protect yourself against his psychops and attempts at shaping public opinion.
Keep in mind another comment he dropped. Trayvon took a photo of an underage girl. It’s all about planting insinuations that he hopes will somehow stay. He needs the most diverse ones to shape not only the public mind but also especially the juror’s.
Good to hear you looked at it again. I had to force myself doing it too. This was the first time we heard Trayvon’s own voice, and I do think we’ve made him somewhat into a one dimensional character. What the messages show he was a regular teenager.
Couple of notes:
There is only one extensive exchange about an actual fight, and that is on the 2nd report.
That specific report has sender/ receiver information blacked out, so you can’t tell if it is Trayvon telling about the fight or reading about the fight. The fact that the person who was in the fight also states he has been suspended for that fight, make it less likely it was Trayvon since there is no record of Trayvon ever being suspended for fighting.
We also know from the messages why Trayvon transferred to another school. He was moving in with his father.
We also know what the reason was for Sybrina to have Trayvon move in with his dad.
I think if his friends think that Trayvon’s truancy is a first sign of becoming a hoodlum, he couldn’t have been much of a thug to begin with.
Another example of what a thug Trayvon was. Here we get Sybrina txt with Trayvon.
Another thing I noticed is that he may have an interest in guns, but he appears to have a better realization about the dangers of guns than most gun nut cases, including GZ.
There appears to be two conversations going about guns with two seperate people. One of them is DeeDee. It is a bit difficult to tell for sure which txt belong to which conversation, but in both conversations, he appears more concerned about gun safety aspect of owning a gun.
Here is another statement the tools of the Sentinel attributed to Trayvon but was not said by him.
present.
Amsterdam, can you be sure the last exchange is with his cousin? I was wondering, if that was Tracy. I wondered if he usually took him there before and now Trayvon has to go there by bus. And Tracy wants to be make sure he has the correct address.
An SMS could slip into an exchange in between an exchange with someone else, how could we tell we tell? I occasionally checked the times. But not even that ultimately tells us something. We could only be sure if we could see the cell phone number of the senders.
I would guess that genuine gang-bangers don’t text about their illegal activities amongst their friends. If the defense is claiming that these text messages show TM had a ‘prediliction for violence’ or whatever they’re calling it, their definition of that term is so broad as to be absolutely useless. Teenage kids get into school fights. Boxing and martial arts are considered legitimate sports. The distance between any kind of consensual fight and the kind of aggravated assault on a stranger GZ is claiming is a gap of light years. Teenagers also pose, exaggerate and lie, and kids from a tough neighborhood have good cause to pretend to be more badass than they are, lest they not look weak to the predators surrounding them. And, for some reason text forms of ‘new media’ seem to up the ante of BS and hyperbole among just about everyone, thus further discounting any ‘woofing’ TM may have done onto a cell-phone keypad.
What would be required to establish the validity of even the relatively innocuous activities discussed in the text messages would be eyewitness testimony: someone who would go on the record as saying, ‘Yes, i was in a fight with Trayvon Martin.’ And even this would have no relevance (and as IANAL, I’m not referring to admissibility) unless there was also testimony that Trayvon picked a series of fights, or was particularly brutal in the course of them. (I didn’t read the whole file, but I believe I saw one reference to him not faring well in one of the scuffles he was in. He doesn’t seem to have been much of a pugilist.)
As far as I know, no evidence whatsoever has turned up that Trayvon was ever physically aggressive with strangers. I find it ludicrous to think that a kid would begin a career in assault by attacking a scary-looking bouncer who outweighs him by 50 lbs. If TM had become the kind of kid who WOULD double-back looking to pick a fight with a guy who had been following him, then he most certainly would have committed some similar behavior before, picking on someone smaller or younger as bullies generally do. If TM had been ‘into violence’ then there would be victims of his thuggery somewhere.
In the absence of actual testimony, the texts only show us things we already knew: that Trayvon had lost interest in school, started cutting classes, had been smoking pot regularly, liked ‘gansta’ rap, had a fake ‘grill,’ amused himself by taking ‘gansta’ poses to his cell phone in the privacy of his room, etc. The correlation between these behaviors and criminal aggression is so low as to not be worth discussing — unless you’re a desperate defense attorney with a guilty client trying to poison a jury pool with appeals to the most base forms of racism.
@whonoze Very well said. There is nothing known in Trayvon’s past which predisposes him to such a savage attack (as described by GZ) for no apparent reason.
More: There is nothing in the NEN call that points to it.
More: On the contrary, Trayvon seemed to be scared.
More: The difference in weight is not the only problem. Trayvon had no idea who was GZ. He could have been an undercover policeman. He could have been some kind of maniac (which is still possible!).
More: GZ could have been armed.
More: Trayvon surely noticed that GZ was on phone when he was in his truck (or later like some say). It means that GZ could get help very quickly.
Attacking an heavier stranger for no apparent reason when there is so much unknown takes a lot of nerve or unconsciousness. And it is senseless to pretend that marijuana can be the cause, specially among regular users. Anyway, Trayvon had slight traces only in his blood.
But even if “a priori” it looks unlikely, the possibility is still there, over the reasonable doubt. So the prosecution needs more. Too bad that your very estimable work about the ClubHouse cameras and the position of the truck does not seem to be recognized. This gives a penetrating light on the first part of the call.
Because the trial begins in two weeks, can we consider that the prosecution has no more hidden card? Except maybe from GZ’s phone data. No ballistic study?
Quickly. GZ is difficult to grasp. For example, less than 24 hours after the shooting, he describes the scene very quietly and had many hesitations. When he should have had no hesitation at all and be much much more emotional. After all, he had just supposedly escaped a nearly fatal vicious attack.
On the other hand, with Singleton minutes before the stress test and also during interviews with Singleton he did not seem nervous. While he should have been a lot, since he was preparing (according to us) to lie big, very big.
Keep in mind we are dealing with a life-long casual liar who grew up molesting his cousin. He lies very easily and often and has lied in open court after swearing an oath and taking the witness stand. BDLR asked him At the very first bond hearing in cross examination after his so called “apology” if it was true that his statements to SPD were inconsistent and contradictory and he said “no” without hesitation several times.
He’s got exactly zero credibility and the jury will be shown this fact many different ways.
The voice tests (and traditional lie detectors) are meant to measure physical signs of STRESS when the person lies. The stress is presumably caused by a fear of being found out.
For this reason the “baseline” tests were a total joke. He was told to give the wrong colour for the walls of the room. That won’t stress anybody. He was also TOLD to lie about some traffic conviction. Again, if you’ve been TOLD to lie, there’s no fear of being found out.
As for the rest of it? if you really believe the BS you’re saying, what’s to be stressed about? he’s also used to everyone else believing his BS, so……
Exactly, the kind of behavior the defense would like to have us believe from these text messages, is unsupported by anything that would allow us to interpret or understand what is actually being talked about. Trayvon does not text about who the next victim will be, what he does about his own injuries, what he will do to the next guy or the same guy next time, etc., as you would expect of someone involved in fighting and generally making a menace of himself.
Of course, a teenager being around his mom all day, gets a false image of what a man really is, because it comes from him and his peers watching tv and gangsta rap cd’s. He needed to spend some time with his dad, to refresh his memory about his goals, and dispel this illusion that “real men”™ are Bruce Willis, Rocky Balboa and John Wayne.
thank you for # 10 post; follow please; character evidence/prior bad acts of victim is not admissable- MOM stated in interview – he wont go there if the state doesn’t go onto george’s prior bad acts- but those are different- he has arrest records, etc., AND prior bad acts admissable to show propensity & modus operandi…. judge will ule on these issues- but MOM now already has leaked to/ prejudiced juror pool. they will have to consciously avoid considering evidence learned outside of trial-=hard to do, not impossible, but hard
follow…
Hey there! I’ve been lurking too, but good to see you around. Hope all is well.
HEY! I’ve been working crazy hours and I do try to keep up with Dispora along with some other blogs, but this is a must read. I see alot has happened, but alot remains the same. Interesting about the texts, I felt bad for Tchocpi for not understanding the “lingo” in the text messages. 🙂 If I have time to break down or translate for him I will this weekend. Amsterdam seems to have a great handle on it. I miss you guy. Life is not the same without you guys.
@aussie – whatever “results” were acquired by administering a “voice stress test” are 100% in admissible in court. I’m fairly certain the ONLY purpose of having GZ sit for such a. Bullshit test was to keep him cooperating and making additional statements that “can and will be used against (him) in a court of law.”
Just as important (that’s by it was recorded) as the so called “test” was the long period before where GZ is left to wait in uncomfortable silence with a female investigator and so he breaks the uncomfortable silence with chit chat, including the loaded remark about how people ” respect authority” or don’t.
Then GZ is asked almost casually by the test administrator as an afterthought to run thru his story again, which he does. It here he most adamantly claims he wss knocked backwards to the ground by an initial sucker punch. These are the sorts of inconsistent ad contradictory statements that convictions are built on every day.
Again I feel very strongly that the ONLY “results” that will be heard by a jury regarding a voice stras test
Whoops – the only “results” that a jury will hear about what appened regarding a voice stress test will be the character – revealing statements about “authority” and the inconsistent and contradictory tale he’s peddling about self defense
The “voice stress test” is a very rich and rewarding investigative tool, since anyone who’s aware of lie detection science will have to think “Wha??? These cops are dumber than I thought!” Which is exactly what you want a suspect to be thinking! Because while he’s being impressed by how abysmally stupid the police seem to be, he’s not thinking about his right to remain silent or that he might need the assistance of an attorney. Who needs an attorney when the police are this dumb? 😆
Well, I can’t begin to express how happy I am to see you’ll rethink TM’s texts. I have admired each one and your high level of critical thinking skills, especially you tchio(sp.?) and to read you saying you have changed your opinion of TM and especially he is as bad as thugboat, simply caused my heart to feel so sad.
Contrary to Zimmerman’s attorney trying to paint victim as bad apple, they show him as an exceptionally gentle, sweet natured barely 17 teen. Where is the cussing or even a hint of anger in his texts? Not one FU. Not one asshole. Not one shit. His mom and dad are enacting a severe, to a teen, discipline making him leave his friends for the full 10 days. For a teen, 10 days away from his friends is an eternity bordering on torture.
So, where are his cussing, name calling, refusing to take responsibility words. You would fully expect them -90% of teens would be ranting about what an asshole my parents are! How could they! I hate them!
Now, let’s look at Zimmerman’s anger. He calls the 911 to complain ” the dog is gone but I WANT IT NOTED it took a full 30 minutes for someone to respond” I mean he is calling on dogs in his neighborhood every month and not strays but pets. So that is an anger problem but who takes the time to call the police to complain they weren’t quick enough, by god!!
There are still two instances that trouble me in TM’s cell phone texts:
2/18/2012 11:16:15 PM : Read : “You want a 22 revolver”
2/20/2012 12:49:04 AM : SENT : “Tell fool i got 80 4 him right na”
One thing about the line about the 22 revolver. It is in a language that I can read without too much pain that’s called English. However, like for the 38, is it a reference to pot? If not, it pops up like that randomly, with no contest and the only possible reply from TM is “Wat shoota??” which I can’t understand at all.
The reference to 80 comes a few time. I guess that’s MJ too. It looks like TM sold some too. That’s not good at all if it’s the case. Can anyone translate to me?
They don’t even line up to each other. One is the 18 th and one the 22nd, four days later. You make them sound like someone is selling a 22 and TM is saying he has money. That is what O’Mara is attempting to do, pulling a text completely out of context and totally at random to the preceding text.
2dogsonly, I never claimed that those lines come in a sequence. To clarify, those are the two lines in the whole set of texts that I find disturbing.
Tchoupi
These messages are out of context. Maybe this was a classmate sending out txt to a whole bunch of people. I can’t find reply messages to that particular message that made sense.
Maybe something happened to a friend, and they were talking about how they were going to defend themselves.
I can go on and on.
If someone were to check my social media and pick out sentences, you would think I had an arsenal at home, I haven’t touched a gun in my life. But I’ve been talking and researching guns for this case. I’ve commented extensively about guns, after the Sandyhook massacre.
Do you realize that the defense added photos, claiming they are Trayvon, that are taken from social media sites. One of them from a video of which Trayvon’s brother had said over a year ago that is not Trayvon?
The defense knows this stuff is never going be entered into evidence. O’Mara pretty much admitted to that. The stuff is never going to be tested for what it actually meant. Its sole
purpose is to sway public opinion and to poison the jury pool.
You want to know the real Trayvon. Read the exchange with Sybrina again. That is Trayvon with the person who knows him best in a complete exchange.
He wasn’t high when he was murdered. In his previous tweets, not texts, released by nutters, he says he’s not going to smoke anymore because it gets him in trouble. He also says Rt if you love your mother.
You are disappointing me, tchio. Step back from being so judgmental. Again, he did not have a gun when he was murdered, his THC level was so low it would not have even keyed on an employment test, and finally no one who is buzzed buys one package of candy.
Male teens use bravado to explore their new masculinity. This is as normal as teenage girls swooning over celebrity crush. Now, everything is out in public. But this was a sweet natured boy and it shows in his tweets, texts,and the many pixs. No violence in his history. Fight was a boxing match two years earlier. And he lost. Not much of a fighter at all.
Someone sending a text about a 22 means nothing. Him responding he has an 80 could mean anything in teen code. But his tweet clearly says he’s quitting smoking cuz it gd u in trble..I don’t know where they are but he was recognizing he needed to grow up. And his parents were making sure he got on the right path.
My views are from a white grandmother. I am kind of astonished at your intolerance of young teens. Do you not have children?
Again for context if highly recommend a recent two episode series on the radio program THIS AMERICAN LIFE about at-risk high schoolers called “Harper High” that is available on free podcast.
Kids like Trayvon don’t have a similar background and youth to anything anyone over the age of 30 would recognize. When the Columbine school massacre occurred Trayvon was four years old. He and kids like him SWIM in a culture awash with violence and handguns. Yet he was a good kid, and had zero history of violence.
When I was his age I smoked marijuana on an almost daily basis as a relief from the boredom and monotony of suburbia and substandard public education. The year I started college and was finally intellectually challenged I quit for good. What I wanted was to be treated like an adult, and when I got it my “rebellion” took other forms quickly.
I strongly suggest everyone in this forum listen to both hours of that radio documentary. It’s incredibly well produced and they took a year to make it, speaking to dozens of kids who grew up amidst horrific everyday violence and “gang” activity that is nothing like what you might think it is. You don’t know high schoolers today if you aren’t one.
After reading again the texts, I realized that my first impression was probably excessive. However, I cannot close my eyes on instances that may suggest attempts to buy a gun or attempts to sell MJ. I want to make sure I understand correctly those texts.
So, you should calm down, 2dogsonly, and read again my post. I’m just asking for help to understand what those texts are about. I’m not used to the lingo I and need to get a translator.
I spent hours lining up all the texts to see if something would come out of it. I could makes sense of most of it but the two lines referenced above. At first reading those lines suggest:
1) Someone proposed a 22 revolver to TM. But, there is no contest to that text and the only text that could be TM answering to it makes no sense to me. Moreover, I find it curious that this line is in clear English.
2) TM has a buddy he calls “fool” that he cannot text to directly. He asks someone if “fool” can meet him at the gym or asks someone to tell “fool” that he has “80” for him. I have no idea what “80” is but it comes a few times such as during his trip to Orlando while on the bus.
The one about meeting fool at the gym, is I believe put in an incredulousness way. It is followed by a remark indicating that he is not in Miami, so he is obviously not going to meet fool at the gym.
The kid was a pothead. Then again between 50 to 60 % of Americans have smoked pot. I have used recreational as a teenager, but it made me paranoid when I got older, so I stopped. Most of my friends did, most of them stopped when life didn’t allow them to just hang around, listen to music, say brillant things they couldn’t remember 5 minutes later, and eat enormous amounts of disgusting munch food.
It is what teenagers do. Teenagers of all social economic classes and of every color.
My ex who was from a nice white middle class Beaver Cleaver family, supported himself during his college years at a Ivy league university, by selling pot he had grown between the corn plants in his parents backyard. Trust me, nobody would’ve thought him suspicious and call the police on him.
I’ll feel like Ahab going below decks to ask the pagans to deliver the great white whale by nefarious means, but is there a link to all these text and twitter messages that is un-redacted? If we are to be subjected to the defense’s version of them, it seems fair game to see what they saw and what the state’s investigators have seen.
No there isn’t. And not only are they redacted, they are selections of messages, without it being clear what the selection criteria was, or on some reports not even clear which messages were send by Trayvon and which messages he received. Everybody in the media and the blogs are commenting on the group of messages describing a fight and attributing those words to Trayvon, while in fact there is no way for us to tell, if he wrote them.
TM was in Miami on Saturday Feb 18th, when he txt about meeting “fool” at the gym. He would leave to Orlando on Tuesday Feb 21st in the morning.
I understand that those texts are rather typical of a teenager.
I looked it up, Tchioupi. Here it is:
Do u want a 22 revolver is do you want to be a revolving door in & out of HS until you are 22?
Have an 80 4 you. Is –I have a wake up call for you. Stop being a dummy.your Dad and I will be having an intervention with you.
I know this is correct translation cause I asked my children what it means and they swore this is correct.
Please Tchioupi, you are way too smart to even be concerned with this bravado from a barely 17 yr. old trying to grow up.
I would take this 17 yr. old AA kid as my neighbor any day all day long over that redneck psycho any day of the week.
I have been amazed at your analytical skills, maybe over anyone else’s, for over a year. Please let me continue to be educated by you. The stupidity on the web is breathtaking but you have been inspirational.
So stop this silly time and return to being a frigging genius.
And I will calm down. deal?
Thanks for the complements. I really appreciate as I spent a lot of time on the case.
The 22 revolver text, is weird on two aspects: 1) it is in plain English , & 2) it has no context. The only text in plain English I found are from TM’s parents.
@2dogsonly
Great work. Please thank your kids for the enlightening on my behalf… and from my long lost childhood:
: – )
Ooops, forgot to give the quote. It’s from the authorised version of the King James Bible (translated 1604-1611).
hearing so far: defense motions denied; state motions upheld. Everything regarding text messages seems to be ruled in-admissable.
And the photos and video? (I missed the beginning)
Do you have any link?
So all the stuff about fighting came from unauthenticated social media, not from his phone.
I don’t see anything like what you’re describing Amsterdam but here is a nice article that describes the defense strategy.
For real this time: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/05/george-zimmerman-pre-trial-hearing/65639/
I don’t read the media, they have their own strategy, “pump up emotions, to pump up sales or ratings”. I will try to locate the relevant part from the hearing for you. Nelson is not looking at redacted stuff the way we are, and basicly what she said was, “defense first authenticate the stuff you got, then you have to get past the hearsay rule, if you pass all that I may let you use it as evidence”. The reason there is no send/ receive information on the fight messages, is because they don’t originate from Trayvon’s phone, but from a social media site. The same for the videos and some of the photos. They do not originate from his phone, but have been floating on the internet for more than a year. They have not been authenticated as having originated from Trayvon as of today.
Here is the first part.
And it continues in this video.
I set a begin time for the first video, but it didn’t work. It begins at 5:28.
This is great Amsterdam, it will save a lot of time to a lot of people.
In response to the fight, Judge said if everyone was viewed as unfavorable because they watched a fight ( one of MOM’s motions as to prior bad acts) then there are a lot of bad people. I think the nettles lady writes a lot of his motions because they fail to cite cases and they are bordering on embarrassing for their client.
All texts and other media is verboten. No continuance granted.All motions granted in victim’s favor. Three noteworthy moments:
1) Judge denies one of Wes’s motions but Wes continues to stand. Finally, Judge asks “anything further” (meaning could you please sit down) and Wes responds:”Just trying to process” and stands for another second or two. I think he’s thinking ” well, I earn 350/hr. so I just earned 50.00.
2) MOM has motion to force voice expert to lower fee, of course it’s denied and Judge suggests Skype. BUT, from his seat, MOM says “he only makes 20k /yr.” Thereby, ensuring expert will not be lowering his fee, thank you very much.
3) MOM threw Wes under the bus when judge chastised them for breaking her order…saying ” it was Wes who gave that pressor…I never would have violated it”.
4) MOM screwed up by including standard clause to include any and all prosecution witnesses not listed on defense witness list. This brought Shellie into the fray as she could have claim spousal immunity. May not have been totally successful as spouses don’t have immunity where privacy is not assumed. Her attorney is first rate but now she’ll have to return and plead 5th and hope it’s accepted. At least, this keeps her knowledge away from prosecution until trial. She can’t really flip on hubby until she knows he’s going away. would be too dangerous for her.
5) Sanctions against state for not turning over 3 items that make victim look less angelic. They brought in a surprise former state attorney employee who had called MOM asking if BDLR had turned over these items? BDLR looked stunned. Judge called halt as this guy is giving heresay testimony and they need state attorney employee who actually has direct knowledge. This state attorney employee will be testifying at 6/6 or 6/7 hearing.
6) BDLR daughter is getting married. Daddy is so happy, he stupidly said this in open court.
Summing up, Wes is po’d at Mom
BDLR is really po’d at his employee, can’t remember his/her name but they will be looking for another job.
BDLR’s daughter is po’d at her Dad
And the Trayvon warriors are pleased as punch.
Left out one. Motion to have jury visit scene, denied. Mom argued they could actually DRIVE onto dog walk and T to view murder site. They could do this in a blacked out windowed van so no one could take their pixs. They did not offer how they would NOT be breaking numerous laws on trespassing, property damage,etc.
This was Mom’s answer to questions concerning protection of jury identification.
Judge: How would you prevent residents and overhead media from taking their pixs.?
O’Mara: They could drive onto the property in a blacked out van.
Judge: What about recreating the weather conditions, rain? How would you do that?
O’Mara: crickets
Silly MOM, he could have suggested the jury all wear KKK clothing which it would have solved the recognition and pix problem.
But of course, that would have done it nicely. The nation and the world, would have been treated to the sight of six kkk clad jurors walking RATL, how positively lovely.
Hope you are being sarcastic Lonnie, mine was a poke/joke no more… Maybe I should have put a winking smilie or something !
At this late date, I sincerely think no one would believe that I wasn’t being sarcastic. No emoticons needed. 😆
They’ve started a trial watch group on the Daily Kos. I am one of the blog editors of the group. I am going to work on some primer posts. I think it would be great if some of the great work done here, could be shared with a larger audience.
Any volunteers? I know Willisnewton has an account. Willis I think this is the time to share your car to pedestrian tail.
Tchoupi, Whonoze I don’t know if you have accounts at the daily kos, but a proper introduction to the clubhouse videos with the video, would be a great primer.
Do you have a link? You made me remember I have an account but I never used it before.
Yes
Here is a link http://www.dailykos.com/
Not that one. I need a link to your watch group within dkos.
I search under your name and under “trial watch” with no success so far.
Here is the link to the group
http://www.dailykos.com/blog/Trial%20Watch
Thanks
One of CNN lawyers said BDLR’s Motion in Limine to keep out texts, pixs, was a very bad move as any attempt at trial to enter any prior bad acts would be immediately blocked by rule of law. But now every media report is leading with “Judge approved motion to keep out TM’s drug use, fight, etc. which, of course, makes everyone acutely aware of them.
Further, the refusal to issue gag order allows O’Mara to go on every media site announcing Judge refusing all ………of TM over and over and over again.
Apparently, BDLR’s lack of turning over 3 items is a serious error, even if it was accidental and could, but probably won’t, result in new trial. But definitely a lot of fireworks at next hearing.
As far as I understand, the defense received all of the data from the phone, including the photos. They just received it as raw data, which was the way they requested it, and they didn’t want to pay for an expert to extract the information.
They asked if there were more reports generated by the prosecution expert, BdlR said no to that. BdlR followed that up with ” they can hire their own experts”.
So the complaint in their motion is basicly ” The State owns software and hired an expert, we want them to do our work for us”.
Way way back I had an exchange over on bcclist about the alleged burglary tool (a screwdriver) in TM’s backpack found by a security guard at the school. I made the comment something to the effect of “Let’s bring it all out in the open and then we’ll see who looks better in the light of day.” You’re right, the mere suggestion that the prosecution is “hiding” something is worse than what the true facts are.
Hey Amsterdam- I’m working on a post for daily kis but I’ve been swamped this week with work.
I’m hoping that the prosecution covers all the “they went that anyway” stuff at trial but you never know. My secret nightmare would be that they lose the trial by virtue of not ever having figured out what the BCC list consensus came up with months ago.
“My secret nightmare would be that they lose the trial by virtue of not ever having figured out what the BCC list consensus came up with months ago.”
Isn’t that something they should have already had before pressing charges?
Short answer: damfino
Longer answer:
The case for murder 2 IMO hinges on the state proving “depraved mind” status of the defendant. You could argue that point to a jury with a deaf body,an empty shell casing and the NEN call recording alone but I’m not sure you would get a unanimous vote. You might convince a majority that GZ profiled and pursued an unarmed teen into the proverbial dark alley but demonstrating what happened next is not something a skilled defense attorney couldn’t sow some reasonable doubt upon.
IMO it’s the car to pedestrian chase plus the lies to SPD that prove the killing was enacted with a depraved mind. Why lie about how you arrived at a scene unless you have a darn good reason to lie? He established (IMO) a PATTERN of lies that can be shown to a jury. When in doubt he left it out; what he did he blamed the kid.
The “doubling back” was something George did after trolling the mail kiosk. Leaving this out speaks to his intent. If he had good intent why not relate the story as it happened?
How did goers travel south of the T? IMO he leaves this out.
That’s the pattern to me that a jury would use to make up their minds about what really happened in the missing minutes. George left out some actions he’s hiding. But I feel the prosecution could establish he already exhibited a depraved mind or at least aggressive action and bad intent. Forensics and circumstantial evidence would be enough for jurors to unite behind the idea rant this man is guilty once all that is demonstrated. He’s got no credibility and a pattern of lying where it counts. The rest is just in getting a jury to unite on these issues and a preponderance of the rest. Some may believe it’s trayvon yelling, Others may feel the bullet trajectory is key. But they don’t need to be unanimous about these side issues, dee dee included. Just the lies and the pattern of lies, an the understanding that he drove after the kid and the jumped out to follow him. The rest is just what one would expect – a man who would lie about the little things isn’t to be trusted on the big things.
darn autocorrect
deaf = dead
goers = george
rant = that
I recommend ignoring O’Mara and the media that’s making hay of out his allegations. The jury will be comprised of six people, and it’s unlikely that any one of those six will be so swayed by these tactics that they will ignore their responsibility to judge the evidence presented in court. While I’m angry at what O’Mara is doing, I’m also amused if this is pretty much all he has to work with.
The state has the evidence to prove Murder 2, and I now trust that the prosecutors have a good strategy in presenting the case. O’Mara’s dependency on showing Trayvon to be a violent pothead not only cannot be proved unless he has witnesses who testify to Trayvon’s behavior (like, he’s aggressive on pot, or he likes picking fights rather than enjoying watching/participating in refereed sparring matches), but such an allegation has nothing to do with the events of that night. In the early evening of 26 February 2012, Trayvon was nothing but a 17-year-old high school junior who had walked to a 7-11 to purchase a can of soda and a bag of Skittles candy, and who then walked back towards home – while talking to a friend on his cell phone.
But… he was SWAYING! And… he had a lighter and a tan bag and forty dollars! Imagine what McGuyver could do with all that!
I’m not in the least but worried about M’OM’s tactics. I’m worried that the State won’t prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt to the jury.
If GZ had a defense it would be that he acted in self-defense. He’s already given up on that idea, IMO. He’s just hoping that the state can’t prove it’s case.
Yep, TM was swaying, but then again maybe all the customers sway since the clerk didn’t even remember anything about TM or anything remarkable that way. But seriously, what is the swaying that he’s talking about? All I remember was when he was up at the counter, he leaned up against it a couple of times.
When that 7-Eleven video first hit the web, whatever was done to change it from their surveillance system’s digital format to whatever was used online “had issues”, with the result that it did not run at one second of playback for one second of original recording–it would drag and then hurry to catch up (you could tell by watching the time-stamp), which exaggerated movements.
Once you see it run at the correct rate, the swaying pretty much disappears and all you get is leaning to one side when he’s digging in his pocket for exact change.
Obviously you don’t patronize many convenience stores, as a general rule they have music playing, since studies show that people buy more when they hear their favorite hits.
What? The first sentence of my comment was sarcastic, in line with and as a response to willisnewton’s comment. Maybe I should have noted that. I did follow up with a “But seriously….” Anyway, I didn’t see TM swaying to music or anything at the 711 at all, other than his movements at the counter which, as unitron noted, was just him digging into his pants for change.
Sorry, I didn’t realize you’d be so sensitive about being accused of not patronizing convenience stores, I guess I should have added a smiley. 😀 Lots of people I know
would consider such an accusation to be highly complimentary.
Anyway, I thought I’d just toss the music meme into mix to confuse and confound the treepers.
@Lonnie, ha! you’re right, I wouldn’t be caught in a 7-11, no way!!!! That’s just because I’m cheap and can’t see myself paying $2-3 for a soda when I can buy a full 2 liters at the supermarket for $1.
Yeah, our Grand Parents called this type of thing “abject stupidity Chile”, of course we new age people knew better, it was what we call “upscale/avant garde” and/or “jiggy with it”.
All of which sounds very upscale and “with it”, “hip” and “cool”, except for the fact that pay 2 or 3 dollars for less than half of what you can for 1 dollar, is patently stupid, no matter how one dresses it up. Of course, that’s why the commercial whizz by so quick that nobody gets a chance to think about the fact that it’s a super athlete multi millionaire whose leading the “burger jockeys and entry level paper shufflers” to slaughter.
It’s hard to believe that the trial will begin in a mere 10 days, although frustrating to know that the first week or two will be taken up by voir dire. Perhaps we can take this time to review the evidence, at least that which has been publicly released. I think we should first realize that character issues are not likely to be brought up; the state will focus all its attention on the events of that night, and, perhaps, to Zimmerman’s behavior in the days afterward.
What evidence suggests Zimmerman’s criminal profiling of Trayvon, and how this state-of-mind led to his subsequent actions? What evidence suggests that Trayvon consistently behaved in such a manner that would lead a reasonable person to persist in believing him to be suspicious?
What evidence supports or contradicts Zimmerman’s statements as to why he followed Trayvon? What evidence belies his assertion that he merely walked to Retreat View Circle and was attacked just beyond the T as he walked back to his truck?
What evidence suggests Trayvon, at any time, showed aggression towards Zimmerman, or that, if he did punch Zimmerman in the nose, that such an act was or was not reasonable?
What evidence suggests that, when the struggle began, Zimmerman made no effort to retreat, and that he, in fact, sought to restrain Trayvon? What evidence suggests otherwise?
What evidence supports or contradicts Zimmerman’s assertion that he had no choice but to save his life by killing Trayvon?
“What evidence belies his assertion that he merely walked to Retreat View Circle and was attacked just beyond the T as he walked back to his truck?”
One huge piece of evidence is that map that GZ personally drew paths upon. The path back from RVC to the T is worth looking at. It doesn’t go past the T and on to(wards) his vehicle at all. Instead it seems to cut across right where the dog waste station is, and then heads south a little towards John/W6’s back yard but doesn’t quite reach that far, much like GZ himself pantomimed his “stumbling” less than half the actual distance to the body.
Then of course there is the clock itself. He must have CRAWLED that distance on his belly if it that’s how long it took him to only go that far.
And again, there’s that map he drew on. In his walk thru “re-enactment” he stops short of the street. On the map he crosses the street to the opposite side. Which was it, George?
I see that map as a keystone piece of evidence against him, mostly for the car-to-pedestrian chase it suggests, but also for the “missing minutes” paths he drew.
You’ve got Dee Dee’s statement from ScreamingJ’s wonderful spreadsheet of witness statement. Be sure to read Witness 8 HERE
Then you’ve got the Master Revisable Timeline HERE
And last but not least by a long shot you’ve got: “WHO WERE THOSE PEOPLE — OR DID WITNESS 11 LIE?”
Everything gz said about FT’s and the clubhouse was made up out of whole cloth.
But the most critical lies of all are about the actual confrontation, gz’s version is certifiably a lie, made up out of whole cloth, which my last link above demonstrates.
Well, from the evidence we have here GZ is not the neighborhood hero who was attacked at the Tee, but the cowardly criminal and lying stalker who shot a helpless kid in cold blood!
I got up this morning in a rare mood, here’s a little work I managed to get done about that “bending the corner” and stuff. I managed to locate the two videos that taken together illustrate that, either there had to be another group of people out there, racing towards where Trayvon and GZ were stationed, or witness 11 is lying through her teeth.
I tend to think W11 is just mistaken. Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable.
Then again we just don’t know. What’s clear is that someone closed a gap between these two people. Either it was the unarmed teen who had just run away from a menacing car, or it was the hot-tempered, violence-prone wannabe cop with a loaded gun who had just told theNEN call taker that he wasn’t going back to his car after all.
YES! By saying ” umm just have them call me and I’ll tell them where I am”, he informed NEN he was not returning to his car. So, jury,WHAT was his plan? Consider his options, jury members.
A. continue with his grocery shopping?
B. Return home.?
Neither of these make sense as NEN had his cell number as Shawn stated it and GZ last words were : ” yes, you got it”
Instead, he said you have my contact number and I will tell you where I am when cop gets here.
That is as pure a line of what his intent was as I have read. And it keeps it to the KISS principle.
I don’t think W11 is wrong when she states that the initial yells were coming from the T area. This is the only way to explain why those initial yells are heard only by the witnesses living by the T (including W18). This is also the only way to explain why there is a clear gradient of what was heard going south from the T. For example, 3 houses down, they heard the cries for help but not the initial yells. Then, 4 houses down, (Mary & Selma) they barely heard the cries for help but still heard the gunshot. Then, 5 houses down (W19), she heard the cries only after opening her back porch sliding door to walk her dog.
I’m sure W2, on which the analysis is mostly based, is the unreliable witness. In fact I believe she simply lied during her 1st interview with Serino outside her house. Indeed, she starts with claiming doing and seein what her sister, W01, did and saw. Then, she states seeing things that she will later recants.
Finally, LLM misunderstood W01’s drawing. If you look to her map as you listen to her interview, you can’t miss the fact that she swapped north and south in her map, and that what she flailing hands she describes are occurred by JohnW6’s house.
That said, I find more significant that there was a loud argument started between the T and TTL as W11 seems to indicate. That suggests that the 2 were coming from TTL which can only go against GZ. There is no claim from DeeDee about where it started and where TM walked. There is a claim from GZ that is that he was just 1 step past the T when TM called him out and punched him. If GZ’s story is to be believed, it is rather difficult to understand how the 2 ended up rushing down the dogwalk.
Somebody’s gotta make Jeremy spill the beans.
I agree with you Tchoupi, it started near the T. W1, w2 didn’t speak with Serino that first night. There was a neighborhood meeting one or both of them attended, where they told an LE they may have information. I think w2 was trying to hide the fact that her daughter witnessed the entire event but that she felt guilty about it and pretended that she was the one witnessing a footchase. She just wasn’t prepared to answer the details like, which way were they running.
Why would they release an anonymus tip, that didn’t pan out anything?
I am not sure about the rules concerning a minor child’s testimony, but I can imagine it wouldn’t have been difficult to get an agreement to keep that kind of information out of the public domain.
@amsterdam, Wait, what? I’ve been out of it, so please bear with me. Are you just speculating or has there been some new information regarding the 8 year old female witness that may have seen the whole thing according to the anonymous tip? Does witness 2 have a young daughter that some suspect to be the “saw it all” witness or is this your own hunch? Sorry, that comment just caught my attention, but I’m unsure of the context. Thanks for any clarification.
@wassointeresting
That is my deduction of the facts. You can judge for yourself.
Here is the memo
Notice that they didn’t return to W1 and W2, because they’d already been there.
W1 and w2’s porch was screened in. I’ll add a link to an image in the next comment.
This is from w2’s statement.
This is from w1’s statements
and later in her statement
Notice the over emphasis on “the kids didn’t see anything”. Over emphasizing a fact is usually a warning signal for deception. It bothered me before I knew about the kid that supposedly saw it all.
I first thought that w2’s first statement was mixed up with her sister. When I realized she completely changed her statement, I started to put 2 and 2 together.
Intriguing. If true, I wonder if the young mystery witness could be brought forth at trial, and if so, what would that ever mean in terms of credibility if W2 stated in the first place about her not seeing anything.
@wsi
and here you can see w1 and w2’s porch is screened in.
@amsterdam, thanks for the detailed explanation of your theory and the link. I had dismissed any of the original witness’ residences as being where that potential young eye-witness lived, but this deserves a second look.
And now with a link.
@wsi,
How many anonymus tips that didn’t return anything of value have been included in the discovery? I think it is there to validate what ever statements were recovered at a later date.
If it is true, the defense would know about it. The information would’ve been kept out of view of the press and the public.
I can’t blame w2 for wanting to keep her child out of it. Here is this guy, who lives on the complex and was set free after murdering a teenager in your backyard. I can understand not wanting to put your child in the position of being the only eyewitness who saw it all.
What we do know for a fact is that a female child was living in a house with a screened in porch, within sight of the murder scene. We also know the footchase was part of the original charge. GZ was charged in april. w2 changed her story on the 20th of march.
We’ll find out at the trial. If the child saw it, she’ll be testifying. It may very well be part of the evidence the prosecution couldn’t make public.
LLM gets a lot of things wrong, sadly. His videos are a testament however to the power of persuasion using motion pictures as a medium. He gets plenty right, as well. But were his various theories and opinions presented as a paragraph in a comment section of a blog, like this is, they would carry less weight with a general audience.
I hate to harp on my pet theory (because it’s no more valid than another) but again I have to point out that the only PHYSICAL evidence we have of where TM went is the location of his body and cell phone. So it’s possible that he never went anywhere else at all.
I could see a scenario where GZ did all the wandering around in the missing minutes and TM essentially stuck around John’s back yard on the phone, pacing in a small circle until eventually edging up towards the T to see if the stranger on a cell phone was going to return from the direction of RVC, only to be surprised by GZ approaching from the south.
Many things are possible. What GZ claimed happened is not possible.
@willis
At least drop John’s backyard. I think John was the only person with a porch light on. I agree with you that everything is possible, but it doesn’t make sense to hide in the only spot where he could easily have been seen.
The possible alternative is that, perhaps he was running to the light, in hopes of finding someone home who might help?
Hmmm, I don’t know whose map that is in the video but I did get the impression she did draw a map. If so, she’s about as mistaken as the guy who swore he saw MMA punches that never happened either.
It’s like the lady at the check out counter, sure she make mistakes now and then, but if the “mistakes” are always in her own favor…. what do we think then?
The other piece of evidence is George’s failure at understanding the risks involved with playing cops.
In an earlier instance, GZ would also have gone after the suspicious person he was reporting to dispatcher, if it was not for Shellie to tell him not to.
http://www.wesh.com/blob/view/-/15490530/data/3/-/d4lnkj/-/Call-1.null
And her objections that time is why I am 110% convinced she was NOT with him this time. Lot of other reasons, too, but going on that occasion, she’d not have let him do it. There is no sound of her objecting during the NEN call. She wasn’t there.
Trayvon was able to see GZ was a white dude and he was talking on the phone. Hard to imagine he could’ve missed Shellie sitting next to him. I don’t understand why people keep insisting she was in the car with him.
It keeps coming up because of the sounds heard on the NEN tape. It is a truck, so she could have been laying in the rear seat. It has tinted windows, and GZ claims to have rolled the window down and been asked if he was following, to which he says he replied no and rolled the window back up. Of course this story is a crock because he’d have been on the NEN call by the time “He’s coming towards me!” The NEN call is continuous with no drops.
So, there is no way that Sean could have failed to have heard this exchange.
I am not going there Lonnie.
Of course… It occurs to me that gz’s claim that he rolled down the window, may just be another one of his ways of covering up things that he actually did, by saying that it was done for another purpose. Perhaps rolling down the window was part of his terrorizing Trayvon, to get him to run, so in case someone saw him roll his window down, or in case, by this time, he knew Trayvon had been talking on the phone, gz was seeking to cover more of his actions.
Just a thought.
@lonnie
I think GZ is a coward. Serino described him as a softy with a hero complex. His ex fiancee described him as the last person she would expect to put him self in danger. I think the most succinct observation about GZ’s personality came from the middle eastern co-worker. He said that he didn’t think GZ was a racist, but that he was a bully who would pick on anyone he’d considered weak, just to make himself popular with his peers. He also said that he thought if Trayvon would’ve been a 30 year old man weighing 200lbs, GZ would’ve never gone after him.
I heard him in one 911 call, where he called in about a mature black male, telling the dispatcher, he wasn’t going to go out there.
I’ve listened to some of the calls between Shellie and GZ. They are playing their roles. Shellie plays the weak woman and GZ the strong man. But it is all roll playing. It is Shelle’s role to stop him from doing things, he would never do anyway, but now he can continue to feel masculine. You know, the old ball and chain keeping him back.
Taking Shellie with him while doing manly stuff, doesn’t fit in their relationship pattern.
I think GZ had been drinking that evening. I think he soiled his underwear when Trayvon was passing his car on his way home. GZ must have seen, he was only dealing with a thin teenager carrying a 7 eleven bag. I think he must have known at that point Trayvon wasn’t a threat to him. When Trayvon started to run, he knew Trayvon was afraid of him. He got out of that car, because he found a victim he could bully and make himself feel more masculine.
Okay, I got that and it seems to be on point with the persona I’ve captured of him, so I’ll scratch the theory that Shellie was in the car with him, based solely on your validation that she’s a check on him, even if only for things he wouldn’t do anyway. I also doubt he could either keep her quiet or get her to lay down on the seat.
But, that said, he does need to know that people will be with him if he’s going to do something. The evidence we have so far of the way he moved that night, still suggest that he had someone out there keeping an eye on Trayvon and probably tracking him. Those three guys he met at the 711 seem to be the key, they did have a car. They’d be the ideal candidates for tracking Trayvon’s movements. If that car passed him twice on the way back, he’d almost certainly be paranoid and cut off the road through Colonial Village, if only to gain some peace of mind.
I still believe he goes to the kiosk before gz has a chance to leave home. Tchoupi’s track of the vehicle that comes down RVC close to 7:08 or so fits too nicely not to be gz’s truck. It’s not like there’s a lot of traffic to confuse it with and while he’s making his first and second pass at the mail kiosk the cctv’s at either end and the front gate pick up no interference at all.
So, what we have is Osterman’s car missing in action and Shellie’s car on TTL near the back gate. The thing that gets me is, the guy who was checking plates seems to get to gz’s
vehicle before he gets to the HOA presidents truck and it should be the other way around if gz was parked where he says it was. Because the officer seems to have been moving north on TTL. So why should he come to gz’s vehicle first if gz’s vehicle was parked further north?
Right?
A possible explanation I see would be if Shellie picked him up at the MI bank and drove him in. But then, why would she do that if they weren’t already tracking Trayvon? One possible explanation would be that when gz left home, in the condition he was in, and in response to a call, Shellie might have begun to worry about him and when Osterman called she told him what gz was doing, and that he was armed Osterman would know better than to bring his car in while the hunt was going on. Knowing how erratic gz could possibly be.
Maybe they were out there trying to stop him? But by time they heard the screams and knew where he was, the gunshot came before they could get to him and MO advised Shellie and possible Taaffe that they’d better get away from the area and not be caught there at all.
Anyways that’s all speculation. The only reason to speculate this way is, because if there is something in the records we have, we’re likely to miss it’s significance if we have no theory at all. In much the same way we’ve all missed the stain on Jon’s garage door frame. I think long ago some one pointed it out, be we had no idea that gz could have gone that way, so we simply dismissed it. We still don’t know that it’s a blood stain, but we do have an eye on it now and so, if something else comes along that can be tied to it, we’re unlikely to dismiss it so quickly. Of course, none of this is necessary since we already have enough to know that gz is guilty as sin.
More than half of what we’ve developed over the year, probably won’t even be used at the trial.
And, even more important evidence probably still remains hidden from our view.
Lonnie,
I admire your energy and imagination, but I use a complete different method for putting together my theories. I just collect every piece of information I can find and store it without categorizing it. All these pieces of information form patterns. If a certain pattern appears 2 times, I start paying more attention to it, at 3 times I will start testing it against other pieces of evidence. If too many pieces of evidence are pointing away from the pattern, I drop it unless or until other pieces of evidence lead me back to it.
If other pieces of evidence affirm the pattern I start developing a theory.
Based on my method your theories don’t pass my requirements for calling it a theory. Doesn’t mean I am right and you are wrong. It just means that from my perspective you are creating a path and distributing pieces of known facts along the way to see if you have enough pieces. I just don’t think that is a very reliable and effective method. You are helped by your imagination, but you are also limited by it. In other words, if you can’t think of it, you will never find it.
I just note the coordinates of different pieces of evidence, then take a step back and watch the bigger picture to see what paths are lighting up.
I work the way I do because I know there’s lots of debris floating around always. Some of it means something while a lot of it doesn’t. But, what you don’t see is that I know my limits, which is why I put out theories that may seem half baked to some. I don’t work within my limits at all, but I put things out there so that other can either attach their own info, or knock the theory down with critical points. That’s called “working with others” not working alone. You’ll note that once someone gives a good challenge, if the theory can’t be fixed I drop it and move on. As opposed to people who “invest” in their theories and then tend to defend them at all cost. I consider my theories to be mostly dismissible until they aren’t.
But we need people working by different methods, when we finally all, or most, come together on something that’s how progress is made.
Originally back when NLME posted his map and timeline, I looked at the element of what gz would have had to experience, to see Trayvon by Taaffe’s and it didn’t make sense to me, because there were too many elements that would have been coincidental, while others did not fit the natural work flow of driving in the rain on a dark night with a well defined mission or chore at hand. Okay, when I put these gossamer elements together to theorize that gz was lying about that segment of the saga, I was challenged, and although I had to concede some portions, there was just not enough of a challenge to knock the whole thing out. That’s when NLME took another look and decided that there was something to the theory. Of course later on tchoupi’s cctv work put the final nail in the coffin of the FT meeting. But the theory survived in the interim because, the timelines when looked at more carefully didn’t support the claim either. Now we’re on the same page with that, Trayvon may have come by FT’s place, but gz was nowhere around when he did.
But it took all of us working together to get to the final version of that. You were there, so I think you know how close and far afield some speculations about it went before we were able to get on the same track.
So, while we’re still working with unknowns in a large “debris field” there’s plenty to speculate about and many attempts are needed to even select which of it is relevant or not. So it tales a village still. We’re all trying to find the theory that passes the acid test and doing so by different means. We’ve all succeeded and we’ve all failed on various points. That’s the struggle.
@lonnie
I appreciate what you are doing. It took me a while to understand why people think and work in different ways, and that all those different approaches are just as good. When I look at some of your theories, it is a confrontation with my own limited view on how a problem should be analyzed.
In Carl Jung’s psychological typology, you would represent the Intuitive type and I Sensation. These types are 2 sides of the same coin, both collect information and perceive, they are called the irrational functions, because they don’t judge, they just perceive. Intuition perceives what could be and sensation perceives what is.
The other 2 types are called the rational types, they are Thinking and Feeling. They decide and judge. They also form a pair and are each others polar opposite.
We all need to be able to perceive and judge. So if both of us bring in what we perceive, and we then can use our judgement functions to weigh that what we perceived, we can work very well together.
So let’s get to work, you throw out your theories, I throw out what I perceive and then we decide and judge which parts can stay and which parts should go.
Now you’re cookin… But, it’s better that we work our best thing and let those who are better at judging have a look and tell us what they think. The goal, after all, is not to arrive at something that convinces us, but to create something that convinces others.
I chose to work my way a long time ago, when I realize I could easily convince myself of what ever I wanted to be convinced of. As you can see, it only makes matters worse when you have two people doing this same thing to themselves. Convincing themselves of what they agree to be convinced of. This is why I say “It takes a village”. 2000 years ago, one man would have decided this case. 50 years ago it would have been 6 jurors a judge and two lawyers. Today it’s millions of people working in the same direction.
Oh, here’s my newest idea, hope it’s a good read, it’s rather short, but I believe insightful.
I think this analysis is TOO neat. No one in Jon’s house appears to have heard anything before the gunshot. John does not seem to have been aware of anything until TM and GZ were actually scuffling in his backyard. There are too many other factors besides distance that would affect audibility.
W11 has a motive to be less than truthful, as she is an officer of the HOA. W11’s and W20’s statements also do not match well with the audible evidence of the 911 call. “Jeremy, get IN here!” strongly implies he was out on the screened in porch.
I think perhaps the only consensus we could arrive at is that all the residents missed seeing and hearing the start of the altercation, and that whatever each of them witnessed, no one could give a clear picture of what actually occurred. (Maybe the anonymous 8 year old exists and maybe she doesn’t. If she isn’t testifying at trial, it matters not to a jury.)
I wonder about the W11 / W20 “bend a corner” description but doubt they were that quick to coordinate a false narrative with GZ unless he himself laid it out to them in the moments after being handcuffed, which no one else seems to say happened. But who knows, maybe that’s what Osterman accomplished while he was on the scene – helping to coordinate a false narrative somehow by speaking with GZ as he was sitting in ofc Tim Smith’s car and then casually explaining to the HOA officer “what happened here was…” But that is pure speculation and in essence the definition of a “conspiracy theory.” The HOA officer would be sticking his neck WAY out for what’s essentially very little potential gain. Would you lie about a murder that others seemed to have witnessed? They had to have seen Jon /W13 out there, and they had to assume he saw and heard as much or more than they did. Think of all this person is risking if they were deliberately coordinating a false narrative with a killer. Many things are possible.
No matter what really happened precisely, I do tend to think there was something of a “quarterback scramble” that occurred briefly somewhere, and the two may have run in small circles or slung one another around as GZ grabbed at Trayvon’s hoodie trying to detain him. Looking at the photos, the tree closest to the T seems trimmed to high up to have been the cause of the scratches on GZ’s face, but the tree that is closer to TTL and W11s side windows does have low branches. In some versions of what’s possible, this tree could have caused the “struggling in the bushes’ sounds that someone ( I forget who) reported hearing, and the scratches on GZ’s face and possibly also the bloody nose.
I’m just not able to take ANY resident’s story and make myself certain that they are right about what they think they saw and heard. It all happened fairly quickly and in a dark place where no one was directly focusing attention on for very long at all. Eyewitnesses are simply not reliable. This phenomenon has been studied extensively. Everyone wants to help, and everyone thinks they can form a narrative.
I also tend to doubt the resident’s ability to judge the direction of sounds from inside their units. Imagine yourself at the base of a long T-shaped hallway corridor. Someone makes noises as they approach the intersection from either the left or right of the top of the T, but they never quite arrive at the T, or else they do and you don’t see them because your eyes are closed at that moment. Do you think you could reliably say “they came from the left” or would that just be your own first impression clouding your brain? The units at RATL are essentially shotgun shacks, each with a narrow view out the back. That’s why w18 is so different – unlike most others, she had a clear view of the whole “field of action.” The rest were essentially wearing blinders, privy only to what passed them by in a straight shot out the patio doors or screen porch unless and until they went all the way up to the window/door.
Whonoze,
I think you should listen again to the statements given by the Manalos.
To sum it up, they claim they first heard someone yelling like a howl, then they heard the cries for help, then the gunshot.
I agree with you that they heard less than the W11, W18 & W20 in the sense that they did not identify a loud argument. However, there description of what there heard is somewhat closer to W06’s.
I agree with you that there are many parameters influencing what people can hear. That said, there are many witnesses that you can put on the map and rank per what they heard. You’ll immediately see the gradient that is that the ones near the T heard more than the ones further south. It also fits well what JohnW06 said when explaining his experience on how noises made by people on the dogwalk are heard. When asked about how he knows the noise was further away and coming toward him, he answered that noise sourced two houses away are fainted. I cannot neglect people’s experience of their own places.
Concerning Jeremy going out. I obviously don’t know if he went to his backporch. That said, you have to remember that the houses at the ends of each house block have a locked screened back porch. In that situation, you can argue what outside means. The sliding door going to the back porch were open in the case of W11 & W20 (1211 TTL). This is why we could hear the cries for help. But, the backporch itself could not lead outside. In short, I don’t know what Jeremy could have done or seen from there.
What I find interesting though, is that the end houses also have a different layout with the kitchen
window giving to the side. In the case of W11’s kitchen, it is opening to the section of the cut through between TTL & the T. Is it possible that’s the reason why they heard the initial argument coming from there? I don’t know, but it is likely.
I think Jeremy went “out” onto his screened-in porch, not outside that. But had he been on the porch, he would have seen more than he claims. He claims he saw nothing. He also claims he was in the kitchen, which is at the FRONT of the house, looking for a knife while W11 was yelling at him to come inside.
IIRC, W11/W20 are the only witnesses who claim they heard the altercation moving North-to-South. I am not suggesting the argument moved South-to-North, only that it all occurred in the vicinity of W11 and W6’s backyards, and was never actually up by the T itself.
Also, don’t forget, it’s very easy to simply say you saw nothing until… whenever and it would be hard to prove you knew more, unless someone witnessed something. But, who would have witnessed them receiving phone calls and looking out windows? Making phone calls? While there was no disturbance happening to attract anyone’s attention, nothing would be witnessed at all. If no one wanted to talk about anything they did, before anyone else knew anything or even to look, we’ll probably never find out. Which is why little slips and mismatches led to suspicions of more going on but not being revealed.
Remember BDLR claimed in early hearings the state has witnesses (plural) to a foot chase.
This could mean W2 and Dee Dee, I suppose or it could mean something else. But note Dee Dee is only one person, and W2 is only one person. Dee Dee didn’t “witness” a two person foot chase, she heard about one while on the telephone. This hint about plural witnesses is something I felt at the time, and still do, as probably as close as we’ve come to seeing behind the curtain into the prosecution’s strategy.
People characterize W2’s later statements as a “recanting” of her earlier tale of seeing a two person foot chase. I don’t see it quite that way. It’s more like she avoids the topic and is vague. No one presses her directly to confirm or recant anything directly. Again, almost in an odd way they don’t press her about the foot chase, the most significant thing she claims she witnessed. I have opined in the past that perhaps it dawned on her that the state or the SPD saw her as a “star witness” and she didn’t want the role, so she tried to play down her involvement.
Certainly the niece/daughter/playmate visiting story is intriguing. Thank goodness the trial is soon, I’m growing weary of all the things we don’t yet know.
But riddle me this: If the state put W2 on the stand and asked her point-blank if she TOLD THE POLICE she saw a two person foot chase, is she going to say yes, or no?
Or, perhaps at trial she will be put on the stand and THERE she will admit to the court that her daughter and/or the daughter’s friend saw the whole thing, and that she lied to cover up their presence for their own protection. Then, as a surprise witness the state calls the 8 year old. That would be a dramatic moment indeed.
I feel bad speculating about this however as there is possibly somewhere an eight year old girl who could be at risk to threats or assault by some very low characters.
W2’s first statement to the police, is completely different to what she told in her second interview. I actually thought they mixed up her recorded interview with that of her sister. In her first interview she basicly told the same story as her sister. That she was in the kitchen cooking and not that she was upstairs. She can’t be used by the prosecution.
I’ve kept my speculation about the mystery witness confined to this site because I do feel some concern. Maybe I am mistaken, but sometimes I think we are the only people willing to read lengthy comments with lost of data. But I guess I shouldn’t fool myself.
I just want this tral to get started, so we can get some answers.
That’s the thing about W02 that I hate. Because she told two different stories, she cannot be used by prosecution. She may have told the truth about a 2 person chase, she will be fried by defense if she’s called as a witness. Her sister’s story is much more consistent and in that story, she states that W02 was upstairs and did not even realize a fight was going on right by her bedroom.
She can’t be used as a witness who saw a foot chase, that is for sure. The question is, why would she lie about it. They didn’t contact the police that night, they stayed out of the media, they don’t appear to have any connection with the HOA, GZ or the Martin family. That is why I think she may have wanted to get the information her daughter may have observed to the police, without having to expose her daughter.
The State has handed all the witness names and depositions to the defence. They can’t “surprise” them with a mystery 8-year-old. So how come O’Mara hasn’t breathed a whisper about it? I can see them not wanting to admit to an actual real witness, but can’t they have started some excuse for some doxing? they did with everyone else.
Even is the State calls her Witness X all the way through, if her evidence is what she saw from the window, it wouldn’t be hard to work out who she is.
Then I can see the kid being ripped to shreds with “who told you to say this?”
Fascinating stuff, the mystery goes so deep on each level.
You guys aren’t answering my question: if the state put W2 on the stand and asked her if she told SPD that she saw a two person foot chase, what would her answer be? Yes, or no?
I feel like she’d have to answer yes. After she said that, I’d turn her over to the defense for cross-examination and simply hope for the best.
I admit the defense could have a field day with her on cross examination but I’m not sure a jury could ever shake the idea that she FIRST said she saw a two person foot chase. Her later statements to me seem like those of someone who is reluctant to be saddled with the job of being a star witness for the prosecution. And if she were asked about this reluctance, or duplicity, whatever her answer would be, the QUESTION, if posed by the state (on re-direct, or after being called again) would cover a lot of territory for jurors, who might imagine themselves in a similar position – sitting in life-or-death judgement over a person. I’d tend to think the jury would be sympathetic to her, even if she admitted to some flip-flopping that occurred LATER as the weight of the case started to sink in. The jurors are going to feel like they are in the same boat as she was. It’s a tough case with slim hard evidence where it counts most it seems.
Willis,
She is as tainted as John is. Not good for the prosecution to have your witness exposed as a waffler. You don’t just harm the witness, you damage the prosecutor. If the jury feels a lawyer is not being honest in how he presents the evidence, it will hurt his credibility.
Tainted or not, John/W6 will be called by the defense I’m betting.
I agree that W2 might damage the prosecution’s seeming position of authority and veracity, but they are going to face that same problem with W8/Dee Dee and her “hospital visit” story. Should they also not call her?
Sometimes bad choices are the only choices you have available. If she (or her daughter) saw a two person foot chase then she’s a star witness in my book, no matter what else she did or said. I think the defense could impeach her character and pain her as a “waffler” like you say but I’m not sure a jury would be convinced she invented from whole cloth the story of a two person foot chase. The reasons for waffling all seem to skew towards a reluctance to be the star witness, or perhaps a desire to protect the 8 year old, not covering up for an invented tale about a foot chase.
The state could put W2 on the stand and pro-actively ask her all the tough questions about her “waffling” in advance of the defense doing so, and gain some ground back by admitting she is a reluctant witness and giving her an opening to explain why she might be reluctant and why she seemed to back off – but never deny – having seen a two person foot chase.
In any case we’ll soon see.
And, just to satisfy my curiosity, what do others here feel W2 saw and didn’t see?
Maybe she is covering for a daughter. Maybe she heard something that sounded like a foot chase and didn’t really see anything at all. Maybe she saw a foot chase but didn’t want to be a star witness. Maybe she made the whole thing up and quickly regretted it. Personally, I see them all as possible / likely except the last one. I don’t think she made something up out of thin air. It doesn’t make sense.
Willis
Please read Screamin Jay’s transcripts of W2’s statements. It is not the waffling, she completely changed the story.
DeeDee is a completely different story, I think almost anybody can understand DD’s lie. If there is one kind of lie almost all of us have told at some time in our lives, it is one like that.
If w2 lied to protect her daughter, I think that is something people will also understand.
One thing GZ’s camp always confuses is witnessing a fight and witnessing an aggression. JohnW6 saw a fight at best but he never saw the aggression. There is no need for john W6 to know that there was a fight as one guy is dead and the other had some wounds (although shallow).
The fact that TM was seen on top doesn’t mean anything about who started that fight. And who through the 1st punch doesn’t matter much as the prosecution will remind the jury that the fight occurred because GZ made the wrong step of going after TM. TM was stalked and was defending himself.
GZ didn’t realize that the law says, you cannot cause a person to fear or become concerned for their own safety, and then claim self defense if a fight ensues, whether it leads to death or not.
Obviously gz thinks that he’s the only one with any rights out there that night, because of his NW status. But that is not true, because of his NW status, he actually has fewer rights than an ordinary citizen would. While an ordinary citizen might, credibly believe he had a right to keep an eye on a suspicious person, not so for a NW’er who are trained not to follow suspicious people, but to report them and wait for the police.
When GZ decided to exceed his mandate, he became a criminal in the eyes of the law, no longer was he a NW’er, but a criminal stalker engaged in assaulting a child.
Maybe she is protecting the daughter. Maybe she got threatened. Maybe only in the safety of a court-room will she feel able to say so, especially if the threat seemed to come from cops ….
We’ve all had experiences in life, so we know the difference between someone who is lying outright and someone who is merely being flustered by questioning by a silver tongued lawyer.
If she comes across as adamant about what she saw, but confused as to how it should be said to close off any doubt, and the defense is seen taking advantage of the witnesses ability to simply speak clearly, they going to reject him and his offers. It’s like Archie Bunkers wife Edith, even when she didn’t say what she thought, you knew what she was thinking!
Anyone seen this? The docket showed this week that the defense filed their fourth supplemental. However it never showed up on the website. Apparently someone at crimewatchers dug up this story inOrlando Sentinel by Stutzman in Google cache. The story has been deleted from the Sentinel website.
Interesting. It seems according to the generally favorable towards the defense Rene Stutzman that a video the defense claimed in open court of Trayvon filming “his buddies beating up a homeless guy” is actually just a video Trayvon shot of TWO homeless people arguing (drunkenly possibly) over a bicycle. Trayvon is heard laughing from behind camera.
If the defense actually filed this, we’ll learn eventually what was in it. But more intriguing to me is the idea that, as most suspect, Mark O’Mara leaks items in advance to Rene Stutzman at the Sentinel as a means of currying favor and injection his spin onto evidence as it is made public.
I’m speculating here but what may have occurred is that MOM told Stutzman he was about to turn over this video as discovery, and she filed the story, having gotten both the video, or the opportunity to view it and some off-the record words from MOM for her to frame the story with. I also think this sort of back-scratching is going on between these two. But here, this one time, she couldn’t give him the spin he wanted. The facts were just too far off from what he wanted printed and she or her editors put their foot down and wrote the story in a straightforward manner. Then MOM read the story and decided NOT to actually file the video into discovery at all, leaving her with egg on her face and her paper needing to retract an item. Again, time will tell.
Apology for “misstating” the nature of the video, now up on the defense website.
It is on the record what O’Mara said about the video. If she saw that video, she has no excuse for withdrawing that article. The defense has acknowledged it by posting an apology on their website.
I don’t know if many here had watched the Seinfeld comedy series, but this just reminds me of the last episode when Jerry and his friend Kramer watched and laughed while they videotaped an overweight man getting carjacked and did nothing about it. The man wasn’t hurt but he called the cops on the “do nothing witnesses”. The episode ends with the whole group of friends sitting in jail because they happened to be in a small town with a Good Samaritan law and were charged with not helping a person in need. They had a trial and in walks all the characters throughout the years that had been slighted by these guys. Everybody’s claim was of course just “all a misunderstanding” but funny because it was just so ridiculous. Now mind you, no one was getting “beat up helplessly” in the video on TM’s phone, and there was no obligation on his part to “help”, but it just speaks to the voyeur in all of us and how ridiculous it is to define a person’s whole character by snippets of online tweets to a handful of images and videos (highly selected of course), and of course by inaccurate descriptions by defense lawyers who never met the kid. So what was that video doing in the discovery in the first place??????
Exactly. I think O’Mara knew damn well, that none of that ” evidence” would be admissable. He got what he wanted. The media jumped on it as if it really did show Trayvon as a violent thug, and O’Mara got to bloviate about the videos and texts in court, in front of a national tv audience and the local jury pool.
That shows one more time that GZ’s defense won’t hesitate bending the truth to make TM look terrible.
There is a huge difference between filming buddies beating up a homeless man and filming two homeless men beating each other up. This is even worse than the suggestion TM swayed at the 7-11 and in the same level of dishonesty as the suggestion that TM discussion about buying a gun.
MOM’s tactic is disgusting and I wonder how far he can go. Can he be deposed?
The last hearing was a real shellacking for Defense. They looked so unprofessional when the Judge Nelson reminded them of the rules of evidence, or the rules/conditions of jurors sequestration, or about the feasibility of the jurors visit of the crime scene. They also looked pathetic when MOM threw Wess under the bus about the release to the public of TM’s texts and pictures. I’m amazed about how low they are ready to go.
Let’s hope it backfires.
Isn’t it nice how Stutzman gets to see the filing and the video, before anybody else. And when the defense doesn’t like what she wrote about, they just delete it.
I wonder when they will make an apology for stating as a fact Trayvon can be seen refereeing in an other video. There is no authentication that that is Trayvon. Trayvon’s brother has stated a year ago, his brother was not in that video.
More to the point, the tall, thin boy (who is referred to as “Trayvon” by the cameraman) does not “referee” the fight. As the clip starts, he is in the back of the crowd. After awhile he has worked his way closer to the action, and just happens to be standing to the point where one of the fighters is knocked back into the onlookers. The other fighter starts to follow after him, and the tall, thin boy puts a hand out, indicating ‘no, that’s not fair.’ That’s not being a “referee”, and whoever the tall thin kid is, he did nothing to be ashamed of.
Interesting Amsterdam because I seem to recall last year reading that it had been confirmed to be Trayvon by someone there, so I or the source must have got it wrong. Certainly from the abysmal quality it is impossible to tell if it is Trayvon or not, except if present or knowing Trayvon personally (his brother would), but all the hullabaloo about a tattoo on the left upper arm proving it can’t be Trayvon because Trayvon’s tattoo is on the right is IMO simply that, hullabaloo, because I parsed the video frame by frame and although the still from MOM’s disclosure LLMpapa used for his video to point to a tattoo on the wrong arm, shows mottling on the left upper arm that could be mistaken for a tattoo, IMO it is noise because in most of the other frames where the left upper arm is visible there is no mottling just clear skin.
I personally thought the youth in the striped T-shirt COULD be Trayvon because it fitted several known parameters as well as what I found, but what I have never been able to fathom is why certain pro Trayvon bloggers deny even the mere possibility that it COULD be him with nothing to back it up.
I mean, so what if Trayvon refereed a fight, or even if he participated as a pugilist? How does that prove a tendency for violence? Does Trayvon have to be so “angelic” in order to win the case he can’t even be in a boxing or wrestling club, pose flipping a finger or wearing a gold grill, all part of today’s teen culture? I find denials per se of images of him doing innocent acts, disturbing, as even if intending to protect Trayvon to me they appear racist even if unwittingly and well intentioned. I mean, if Trayvon were so pure that he couldn’t even participate in the sort of club that over here in the UK are considered beneficial both mentally and physically for young minds, i.e. sparring with your peers without violence or anger, and letting off steam in the process, how does that leave the other youths in the video? If Trayvon were “incapable” of participating in “such things”, IMBW, and I hope I am, but couldn’t that be tarring all the other participants in the video, especially black, as potentially violent thugs?
I don’t know where you got all that from my comment. I didn’t see anything thuggish in that video and I don’t think that is what I said.
What I do think is thuggish, is a lawyer misrepresenting the truth in court. If that kid in the video is not Trayvon, I would call that a misrepresentation.
Who identified Trayvon in that video? What known parameters did you use to identify Trayvon in that video, and what else did you find that identified the kid as Trayvon, other than that another kid calls out the name Trayvon?
Jahvarius saying that that is not his brother kind of convinces me, if you have evidence to proof him wrong. I would like to see that evidence.
Amsterdam, we seem to be on a cross and you have misunderstood.
I was not referring to YOUR comment, I know you never said there was anything thuggish about the video, and I didn’t say there was, at least that was not what I meant or intended, but as you understood it that way I apologise.
I too find it convincing if Jahvarius said that it isn’t Trayvon. As I wrote, the video is such poor quality that IMO only persons there at the time or that knew Trayvon personally (clothing, style, posture, gestures, etc.) could really tell if it were him or not, because from the video you hardly glean any facial features. You are right about the lawyer’s thuggish behaviour too.
”
I am sure I read around a year ago that one of those present had confirmed it was him, but I wasn’t sure which video they were referring to, so I imagined it must be this one as I only saw two and from the text the daylight one seemed to fit best. I have NEVER “identified” the youth as Trayvon, merely said that it COULD BE him by age, height, physique, colour, and there is something about his posture in certain parts which reminds me of photos we know.
All I was trying to say in my previous post, badly it seems, as I was NOT referring to you, is that some seem to just deny per se that an image even COULD BE (please note I stress COULD BE) Trayvon without any other other data to back it up which I feel makes him sound sometimes “too good to be true” when I believe he was a normal teen as Syrina tells. And I think people who deny without any more than intuition, they seem to fear that it will link him to thuggish behaviour, when I think all the images so far show a normal teen, and vehemently denying anything with or without any basis has the counter effect of being derogatory on those teens that did join in the club “fight”, do flip a finger, do have a tattoo, and do pose with gold grills.
Don’t know if I explained myself, amsterdam, but I sure tried and it may be I’m the only one who sees it that way anyway.
I am sorry gbrbsb,
This case is getting to me, and I am walking around with sharpened teeth and nails. I am just so sickened by the onslought of character assassination of a murdered kid, but that is no excuse for lashing out.
I
No need to apologise amsterdam, I understand how you feel. I didn’t even feel a “lash” anyway, just a confused tap on my shoulder!
Thus screw up could cost O’Mara the OS support! They had to pull the article and it’s all over the internet, making them look terrible! O:Mara’s learning to be toxic just like george!
One thing we have to be prepared for is, the evidence won’t be given in a neat straight time order. They’ll try to give it in an order that build up the picture. But experts, in particular, will be squeezed in out of order, depending on when they’re available. Or if another witness drags out for too long, they may be interrupted to fit in an expert.
Short statements to set the scene will be way out of order, eg police telling about arriving at the scene and their activities there will probably be quite early in the trial.
They might not use all the resident witnesses but I don’t know who they’ll leave out. John6 Jon13 and Selma18 have to be in, for sure. She saw more than anyone else, and a bit more than she’s been saying.
In other news… they’ve set aside areas for protesters at the courthouse. I wonder if there’ll be any problems during jury selection? The media have apparently agreed to not film the jurors IN THE COURT ROOM. So they’re free to film them entering or leaving. And so are “protesters” free to heckle them as they do so, I imagine………. does this court have an underground car park with internal entry? will jurors be allowed to use it?
How long before there are pictures of the jury, sitting there, taken with a cellphone from the public gallery? anyone want to hazard a bet?
Nelson said that the jurors won’t be seen outside the courtroom. I don’t know how she is going to manage that, but the court was pretty good in moving people in and out of the court room without being seen, in the Jodi Arias trial.
In the UK all jurors are completely anonymous and the law has made it a criminal offence for anyone, press or public, to “publish” any detail, picture, etc. of the jury, or for a juror to disclose his acting on a particular case, so much so, I personally don’t recall ever hearing of any juror’s details being out there as whoever did so they would face very serious charges with a prison sentence at the end, for sure.
Selma is W16. W18’s first name is Jayne. I assume you mean JayneW18 will be called. Why do you think she saw more than she’s saying? Her disguised interviews on CNN seemed to cover what she saw, and what she didn’t see, pretty well.
Yes, Jayne. Just the feeling I got from the very first time I heard that call.
She moved to the other window to “feel safer” and the shot was fired while she was on the move. She said. You don’t need to “feel safer” from two guys fighting 50 feet away. You do need to “feel safer” from someone who has a gun, has just used it, and may notice you watching.
Then she totally fell apart asking why? why? why?
And she knew from that distance that the kid was dead. And didn’t she lawyer up?
The mendacity continues:
MOM puts a retraction/apology on his website and Rene has her story to file….
“On Thursday, in preparation for the anticipated release of the fight video, an Orlando Sentinel reporter drafted a story describing it, intending to publish it once the video had been made public. A web producer prematurely posted it to OrlandoSentinel.com Friday but quickly took it down after discovering the video had not been released. The story correctly characterized the video. After readers found a cached version of the story online Sunday, Zimmerman’s attorneys released their statement and decided against posting the video.”
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/trayvon-martin/os-trayvon-martin-fight-video-20130602,0,6996223.story
Note that by “an Orlando Sentinel reporter” Rene Stutzman actually is referring to herself. The cached version of the story carried her byline, just as this story does. Way to take accuntability there, Rene.
Kinda like how O’Mara apologized in the third person “Mr. O’Mara misstated….(yadda yadda)…For that, Mr. O’Mara apologizes.” on his website. But it comes off sounding like a faceless webmaster making the apology. Will he not come right out and admit his “misstatement” was HUGELY misleading and probably permanently cemented bias in some blockheads out there?
I wonder if Rene moonlights as his web-mistress. (eye bleach! eye bleach!) lol
Forget the eye bleach, I need to gouge out the part of my brain harboring that ugly image (not calling either of them ugly mind you, just….nevermind…going for the lobotomy now….)
I would guess, as a police beat reporter, Stutzman is close to her sources in the SPD, and her pro-GZ bias comes from those relationships. So maybe she’s ‘in bed’ with Tim Smith and Michael Wagner, and MOM’s just a ‘friend with benefits’ for this occasion. Or maybe we’ll find out something else in the tell-all book Mark Osterman is sure to self-publish when the whole affair (I mean the trial and other legal stuff) is over. 🙂
JonW13 also described how the two moved. However, we don’t have any visual of what he described. This is the part of JonW13’s interview that is of interest concerning what movement was heard:
“W13: Well, we just heard some loud noises like it was a dog barking. I didn’t hear anyone say anything recognizable at first. Towards the end I heard, “Help”. And as soon as that gunshot went off and my wife says, “Oh, my God, somebody’s been shot” that’s what draw me outside… that’s what drew me outside. That’s pretty much it. I mean, that’s what brought me out there.
Veaudry: How long do you think the… when you first started hearing him… the person scream for help, how long was that?
W13: It couldn’t even have been a minute. It was very quick.
Veaudry: So, you heard this… you heard the sound of what you thought was…
W13: Right. It sounded like it started over here. And then it ended up over there. It was very quick. And before I knew it there… we heard gunshot. “
1 week to go. It’s my 1st experience of a trial in the US. How things will work?
I watched the Jodi Arias trial to get a better idea. That was a self defense case too. I missed the jury selection, so I have no idea what to expect.
Just in case anybody’s itching to attend GZ’s trial….
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/trayvon-martin/os-box-seating-chart-george-zimmerman-trial-logist-20130602,0,4678476.story
I just want the trial to start. I just was engaged in the communal fight at Daily Kos, where for more than a year the same people have been waging the same battles. Enough of pet theories, I want to know what the prosecution knows, and I want justice.
Attorney Crump to be deposed
I agree. I’m tired also of arguing with “true believers” of GZ.
Lets see the GPS info. Let’s hear the experts. Let’s learn who George called and texted, and what was said. Let’s find out who had turned stated evidence in exchange for immunity. Let’s hear Mark Osterman cross-examined. Let’s watch the defense try to introduce the concept of self defense without putting the defendant on the stand. Let’s see what the judge says about “rolling in” an immunity hearing in the middle of a trial. Let’s see where the buck stops.
Let’s let a jury decide what is fact an what is fiction.
Bring it on.
It appears defence is to be allowed a limited deposition of attorney Crump:
Link: http://www.gzdocs.com/documents/0613/dca5_opinion.pdf
So sorry about the line breaks, I OCR’d it and forgot to check returns, etc. before posting.
Some new evidence came out according to the OS.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/trayvon-martin/os-george-zimmerman-trial-cop-application-20130604,0,7772961.story
The OS points to two pieces of evidence:
1) GZ applied to be police officer in Prince William County Virginia,
2) GZ trained in a gym that specializes in boxing and kickboxing
Here’s the State’s 17th redacted supplemental discovery.
Click to access STATES-17TH-REDACTED-DISCOVERY-pdf.pdf
Interesting that the state got RZ’s phone records for Feb 26. I would understand having Shellie’s but RZ’s? I always thought that RZ didn’t talk to GZ until the next day. But then again, that was based on RZ on Piers Morgan, when asked “when did you talk to your brother”, he gave kind of a funny answer that was something like “I’m willing to say within twenty-four hours.” Like why couldn’t he give a precise time. Can we speculate he was the one GZ called? I just can’t imagine though that RZ would be the first person on GZ’s mind after the shooting. Then again, it could just be that Shellie called RZ and so the state wants to know about their conversations that night. In effect, they can make Shellie talk about her conversations with the rest of the family because it would not be a “between husband and wife” thing.
Remember what JonW13 said? When he walked toward the T it sounded like GZ was on the phone.
We don’t know if he really was talking on the phone but there’s a chance that he at least tried contacting someone. For sure, we have a picture of him with the phone in his hand as if he was on the phone. We also know that GZ later asked JonW13 to call his wife. Since JonW13 was not GZ’s buddy I guess GZ had to either hand him over his phone or give his wifes #.
All that to say that the zim’s phones went busy pretty quickly.
What caught my attention is the data part. I’m not sure what they mean by that. Did they get texts, internet & gps data?
I doubt it’s GPS data. I think “data” could mean just a list of incoming outgoing calls and phone numbers and times on that day. It would be nice to get text messages too, but I’m not holding my breath. Actually, didn’t the family claim that GZ texted his SISTER about going shopping? If that is true, then where are HER phone records?
Isn’t GZ’s brother a lawyer or studying law or something? If he is then that would answer why GZ would ring junior before anyone else… “Hey bro, just shot an unarmed teen, what do I do?” sort of thing. On the other hand just because he rang RZjnr doesn’t mean he spoke with him, GZ could have left a voice mail or sent an sms but not talked to him and that could be why junior was evasive about answering… just pondering.
I agree “they can make SZ talk about her conversations with the rest of the family” without spousal privilege getting in the way, but unless that rest of the family divulges such conversations exist and what was said, I’d say there ain’t much chance of SZ telling of them.
Nobody really knows what he does or did. I don’t think he’s a lawyer. He MAY have worked for a law firm but then again that may have been confused with his sister who I’m not sure is a lawyer either. There are paralegals, admin assistants, mailroom clerks etc who all work at law firms but aren’t lawyers. According to a CBS article “Zimmerman, a classical singer who said his music has taken a back seat to his role as a spokesperson for his family”
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57576548-504083/trayvon-martin-case-robert-zimmerman-jr-says-tweeted-image-meant-to-show-trayvon-martin-2.0/
A classical singer… his music ? Methinks Junior may be hoping to jump on a bandwagon when case is over.
They also taught submission grappling. The State got his records from the gym, so we will find out if he got any specific training.
Oke, i am sick of fighting with GZ supporters, but I feel obligated to continue to rectify outright lies. I sure could use some help at the Daily Kos. Lots of good people there, but a little short on details. So if you have an account and feel inclined to enter the arena, please join me.
I would love but free time gets rare on my side.
It is sort of a waste of time.
I found the question that shuts them up a long time ago. Ask them where the two were when GZ had the “by the clubhouse now / yeah now he’s coming towards me” exchange.
They can’t answer this without realizing he’s lying and contradicting himself.
They will change the topic or, of their initials are JM they will ban you from their website but they can’t answer it.
It is just the same bunch of users. These aren’t particular well versed in the details, I don’t even really think they care. They just want visibility for a set of talking points, mostly dealing about the legal issues. So I am trying to hit them where it hurts, by continuously posting the relevant statutes and challenging them on that.
I just read the comments feud you had. I understand your pain but what do you argue in the 1st place? Answer to their post with facts and stop there.
They have a very different world view (http://iaiwm.wordpress.com/). There is little you can do about that.
Thanks Tchoupi
I appreciate what you are saying. I am not trying to change their minds. I want the record straight for passersby, who may not know to much of the details and are bombarded by bad reporting in the media. You leave it alone, it becomes the truth.
Concerning Kokopelli’s Gym where GZ trained.
It is a fight gym not the typical exercise gym. Here is their website: http://www.kogym.com/index.shtml
The Gym is 11.5mi away from home. There are many more gym’s closer from home:
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=gym+sanford+fl&hl=en&ll=28.76179,-81.322861&spn=0.146571,0.300751&sll=28.79083,-81.30518&sspn=0.14653,0.300751&t=h&hq=gym&hnear=Sanford,+Seminole,+Florida&z=13
I don’t know if GZ trained there for fighting but given that he wanted to be a police officer, I think it is highly possible. It would also explain why the prosecution puts it in the evidence.
It must be a reason why GZ chose that specific Gym. It might be close to a place where he used to go (work, Community College, …).
I don’t know where he used to work. Geographically speaking, the Gym is closer to the gun range and the family practice than it is to home or Seminole CC or Mark Ostermann’s.
The Seminole Community College in relation to home and gym is shown here: https://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=1950+Retreat+View+Cir,+Sanford,+FL&daddr=Seminole+State+College,+Weldon+Boulevard,+to:Kokopelli's+Gym+Inc,&hl=en&ll=28.74358,-81.333675&spn=0.146596,0.300751&sll=28.74303,-81.359554&sspn=0.146597,0.300751&geocode=FYlStwEdO_om-ynzX5pimBLniDE5TfglviYKgQ%3BFRyatgEduF8n-yGYYuLv6-W0gSmLd_S1Im3niDGYYuLv6-W0gQ%3BFebetQEdcJYm-yHo8CDgl75iySn9ChF7FHLniDHo8CDgl75iyQ&t=h&mra=ls&z=13
Mark Osterman’s place in relation to home & gym is shown here:
https://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=1950+Retreat+View+Cir,+Sanford,+FL&daddr=Messina+Dr,+lake+mary+fl+to:Kokopelli's+Gym+Inc,&hl=en&ll=28.745085,-81.34655&spn=0.146594,0.300751&sll=28.74358,-81.333675&sspn=0.146596,0.300751&geocode=FYlStwEdO_om-ynzX5pimBLniDE5TfglviYKgQ%3BFVHstgEdUdIm-ykVisz_qnLniDFM5hC7M6qSMw%3BFebetQEdcJYm-yHo8CDgl75iySn9ChF7FHLniDHo8CDgl75iyQ&t=h&mra=ls&z=13
GZ’s Gun range in relation to home and Gym:
https://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=1950+Retreat+View+Cir,+Sanford,+FL&daddr=Shoot+Straight+Casselberry++++4700+S+US+Highway+17%2F92,+Casselberry,+FL+to:Kokopelli's+Gym+Inc,&hl=en&ll=28.728528,-81.319084&spn=0.146617,0.300751&sll=28.745085,-81.34655&sspn=0.146594,0.300751&geocode=FYlStwEdO_om-ynzX5pimBLniDE5TfglviYKgQ%3BFV5ytQEdUdwm-yF6N0a4zfp9rSmtGigMAm7niDF6N0a4zfp9rQ%3BFebetQEdcJYm-yHo8CDgl75iySn9ChF7FHLniDHo8CDgl75iyQ&t=h&mra=ls&z=13
GZ’s familly practice in relation to home & Gym:
https://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=1950+Retreat+View+Cir,+Sanford,+FL&daddr=Altamonte+Family+Practice+++249+Maitland+Ave,+Altamonte+Spgs,+FL+to:Kokopelli's+Gym+Inc,&hl=en&ll=28.725668,-81.359081&spn=0.146621,0.300751&sll=28.728528,-81.319084&sspn=0.146617,0.300751&geocode=FYlStwEdO_om-ynzX5pimBLniDE5TfglviYKgQ%3BFQNPtQEddXcm-yFBKvwiR90Rwin3tRl5lHHniDFBKvwiR90Rwg%3BFebetQEdcJYm-yHo8CDgl75iySn9ChF7FHLniDHo8CDgl75iyQ&t=h&mra=ls&z=13
It might be helpful to folks if you used a URL abbreviation service like TinyURL instead of pasting in those long links…
Sorry Whonoze. I was just too lazy to do the right thing.
One of the the fighting diciplines they teach is submission grappling. That seems to fit with his police obsession. We can check the other gyms nearer to his house to see what is on their menu.
Do you have a list of the gyms?
I am checking the gyms
Platinum only teaches kickboxing, but the emphasis is on cardio.
Cross that one off the list.
Crossfit just a specific fitness training, no fighting diciplines are taught here.
I checked them all. 10 are just fitness training, one is yoga. He must have gone there for the fighting classes.
Thanks Amsterdam. This is a great job. I love when we can do the job in collaboration.
So, you answered to the question I was asking to myself. Why did GZ chose that specific Gym of all the options he had? It is hard to believe that it was not to learn fighting:
1) It looks like something interesting to the Prosecution,
2) He wanted to be a cop, so it would have been a plus on his resume,
3) This is the ONLY gym with a strong emphasis on training to fight and it is not particularly close from home.
Yes, I always liked that about the bcclist crowd. Give us a project to work on. It also helps me contain my anger. I get so frustrated with GZ defenders.
It seems obvious to me. That is not a fitness school, it is a fightschool. Can’t wait to see what is in those records the prosecution got.
Wondering if Mark Osterman has/had any connection with that gym, and whether he may have recommended it to GZ as a place to learn various cop-like maneuvers…
So after the huge gaffe made by O’Mara regarding the homeless men fighting over the bike video, here the defense is waving their hands over to the side to distract us all.
Click to access limine_use_of_terms.pdf
They want to prohibit the prosecution from using certain words. No problem. I have faith BDLR will come up with some proper terms…
One of the things MOM wants the judge to ban concerns the word “profiling,” which is the term used in the “information” charging document.
Maybe he can ask thejudge to ban the words “crime” and “murder,” too.
; – )
If I am not getting it wrong, I think K’s testimony has settled the GPS questions and why it was missing on the 26th. It was only tower based anyway so no where near as accurate as the satellite based I’ve used with dedicated software that records data every minute or three or five or whatever, depending how you set it up. I am not surprised and never held my breath but it’s a disappointment nonetheless, because it would have been very useful.
If the defense has it their way, would people get kicked out of the courtroom for wearing a hoodie, even if there is no “message” on it?
Click to access motion_to_prohibit.pdf
Whonoze,
I don’t know if you saw the audio expert frye hearing. If you did, do you have any remarks/conclusion to share with us?
Tchoupi:
Below I paste the comments I made in the lounge yesterday during the livestream…
_____________________
chi1224 says:
June 6, 2013 at 2:09 pm
So they are using a scientific audio expert to debunk the science of audio analysis?
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whonoze says:
June 6, 2013 at 2:24 pm
Not debunk the whole field. They want to use him to distinguish between audio analysis methods that are well accepted in the field, and produce results considered “robust” within the research community, and methods that are more controversial, and produce findings considered “fragile” as Dr. Nakasone used the term earlier.
They haven’t gotten to any substance yet, (listening to this is like watching paint dry), but I can’t see how his testimony would go to admissibility rather than weight. But, perhaps we’ll see (or rather hear)… If we all can stay awake…
– – – –
crazy1946 says:
June 6, 2013 at 2:54 pm
BDLR should have objected to the change of order for the witness…
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whonoze says:
June 6, 2013 at 3:12 pm
Assuming the State has done its homework, they would know pretty much what Dr. N. is going to say. If they let him go first, I would guess they are prepared to counter him on cross.
IANAL, but I still don’t see anything in his testimony that goes to admissibility. However, he might be a formidable rebuttal witness at trial. He seems to know what he’s talking about. I would assume the argument will be that his standards are too conservative, and the State will argue that their experts’ conclusions have a measure of validity even if they don’t meet Nakasone’s criteria.
– – – –
whonoze says:
June 6, 2013 at 3:22 pm
I would guess [Dr. Nakasone’s] assertion that any speech that has been stepped on must be disregarded will be challenged by the State’s experts.
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whonoze says:
June 6, 2013 at 3:40 pm
In my NAL estimation, the prosecution sufficiently countered Dr. Nakasone’s statement to meet the standards of admissibility.
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whonoze says:
June 6, 2013 at 3:47 pm
Nakasone just screwed his own pooch by replying ‘Yes,’ to the State’s query as to whether he had ever disagreed with the majority of the scientific community.
– – – –
whonoze says:
June 6, 2013 at 4:15 pm
When all is said and done, it seems to me that Dr. Nakasone’s opinion is rather generic, and based on his very stringent standards. His opinion of the 911 recording comes down to, “We have to throw out everything but 3 seconds of screaming, and no-one can tell anything from 3 seconds of screaming.” His opinion of competing experts comes down to, “Anyone who would claim they can make a positive ID from 3 seconds of screaming is a quack.”
First of all, this doesn’t address the bulk of Reich’s testimony, which is about what words can be recognized by scrutinizing the recording, not who said them.
Second, it sets a clear standard for the State’s voice ID witnesses. I would assume they found more than 3 seconds of the recording usable for their purposes. They will now clearly need to explain their rationale for including the additional material in their analyses. If they can’t do that well, then they SHOULD be disregarded. But I would guess they are armed with arguments as to why their method is valid, and that those arguments will be less generic than Dr. Nakasone’s, but rather refer to the specifics of the recording(s) in question. Something along the lines of, “well, yes, there is a lot of cross-talk, but that doesn’t totally rule out identification IN THIS CASE because of (tech factor x, y, z…)”
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whonoze says:
June 6, 2013 at 7:31 pm
My guess is that, in the long run (e.g. when the Frye hearing resumes) West and O’Mara’s stalling tactics will backfire. Based on his general cluelessness regarding the tech issues surrounding the audio of Crump’s interview with W8, I suspect Don West doesn’t know enough about audio to effectively cross the State’s experts. Perhaps if Dr. Nakasone were sitting by his side, he could come up with some more pointed and effective counters, but I’m thinking even Tom Owen will be able to run rings around him, not to mention Alan Reich who has a PhD and was a professor at a well-respected university. If West and O’Mara hadn’t wasted most of the day chasing BDLR about that discovery BS, they’d have been able to hear some of the State’s witnesses in the Frye hearing and have Dr. Nakasone respond to them point by point. Now the shoe is on the other foot.
But then, I doubt MOM and West actually expect to win any of their motions, either on sanctions against BDLR or on the Frye hearing. (They have to know Dr. Nakasone’s testimony will go more to weight than admissibility.) So, the whole point still seems to be to aim a rhetorical assault on the jury pool and the media: to get HLN or whoever to run sound sound bites of Don West saying “We caught you!” and Dr. Nakasone essentially calling the State’s experts dangerous quacks (though I’m not the good Dr. is quite as sound-bite friendly as they’d like…)
Thanks Whonoze. This is helpful.
To me Dr. Nakasone more or less confirmed my understanding of the state of the art of speaker recognition. So, my conclusion remains the same: Machines still don’t beat humans in the domain of speaker recognition today
Here is what I got:
1) Automated speaker recognition is a clear goal,
2) The automated speaker recognition technology is still in its infancy but is growing fast and reached the point where the FBI just decided to adopt it over other methods based on spectrograph.
3) The automated speaker recognition tools are still extremely sensitive to the quality of the recording making it useless in situations like the one we have with W11’s 911 tape.
4) There are other methods of speaker recognition but they require human intervention. Some are based on spectrographs.
5) The spectrograph methods were used for decades by the FBI untill last year.
6) To be efficient the spectrograph methods need a trained examiner [per Dr. Nakasome’s testimony]
One can compare the evolution of speaker recognition to that of other technology moving at replacing humans.
Chess computer programs., 30 years ago would be beaten by nearly any human with a minimum of training. 20 years ago, computer would beat most of humans. Today, there are computers that nearly no human can beat.
But chess is a world with narrow rules. If we look to robotic walk, it took much longer for a machine to get to walking like a human and we’re still beating them up today. It won’t last, but it will take quite some time before a robot beats a tennis player.
From what I saw, automated speaker recognition look even more complex and it will probably be years if not decades for it to really be efficient.
It’s amusing to read news reports about this case…ABC says “During testimony Thursday, Zimmerman looked down at his lap as the 911 call was played in court for Nakasone, the FBI voice examiner who had worked on the case.”
http://abcnews.go.com/US/screams-heart-george-zimmerman-murder-trial/story?id=19345658#.UbIDhUCcfD4
GZ was looking down at his lap texting like he always does during the hearings. They made it sound like he looked down at his lap as if in shame or had an emotional reaction to it. It didn’t seem like he was listening to it at all.
Would anyone here care to summarize what’s actually “news” to is bloggers of late in this case as far as evidence that can be considered?
Yesterday someone let slip that there was a photo of what appeared to be an underage girl who was naked on TMs deleted photo section on his phone.
ABC news broadcast short clips of Trayvon’s voice from a video that was on the phone- perhaps possibly the video of two homeless people fighting over a bicycle?
Out of all these latest hearings that’s all I’ve discerned as “new to us” as far as what might be considered by bystanders. But maybe I’ve missed things?
I’d also like to observe that I still don’t have a strong opinion about who or what is heard on the 911 call. I see it as a possibility that GZ called for help in illegally detaining the teen. I just don’t really have a strong opinion in that area.
Many things are possible. What GZ claims happened is not possible.
What heterosexual teenage boy DOESN’T have a picture of a naked girl on his phone?
No kidding. Plus of course all this stuff on his phone has already essentially been ruled inadmissible by judge Nelson.
Then there’s the rather obvious fact that Trayvon was also “underage” at the time of his death. I he’d had pictures of an ADULT naked woman no doubt the prosecution would have tried to charge him with “reverse statutory rape” or something.
It’s all rather stoopid really. Note that they found it in the deleted section. Of course it doesn’t matter at all, but if anyone wants to go there, let’s do a dump of GZ’s phone and home computer while we’re at it and see how many underage images pop out. Just kidding. I have a sensitive stomach as it is.
@willisnewton
A bit tardy but your comment struck me because I posted the same about statutory rape on a blog somewhere except I imagined the police trying to find out who the female was to charge her! It is so ridiculous!
But, as a passing thought, and I just don’t have time to read the Florida Statues on age of consent and the exception laws, etc. but could it be DD’s fibbing about her age, (if she did and it wasn’t Crump’s gaffe), and her being kept incognito, have anything to do with this, more especially if they had dated at a point in time when Trayvon was still 15 and she had turned 17.
But IDK and IANAL so just putting it out there if someone knows.
wass, it’s about playing on the stereotype that black males are hypersexual and violent.
@ Rod, perhaps, but I’d rather bury my head in the sand and not think that the defense is slimy enough to go down that road. (i know, i know, somebody out there is yelling “too late!”)
Of course and they continue with Trayvon had a picture of ‘the underage girl’ in an attempt to neutralize George’s ten years of molesting his female cousin.
Ignoring that Trayvon was ‘underage’ when he was murdered in cold blood.
Without any trace on Trayvon’s hands means gz was never under any attack at all, he was superior and in control the entire time they were close to each other. It is murder 1 to kill a child without provocation of any kind, one has to think about it and decide to kill anyway and that is premeditation!
I’m going to speculate that the abc news release of two short samples of TMs voice were not released to Matt Gutman by the FDLE or the State Attn’y.
If I had to make a guess however i am wondering who had access to it? If it was taken from a deleted video I’m not certain the Martin family would have access to it.
Then again tryavon may have shared, backed up or duplicated the video at home or through email, social media etc.
I’m further speculating that this video might be the same video spoken of recently in court and in the news- of two homeless persons fighting over a bicycle with the teen commentating on it humorously as he filmed it with his phone.
If this is the case it might behoove the family to leak these small clips at this time as something of a “limited hangout.” The public can discuss and comment based on the sample that is free from judgement about whether it was socially appropriate to make fun of “drunken bums” or not.
Keep in mind I’m speculating here.
Today’s Frye testimony mainly reinforced my previous opinion of the voice experts, except I now think even less of Tom Owen’s credibility. His voice ID ruling out GZ as the screamer does not pass scientific rigor by a long shot, and his explanation of his techniques struck me as fundamentally flawed. Dr. Alan Reich on the other hand, though much more of an old coot than I had pictured in my mind, knows what he’s talking about. I think he’ll be an effective witness for the State, all the more so because Don West is in way over his head on this stuff and doesn’t have a clue how to cross Reich (or even Owen, for that matter) effectively.
But i have to say I don’t think the State is putting much stake in the audio experts to make their case. They didn’t bother to commission their own studies. Owen just rehashed what he had done for the Orlando Sentinal, and Reich stated he started researching the audio questions just out of his own interest (just like us!), and only later took a modest retainer from the Seattle Times to assist in prepping an article on his findings for that paper.
I have not seen Reich’s part yet [any link?].
I had the same impression concerning Owen: More pretension than skills.
Nakasone is definitely an expert in speech related domain. However, don’t make the mistake of thinking that he is deeply involved in building those models, algorithm or tools. He does not have the math background, the neurology background, the bio-mechanics background. Ph.D. does not mean you can do all of this. He is deeply involved in scientific committees (conferences, publications) as I was at some point. So, he is aware of what happens in his field. At best he has a team of researchers with the math, computer science background to create and develop the algorithms and methods he talked about. I actually check 4 of his most recent papers from the past 10 years or so. As I suspected, he is not 1st author. Usually, 3rd – 5th authors are enablers meaning they are in a hierarchy position that allows them to demand that their names be on the paper written by author #1 on a work executed by #1 & #2.
My impression of the last two days of hearings? a total snooze Fest.
Anyone else see something different?
At issue supposedly is whether or not the State’s experts will be allowed to testify as expert witnesses during the trial. It seems to me that they qualify and them some.
The defense tried a lot of ways to paint them as quacks but seemed to fail completely to my ears.
Not a total snooze to me. I’m enough of an “audio guy” that it’s interesting to me to see what these guys have (and don’t have).
I hope Dr. Reich gets in, as I’d like to see him get it on with Dr. French during the actual trial (though I’m not sure the defense would be able to bring French across the pond… or whether the court would allow another Skype hook-up…).
One fight I can see arising is the 16 bit vs 8 bit argument. The last defense guy claims the recording IS 16 bit but that only 8bits of data is available to evaluate.
George Doddington was def. expert. Very hostile and came across as an alcoholic. Trashed peers, lots of I don’t knows.Very large chip as no one RSVPed his conference, except he did say Dr. French did have the decency to decline. But no one from outside his group attended.
He said no one can id without minutes, I think 10, of sound so he along with Dr. French refused to Id GZ as screamer. He worked with NIST but he’s only an electrical engineer. Not even a doctorate. Never testified in court.
I received tweet NIST plans to buy biometrics software….fbo.gov/index?s=opport…
The third defense expert abruptly cancelled. There was a break as O’Mara said he needed a few minutes for witness. Five minutes later court announced witness was stuck on Tarmac.
Judge just gave a look of right, sure. Court adjourned till Monday 9:00
West asked for GPS call in to be set aside but Judge said he is to call in 8-9AM. Both attorneys are very disrespectful to her.
Whonoze, can not wait for you to watch Doddington’s testimony and get your opinion. You know Trent already has it up on you tube…state of the Internet. Seriously, he was SNL parody material. Wait until you hear him list his school…”xyz Stanford” well, I mean “it’s in Stanford”. Yes, he actually said that. By the time he was done, I was thinking he meant xyz in Sanford 😉
I have always thought if state and family would accept a plea this would be outcome. O’Mara hasn’t found one voice expert to say it was GZ and state has two who place probability it was Trayvon. This may be why O’Mara cancelled his last voice expert. May be a plea in the works.
The state just released fight gym pix and no voice expert to even give a probability chance it was GZ screaming.
I could not see it all. That said, I saw enough to know that the defense got some real punch today.
From what I saw, the discussion about speaker recognition did not turned enough around machine vs human.
I realize that automated speaker recognition is tough with today’s technology and requires amazingly good conditions to be efficient making it not applicable in this case.
But what I also know, and I believe the defense expert briefly mentioned it, is that a man doesn’t need 16sec of clear speech from an unknown to be compared with 1min of a known to make a decision on whether the unknown and known speakers are the same person. To put it simply, I can ID the voice of someone I know in a relatively noisy environment.
That’s the discussion I would have loved the prosecution to bring up. Defense experts discussed at long about how computer aided systems cannot work in this case. I haven’t heard any discussion on whether humans would actually be better or not at the job.
Wanted to add what French said. Almost at end of his part, West decides to inquire about puberty.
WEST: “Could you tell if Trayvon was in puberty?” There was a bit of explaining how voice changes after puberty
FRENCH: ” No, because all his KNOWN vocals were high pitched.(my emphasis)
WEST: (thinking OMG, did not want him to connect TM w/ high pitch) asks “You mean in the videos sent in?”
Problem, is the 2 short videos just submitted do not have Trayvon vocalizing in a high pitch.
FRENCH: Yes, those
Also, French testifies he does not hear the word ” asshole” which, of course, is plain as day and even Serino brings up GZ saying that and pointing out he seems confrontational/ stressed on his NEN call.
There were other words French couldn’t hear that others could and he didn’t hear any words uttered on 911 call but to testify he didn’t hear anyone use the word ” asshole” shows his bias quite clearly.
Also, George Doddington failed his doctor of philosophy in information technology at Madison.
@2dogsonly
You made exactly the same mistake I did, and I had to go back over the tape 3/4 times to get it straight as I was absolutely gob-smacked and elated when I thought I heard him say that he couldn’t hear “assholes” because I thought great, how easy for the State to disprove him.
No, he only uses “assholes” to locate one of Reich’s words or phrases in the recording and he says, iirc, or something very similar “…and after assholes…” I don’t have the link or know the marker but I can assure you, much to my disappointment and as sure as I can be, French did hear “assholes”.
O’Mara just filed for another continuance
You have to admit O’Mara is a dedicated advocate for his client! I’m pretty sure the Judge has made her desire well known – she wants this trail to begin on Monday.
I’m wondering if GZ is going to try to make a break for it. He has to know he is guilty; and he has to know that his chances are not good for an acquittal. If he were ever going to try to flee justice, now would be the time since scrutiny is only going to get higher as the trial begins.
He is never going to get much of a head start since he would have to sever his GPS monitoring device first, but I’d guess the best way to start a flight from justice would be for him to sever the device while he is in transit, such as on his way to or from court or his lawyer’s office. I’m wondering if he has anyone he trusts enough to help him, however.
We don’t have any clear information to know if he and his wife Shellie are still together – she faces perjury charges on his account and her interests are different than his now. IMO he never told her the whole truth about his actions involved in the killing, so to think he has done so by now or will do so is hard to guess. I do think she helped secure and hide the second passport and was involved in hiding money from the court but she may have done so believing that he was being “unjustly persecuted,” and was helping an innocent man. Would she feel the same way if she was asked to aid a guilty man? There is a ticking time clock there I feel. As the trial progresses any allies George has are going to wise up to the fact that he killed this unarmed teen in cold blood and lied to THEM about it all.
Would his brother help him? Would a stranger/ internet pen pal? Not unless he levels with them, at which point “true believers” have to get over the fact that he wasn’t attacked by a thug, etc. He may WANT to flee but lacks a good plan or any allies. His father would lose his house possibly. His supporters would lose face.
Perhaps he will wait until the prosecution presents its case. Running is tantamount to an admission of guilt, but if he does it NOW he can claim he felt he was being unfairly prosecuted and somewhere someone will believe him. If he waits until the the first half of the case is presented, and if the prosecution presents a strong case, then to run then won’t really fool anyone.
I’m fairly certain he had a concrete plan to flee justice that was denied at the end of the first bond hearing when he was fitted with a GPS monitoring device. That was his best chance foiled right then and there.
The state’s 17th supplemental discovery is posted to the defense website. Curiously the inventory includes reference to Shellie’s phone records (as well as brother Robert) but only Robert’s is included in the pages attached.
It appears the only calls Robert received in the relevant time period are around lunchtime, and then the next was at 7:55pm, which seems to rule out the idea that GZ called him while having his “bloody head” photo taken.
No info on what texts he received or what voicemail he got seems detailed, but I’m just starting to decipher the records.
Again what is odd is that Shellie’s records are listed as being included in the inventory cover letter but are missing from the actual records posted by the defense.
One could speculate that the defense is responsible for losing them, but maybe the state didn’t send them. Who knows, as the blog says.
Also included is the electronic records for Trayvon’s purchase of skittles and Watermelon flavored drink. He paid cash.
Many months of records from the gym are included. He signed up weighing 255lbs and wanting to learn self defense, lose weight and law enforcement training.
Some suggestion is made that the reason he didn’t pass the scrutiny for being a trainee cop in VA is that he had collection agencies after him for bad credit. It’s unclear however if that is right or not. Look at it yourself and form your own opinion. The grammar is pretty vague there.
Okay, on the inventory when Shellie’s phone records are listed it says “copy previously provided” which may be why they were not included here? Curious. The defense has not posted them previously to my knowledge.
Someone from the media should complain/ inquire of the defense and to the state that these records are not yet public.
Here we are on the eve of the trial and we still don’t know who called GZ (if anyone) at or around the “tipoff time” and who GZ called during the bloody head photo.
Regarding phone records, my hunch is that they’re supposed to show that Shellie and RZ talked to each other that night. Since they can’t get Shellie to talk about her own conversations with her husband, they can possibly get her to talk about what she told RZ that night. No husband/wife confidential privilege there. If course I don’t know for sure since the records don’t show who called who but if we ever see her records, we might be able to match up their phone calls.
That’s a good point. It’s the possible tipoff call that I keep hoping to discover there is evidence for. But your theory makes a lot of sense.
We still don’t know if Shellie and GZ are currently together as a couple or not.
IT’s POSSIBLE she has agreed to turn state’s evidence against him. We just won’t know until trial.
It’s also possible that others in the loop over the hidden PayPal donations have been secretly indicted as conspirators and have agreed to testify for the prosecution. It wouldn’t surprise me.
I’m getting anxious now that we are on the eve of learning so many hidden things.
I don’t believe there is much useful GPS “they went thataway” information forthcoming, but that’s another possible thing we might see at trial.
We are possibly going to learn what W2 has to say for herself, I hope, and I think of course we are going to see Dee Dee/W8 take the witness stand. It’s going to be like opening up presents on christmas morning…
The state is either bluffing about having a strong case, or they DO have a strong case for M2. I’m guessing it’s more the latter than the former but I’m not sure yet why. I think we may be in for some big surprises.
The logic of this case says that, if you think the state is bluffing, then you must also believe that gz is telling lies to conceal the fact of his innocence. Oh wait, maybe Wolfinger was hiding in John’s house and stepped out with gloved hands, to shoot Trayvon, then hand the gun to gz with a promise. Nope, I guess not, scratch that theory. GZ is toast.
What Shellie and RZ talked about is HEARSAY and not admissible.
RZ did not GET a call at 7.55. He MADE 3 calls, one of them lasting 44 minutes. And same again after 9 p.m. They may have been made in response to some land line call he received, all the forwarded calls indicating he has a LL somewhere.
The second batch was after getting an incoming forwarded call.
The phone records could be used, for example, to prove X and Y talked, if they are denying it. The most they can say about the content of the calls is something along the lines of ” she told me something, as a result of which I proceeded to such and such a place”.
I’d say the phone with the interesting or relevant calls was Shellie’s, but they got Robert’s as well because he was on the other end of one or some of them.
Oh another possibility, that RZ’s phone was being used by someone else. But considering he was estranged from GZ and everyone, not likely Shellie or anyone else would have been using his phone.
Yeah but… The Prosecution knows these things and the significance of them as well. If the Prosecution has found the person whom gz was talking with, within 3 minutes of the “fatal beating”, some additional light might have been shed on just how tremulous an experience this near death brush had been. I’m pretty sure Omar would object if BDLR tries to use the phrase “near brush with death”, to describe gz’s claimed experience. 😆
Maybe the State should also motion for some words/terms to be barred as incendiary and biased, i.e.
“Pounded/slammed into concrete” when referring to what happened to GZ’s head;
“Near death experience” when referring to the “fight”;
“Beaten up”, something GZ wasn’t;
“Fight”, when all it was a scuffle;
“Broken nose”, when to date all it is is a “likely broken nose” and based simply on GZ’s explanations;
… and I am sure there are more
GZ trained at Kokopelli’s Gym for 16 months prior to the killing. As suspected, one of his goals was LE prep.
I agree that there is not much from Robert Zimmerman’s phone record.
They may have forgotten to hide RZ’s home phone #. It shows an area code from Orange county FL. You’ll also find the personal telephone # having an area code in VA. I’m not sure they were or they are his phones #s.
Initially, I was not sure whether those records are from GZ’s father of from GZ’s brother. The DOB (Xmas 1990) shows it is the brother.
There is no text information.
The 1st call that could be related to the killing is at 7:55pm. So, GZ was indeed already in custody. The thing is that, RZ made that call. So, if he was informed of anything, it was not through that phone.
7-11 records show the lighter was not purchased at that time.
We don’t really know if GZ “trained” at the gym, only that he signed up and paid. The fact that he had a few months where he DIDN’T pay seem interesting to me. It appears he signed up for automatic payments via credit card; I’m guessing that it’s possible the months he didn’t pay were months where he was broke and had no more credit.
But when he starts up paying again, it may be because he wanted to attend – or just that his credit was good again.
Could any of the State’s witnesses be personnel from the gym who could presumably testify whether he trained or not and exactly what he was taught, etc.?
I forget… When did gz get that 18,000 cash infusion from the law suit? I’ll guess that he trained because he was serious about becoming a cop. He did put in an application.
Can someone here explain the various theories and what-not surrounding the “three stooges” aka the trio who were at 7Eleven, and who has been looking into this and why, etc? I’ve always tuned it out previously but now finally I’m curious enough to ask.
The Three Stooges were seen on the video going into the 711 not long after Trayvon, and Trayvon hung around outside while they were in there. They purchased “two or no make it three” Black & milds. Allegedly they talked again with Trayvon when they left, and Trayvon then walked off to set out back to RATL.
The mildest theory is they purchased one of the little cigars for him. The next step up is they already knew him from before and may/may not have picked him up in their car outside, afterwards. Possibly to do a deal out of 711 camera range.
The heaviest theory is Trayvon sold them $40 worth of weed (accounting for the $40 found on him) keeping some for himself to put into the cigar (which was NOT a blunt so not really suitable, but…). He then smoked this on the way back/under the mail shed awning.
Buying the B&M for him is vaguely possible, but I don’t see him having smoked it while jogging in the rain on the way home. The $40 of course was change from the $100 his dad gave him the night before. Tox shows he didn’t smoke weed that day.
The 3 Stooges are just a circus sideshow invented by CTH. Don’t think I left anything out.
Thanks that was more or less what I figured. It’s wild how much people are willing to speculate and invent narratives from almost nothing.
“The 3 Stooges are just a circus sideshow invented by CTH. Don’t think I left anything out.”
Well, you failed to mention the theory that circulated in the lounge that they were somehow involved in setting Trayvon up to be stalked and killed by Zimmerman.
Is there ANY proof for any of these theories or are people just stupid?
None of them are my theories, so you’d have to take that up with those who originated them.
My only theory about Larry, Darryl, and Darryl is that they came into the 7-Eleven later than Trayvon did and at least one of them bought something there.
But I thought that it deserved mention that there were theories involving them “on both sides of the aisle”, so to speak.
Oh yeah, thanks unitron.. Yes they were suspected of having set Trayvon up or tipped someone off about his impending return to RATL. Also accused of such tip-offs were 2 women, also seen at the 711, one of whom was claimed to look like Shellie, the other like Sondra.
In no case was it explained how, seeing Trayvon at the store, any of these people would figure he was going to RATL.
Waaaay back before the videos came out there was also speculation the actual 711 clerk may have tipped someone off. Again the question arise3s, why would anyone think this customer (TM) was heading for RATL? In the event, when interviewed, the clerk didn’t remember Trayvon at all.
The problem with the 3 stooges is, when Trayvon leaves the store they are not there. Trayvon doesn’t start for home immediately upon leaving the store. Instead he waits outside for about 30 seconds before the 3 stooges arrive. The way the place is configured, if Trayvon had not waited for those 30 seconds, and had started immediately for home, he’d have been some 100 or so feet away from the store by the time the 3 stooges arrived.
Why would he wait if he wasn’t due to meet someone?
If trayvon was meeting the three stooges one would assume he needed to call them at some point.
If he waited around outside maybe he was throwing away the receipt or looking at the weather or else speaking on the phone with dee dee.
seems far fetched to assume much of anything happened here. Certainly none of these three people seem to have been listed as witnesses for the defense to my knowledge.
I’m satisfied to “fugettaboutit”until something confirmed arises.
My guess is that most people would forget about it, even me, if I wasn’t attempting to notice the little things that could lead somewhere. With a theory in hand, people are more likely than not, to notice if anything else turns up that can be connected to this.
I notice that when Trayvon is in the store he isn’t speaking to DD. he begins a new call with her on his way back. Also, I’m not sure, but I seem to remember that when he leaves the store he steps to the west. His destination is to the east. If he wasn’t meeting those 3, then he should have started east the minute he left the store. That’s what he did after the 3 guys came back out. So, obviously, they were the only things holding him there.
As far as when and how they could have made contact with Trayvon, that’s something we may never know, they would not need phones, Trayvon was there in Sanford for several days, Burgess lives at 2500 RVC and according to Rene at least one Ransberg lives on the cul de sac just outside the rear gate. So, they could have just walked up to him and talked when he was outside. No matter, it’s just a matter of having an idea of what to keep and eye peeled for. But the matter does seem very suggestive of something.
For anyone interested (if you haven’t seen it yet), and thanks to yahtc at the lounge, the full bicycle video Trayvon filmed and narrated on his phone. Some laughs & screams of delight of his. too.
Forgot to say sorry about its source.
Video didn’t work so here’s a link uploaded by TrayvonGeorge. Curiously it’s 2:31 long same as DMan’s but notes it is two videos combined and “redacted”, when afaics is the same as DMan’s who must have a direct line to MOM!
Information is where you find it.
Keep in mind this is the video MOM described in open court as Trayvon filming his friends beating up a homeless person.
Seriously, what’s wrong with that guy?
I can’t wait for this trial to start.
We look at it and think wtf, but it is intended as a dog whistle. It is not about Trayon’s part in the video, it is an opportunity to confirm biases against AA people in general. Lookie here, black people fighting.
One thing about the video, that voice is a young voice, and it is the same voice as the one in the 911 call. In both you can here the voice is still changing.
Right amsterdam, I also look at it and think WTF! Since when is a small scuffle, a push and pull, a few wrestles, equivalent to a “beating up”. HTF could MOM reach that conclusion.
It appears that Trayvon’s screams and laughter are the samples the State’s experts used for their comparisons.
@Willis says “Keep in mind this is the video MOM described in open court as Trayvon filming his friends beating up a homeless person.”
I have a sneaking suspicious that the video MOM was referring to in the courtroom was not this one about the bike that was released. The bike video came off of TM’s phone so there’s no question of it’s authenticity. Those guys don’t “look” homeless to me. I think it’s a smokescreen because he couldn’t actually release an unauthenticated video circulating in treeper world. I’ve seen a video being discussed by the treepers that show a group of young AA boys/men harrassing a homeless man on a bus. In that video, there was a tall skinny kid wearing a striped shirt (not the same as the schoolyard fight one), It’s grainy but he looked nothing like TM in my opinion. However, it fit much better the description of “two friends beating up a homeless man”. MOM probably knew it was not of TM but wanted to keep it as “unauthenticated” and just barely in the public consciousness in order to seed doubt. Now was this an intentional “switcheroo” of videos? I don’t know. Maybe Rene at the OS thought that the bike video was what MOM was talking. When MOM realized she was reporting it that way, he couldn’t say, oh no no there’s ANOTHER video, because then he’d actually have to show it and probably be laughed out of town for doing so. So he opts to give a soft third person apology on his website. Of course I don’t know any of this for sure. Like I said above, just my sneaking suspicion…..
I think you might be close but not all the way right. MOM had to SHOW Rene the bicycle fight video or else how would she have seen it at all?
It’s possible the prosecution leaked to her but I seriously doubt it.
Lets talk about this “source.” has the defense put this video on their website and if so under what pretense?
http://www.gzdocs.com/documents/0513/cell_video_1_redacted.zip
willis, my apology for “source” was not because the video hasn’t been authenticated but due to the first link that failed having been uploaded by diwataman.
As far as I am concerned the video must have been authenticated considering that a part of its soundtrack was played in court the other day by one of the state’s audio experts as it is appears it was the recording they used for Trayvon’s voice, and either Reich or Owen noted how it had been the source for the high pitched screams, or something like that.
Haven’t checked if the defence has it on their website but don’t think they need a pretense because if the state is using it for sound material I’d say they have a right to use it too.
Hi unitron, good to see you over here again.
Much sense to your words concerning where you find information but prefer to warn should anyone take umbridge. I didn’t know it was on gzlegal so thanks for there.
My general concern is just that/ general. If the defense posted this are they claiming its evidence THEY have submitted or is it “discovery” that was “provided” by the state in the .bin file, etc. This relates to the defense motions about the state allegedly hiding evidence or withholding evidence from them etc.
The potential for hypocrisy exists here if the defense Is providing evidence they extracted from the deleted sectors of the SIM card but then wants to complain about not getting discovery materials.
Clever thinking willis, and BDLR went along a similar line this morning during the motion for continuance. MOM had said they needed more time because the State had only given them the .bin and BDLR replied that defence experts had found data even the State’s experts had missed in a “so what are they moaning about” sort of way.
Just pondering, but if I was asked to analyse an image to see if it had been manipulated or retouched, (photoshopped), if I was just given the .jpg to study, unless there was something so glaring that any reasonably observant person could spot, it would be arguable that my opinion, if I could actually make one, would be invalid.
I think it is certainly arguable that the defence was better off having the .bin rather than having to be reliant on what the State had found, but whether they can argue as well that the State should have turned over both the data found and the .bin, or whether that will be deemed work product and therefore the defence’s problem to do their own work on the file, I suppose is what JN will have to decide. Will be interesting to see her reasoning when she does.
Are we to assume that there will be no more discovery materials/ data / pictures / reports etc from now on? It seems impossible to me, but I’m not a lawyer or even an experimced trial buff. Shouldn’t the Audio experts finish their “final” reports eventually? I assume they hold off until the last so that the other side has lass time to scrutinize…
has the defense shared all it has or not? Are their pendingotions regarding tunromg ober discovery materials still? I am not a lawyer and now I know why- too much to try to keep straight in one’s head!
I am still wondering if the prosecution will make any use of the clubhouse videos or not. Perhaps investigators from the FDLE would be called to present that evidence in the form of observations they made after handing in their initial assessment. I just don’t know.
Typo
Are there pending motions…
There was a pending motion filed for a continuance as O’Mara’s last voice expert got “stuck on Tarmac”. judge denied it and put off her ruling against BDLR for sanctions till after the trial.
I meant motions regarding discovery…. i see a huge typo above. Stupid me, silly iphone. I think that’s supposed to say “turning over discovery” but now that I’m thinking about it all, most of the motions were whining about money for compesation/ sanctions, whatever, not real requests for data.
2dogsonly on June 11, 2013 at 6:28 pm said:
Click to access states_17_discovery_redacted_exhibits_redacted.pdf
Here is :
1.GZ’s Fight Club Contract,
2.Letter of denial for police academy
3.Phone records for 2/26/12.
Please scroll down as previously only the itemized list was provided.
This is the actual contract GZ signed to train in MMA, boxing, submission, kickboxing. There is no pool, normal exercise equipment at this club. This is a SERIOUS FIGHT CLUB. As such, I imagine steroids are sold behind the counter. Remember how concerned he was about Shellie getting his computer and bag from O’Mara.Perhaps Steroids were either on his computer or in his bag.
The Fight Club requires a waiver as noted on p. 2 as there is real physical contact resulting in real physical injuries and is a very real possibility.
There was a drastic body change from 2/26/12 to just two mths.later, I mean much smaller before the weight gain. My feeling has always been “roid rage” even his voice was different.
The fight O’Mara said TM engaged in looks like a you tube put on as there are no punches, another car stops, and TM says ” we need a backdrop”.It wasn’t even between two homeless men but clearly two teens pretending to brawl. Finally, one kid just pedals away. You can hear Trayvon’s high pitched laughter which further shows his voice pitch was still prepuberty and it was his high voice heard on 911 call.
I just don’t understand why O’Mara wanted to highlight Trayvon’s fighting when his client trained as a real MMA, submission fighter. Did O’Mara not know GZ had been training as a real badass? Did he miss seeing the payments to this “number 1 Fight Club in Central Florida”? Located 11.5 miles from GZ’s home and further than more than a few normal exercise gyms. GZ’s doesn’t even advertise itself as am” gym”…
Reply ↓
He didn’t say “backdrop”, he said “a behind-the-scenes”.
And those two guys scrapping look like it’s been awhile since they were teenagers, although on a little 3 or 4 inch wide youtube video there’s not enough detail for me to swear to it..
Hi Unitron, I meant a silly video made to put on you tube, think “Tosh.O”. There is a car that pulls up and no one looks hurt or hollers cuss words. It just looks staged for fun. Not sure if they had actually put it on you tube.
My real question is why O’Mara would want to even shine a light at all on fighting when GZ was a member of a serious fight club. There’s a pix of him ringside at this club before he became a skinhead so he didn’t just sign up and blow it off like most, including your truly.
Did he not have one of the nutters that help him so much, double check his credit card charges and checks? I would think fighting would be the last thing he would want to call attention to.
Watching West interview the potential jury members is painful. Asks the same question 3/4 different ways ,he starts off asking if they want water(trying to connect) but it seems obvious and not natural. BDLR connects with each one very naturally and some were dingy and one this afternoon was horrible to TM’s parents:it was parent’s fault son was killed.
I just don’t understand why O’Mara wanted to highlight Trayvon’s fighting when his client trained as a real MMA, submission fighter. Did O’Mara not know GZ had been training as a real badass? Did he miss seeing the payments to this “number 1 Fight Club in Central Florida”?
You just answered your own question. Just like many believe that much of what and much of what George has stated that Trayvon did to George, George actually did to Trayvon.
O’Mara and his computer minions have known from the beginning that the fact that George was training in boxing and kickboxing would mean that he had an alternate method of self-defense that night other than lethal force so that is why O’Mara has gone on this media crusade to convince everyone that Trayvon was some super ninja.
This is significant to me. I’m very encouraged by the statement released today by the Martin family.
here’s a link to the whole thing as released to the press
http://globalgrind.com/news/day-3-george-zimmermans-second-degree-murder-trial-trayvon-martin-photos-livestream
I think that the Martin family understands the “they went thataway” aspects of the case and probably agrees with the consensus here, with special regards to the car-to-pedestrian chase on the short section of Twin Trees Lane that we’ve deduced together.
I realize I’m reading into this statement more than is precisely there, but check out this part of the written statement:
” George Zimmerman was an armed adult who followed Trayvon down a street, pursued him and then shot him.”
It’s the “followed Trayvon down a street” portion that strikes me as agreeing with what the consensus here believes happened – the car facing the mail kiosk, Trayvon walking past and then GZ moving his car to follow behind, causing the teen to run away.
While the prosecution has worked hard to shield their strategy, we’ve never had a real clue made public about what the State will present at trial as the true events of the evening in question apart from a vague “profiled, pursued and killed” statement and the “witnesses (plural) to a foot chase” that was mentioned early in the case. We’ve only seen a lot of the raw evidence they will call upon. Using this same evidence and rigorous peer review and the combined efforts of so many of those here, I think we’ve pretty much reached the same conclusion as the Martin family has just stated. Let’s hope the state feels the same way.
cross posted w. The Lounge:
—
I may be one of the few folks following the case waiting eagerly for the resumption of the Frye hearing (Don West drone fatigue notwithstanding). I’m wondering how Tom Owen will attempt to rehabilitate himself, and whether he’ll have anything new to bring to the table. I also wonder, from a legal strategy standpoint, whether the State really wants to get their experts in, or is just going through the motions to burn up energy from the Defense.
Here are two issues I’m going to look for in particular.
One might condense the Defense experts’ central critique of Owen as, ‘It is impossible, by any method known to our science, to make a valid speech identification comparison, for inclusion or exclusion, between shouts or screams on one hand, and “normal” speech on the other.” One question neither West NOR Manthei asked the Defense experts: ‘Would it be valid to compare screams or shouts recorded from a distance via a cell phone with known exemplars of screams and shouts also recorded from a distance over a cell phone?”
This question is pertinent because the State possesses exactly such an exemplar from George Zimmerman. When Owen did his initial workup for The Sentinal, he did not have this recording because it had not yet been released in the discovery documents. But, if the State really wants him to do an analysis for trial, you’d certainly think he has a copy now.
http://trayvon.axiomamnesia.com/audio/george-zimmerman-voice-exemplars/
Certainly both Manthei and West are aware of this recording, which is why it’s interesting neither of them posed a hypothetical that would cover it to the Defense experts. Had West asked them the question i posed above, they surely would have said, “No. 1) There isn’t enough screaming on the 911 call to form an adequate sample for analysis; 2) Of the screams that can be isolated, we cannot be sure they all came from the same person; 3) The lack of fidelity of both recordings introduces too high an error rate.” But West DIDN’T ask them about comparing shouting to shouting.
Thus, when the Frye hearing resumes, there’s a chance Manthei can ask Owen, ‘Dr.s Nakasone, French et. al. have argued that science cannot make a valid comparison between shouting and regular speech, how do you respond?’ And Owen could possibly reply, ‘Actually, I’ve now been given an exemplar of Mr. Zimmerman shouting, re-run my analysis using that, and the results affirm [or possibly strengthen] my original conclusion.’
Of course, the State now also possesses a voice exemplar of Trayvon Martin. And while he is not exactly shouting or screaming in this exemplar, it’s not normal telephone speech either. He’s calling out rather emphatically “We need a behind-the-scenes!”
The other question neither West nor Manthei asked the Defense experts is “Given that Mr. Owen’s method might be suspect in matching or excluding two differing samples of speech allegedly from the same person, might it still be of utility in determining which is the most likely speaker out of a universe of two, given voice exemplars of each, even if the exemplars involved are less than ideal?”
Or in more plain language, ‘If I just give you the 911 call screams and George talking, maybe you can’t tell me whether the screams are definitely George or definitely not George, but if I give you the screams, George AND Trayvon, you can tell me which one of the two men’s speech the screams most resemble, and how much of a difference the software found between the two?’
Again, if Owen and the State have done their due diligence since Owen last appeared, Owen should be able to give a good answer to a question like that. If Manthei doesn’t ask something like that, nor Owen offer it, I’ll conclude that he and the State aren’t really making a serious effort to get his testimony included at trial.
I don’t know if Don West gets a chance to bring his witnesses back in to rebut the State’s rebuttal, but if he’s stuck crossing Owen by himself (I mean, the Frye hearing can’t go on FOREVER, can it?), and Owen brings in any new results along the lines I’ve mentioned, I don’t think West knows enough about this stuff to undermine him effectively.
When the 911 calls were released i thought for sure that voice recognition would solve easily the problem. This is disappointing. On Leatherman’s blog , some wrote that they should let the jury decide who was screaming. I disagree. Let this happen without expert advice is not my conception of a fair trial.
Here some fast points.
— I don’t know the instructions GZ received when he made some samples of “help me” but they differ from the originals not only in tone but in intensity and were also much shorter in time. The distress were totally absent in the samples.
— There is about 3 secs hidden in the 911 call to protect to caller identity. There was screams at the same time. Maybe we are missing something important.
— Dr Reich said that he could hear GZ says “but not on me” after “they always get away” and “i’m begging you” at the begining of the 911 call. If he can show that with great certitude it will have a strong impact.
This is a confusing issue, isn’t? I agree letting the jury decide without expert assistance is foolhardy. They have to be guided at least in knowing if the experts can even say if there are one or two different voices. That issue alone would be enough to question GZ if indeed he claimed to be the “only” one screaming (which I’m not sure he said that but at least implied that after the initial confrontation, the only only thing that came out of TM’s mouth was “you’re gonna die tonight MF” and “ow” after being shot.)
Yes it is. At first glance, it seems easier to say that two people were shouting that identify these people.. But if i understood well the cotton balls concept showed before this week (which i listened on and off) is not actually easier.
This is why the “I’m begging you” can be very important. GZ never said that and therefore it has to be Trayvon.
GZ, according to himself, only answered “No” once and that’s it. Furthermore, it is hard to imagine GZ pronouncing these words.
More exactly GZ admitted having talked to Trayvon once and it was to answer “No, i don’t have a problem”
I wasn’t expecting a great jury and so I’m not surprised we have an all white jury. I just don’t see any of these as a totally indoctrinated plant so I’m hoping they can do the job of weighing the evidence.
I cannot WAIT for the prosecutions opening statement… It’s been 16 months. I gotta know..
I can’t wait for the opening statements. We will know what evidence the prosecution intends to use.
Did you hear during the Frye hearing that Reich was working on the background sounds in the nen call? I think it should be possible to tell what gears GZ was shifting to. That may give us our answer about GZ’s movements on TL.
That would be great to know but I don’t know if reich has the wherewithal to get a Honda ridge line to compare to. I hope he does.
Were I in charge of prosecution if have prepared tests of the security cameras for comparison as well.
I can’t imagine the state won’t use the clubhouse videos. The information that’s on it, combined wit DD’s statements about Trayvon taking shelter at the mail boxes, GZ’s Google map drawing and who knows what else they have, will show GZ was lying about everything, even before he got out of the car.
I don’t know if you heard Guy saying today that the State’s case is that GZ confronted Trayvon and that they have the evidence to proof it.
I heard that. I think it was the last thing Guy said and he said it very shortly with low volume. It passed almost unnoticed but that was maybe the most important statement of the day. It looks like they have a concrete direct proof (other than GZ inconsistencies) that GZ confronted Trayvon. I can’t wait.
I also heard Guy’s comment. I’m still anxious to know what it is that the State has.
Concerning the clubhouse videos, I don’t believe it will be part of the trial. We would have already seen a fight of experts as we saw about the cries for help in W11’s 911 recorded call.
I’m not disappointed with the makeup of the jury, except that it is weird not to have even one male on it (other than the alternates). However, I think that whatever verdict is rendered, I think there would be less blame on these jurors. They can’t be viewed as white or hispanic males looking to protect their own, or black jurors hellbent on convicting him no matter what. Some people express concern that they might be “soft” just because they’re females. I don’t think so. They’ve got brains and would be able to follow the courts instructions to consider the evidence.
Whonoze, I hope you listen to the Frye hearing today. Apparently, Dr. French trashed an article he said was by Owen. But at today’s hearing, Owen never received article and when West showed him it on skype, it was NOT by him. and he had never seen it! West said there was no author or anyone signing it.West could not attribute it to anyone. Like just some article copied from someplace with no author, publisher, or name.
Mantai was ready for West, he looked like the cat getting ready to pounce. Apparently, West had asked for the Frye to be moved to today but then asked Judge to delay it again. She was very abrupt with him, saying No sir, you asked for this date and time to be set aside. She angrily left the bench saying we will have hearing as YOU requested at 2:15 today( 6/20). Mr. Owen has scheduled this time as has the court and state.
I watched it live but the odd thing is when I went to rematch it on state of the Internet you tube, it was redacted. His video shows jurors being thanked and told to return Monday and then the seal comes up.
The next pix shown was Judge asking GZ if it was his choice to not be present at the hearing and GZ, MOM and family leaving courtroom. Then West and Mantai setting up Skype with Judge and Owen.West crossed, then Mantai then West said he hadn’t prepared his concluding argument. Judge insisted this was it, proceed. West wasn’t totally disorganized but he whined about how Owen wouldn’t lower his fee and taxpayers were being charged 70k.Don’t think that is relevant to Frye hearing.
The best comment from Mantai was him saying if they had an expert who would say it was GZ, they would not even be asking for a Frye hearing.
Judge will rule on it tomorrow 9AM.
It was quite a priceless bit of how not to argue a Frye hearing as brought to you by a high priced private attorney. Probably will be used in law classes everywhere.
O’Mara and West have probably become the best examples of what poor lawyering can do. Law Schools everywhere are taking clips to insert into their lessons.
I missed the first half of Fridays hearing. It seems GZ wasn’t there but that his lawyer forgot to ask permission for him to be excused? That seems like a serious matter to me in a mirder case when te defendant fails to appear- serious as in revoke his bond serious.
Also there was some issue brought forward about the defense wanting some statements admitted via an exception to a rule? I think that may be relating to GZ speaking about self defense but I’m not sure and wondered if there was an actual motion filed with the court and if we will get to see that motion etc- what was all this about ? Seems important.
The prosecution had a motion in limine granted that prohibited the introduction of self serving hearsay statements by the defendant. It was a broad general motion against hearsay.
West today, wanted Nelson to exclude certain statements from that order under what is called res gestae rule. As I understand it, those are hearsay exception rules such as excited utterances. West however, hadn’t bothered to put anything in writing and had not given the State the statements he wanted Nelson to exclude from that order.
Nelson got really irritated with West after she told him numerous times, the prosecution had a right to have the weekend to review statements and that she wasn’t going to rule on anything that wasn’t submitted to her in writing.
So BDLR spends the weekend making a list of “excited utterances” by GZ that he specifically wants excluded? Or is it the defense who had to request in writing what utterances they want to be able tote lol the jury about without hacking to put George on the stand?
From what I saw I felt it was the latter but the way you just put it I’m unsure.
Also all this action I am assuming is going to revolve around what he allegedly said to w13/ Jon about “he was bearing me up so I had to shoot him.” But what about what he may or may not have said to the EMTs or to mark Osterman or Tim Smith? I don’t trust any of them to be truthful.
I am sorry if I wasn’t clear. You got it right, it is West who has got to do the work.
I am sure Bernie will fight to keep those ” self-serving hearsay statements” out.
Thanks / looks like MOM will have to write two opening statements this weekend – one for each way the judge might rule.
George Pleasance’s statement. He was a teacher at GZ’s college.
I’ve made a playlist collection of LLMPapa’s short vids. Enjoy.
Judge adjourned court around 10 saying she would have ruling on Frye Monday. West asked if she could fax her opinion and, wait for it, she said she doesn’t have a fax at home.
West is extremely disrespectful to her. He is known for setting up issues for appeal so maybe that is some type of good lawyering and he’s trying to accomplish a mistrial. How she keeps her cool is close to saintly.
She ruled on motion to prohibit certain words, so profile is in (racially is out). Self appointed NW is out but initiated NW interest is in. Appointed to head of NW is in but self appointed is out.
Agreed to preserve testimony of Gordon Pleasants who was GZ’s professor at Seminole State College. This ruling is done when a witness may not be available at trial scheduled date.
Thanks!
state of the Internet has it up on his you tube channel, now.
Thank you for the recap. I was able to watch part of today’s hearing. Since it lasted less than an hour, I didn’t miss much. Does anyone know the procedure to sit in court on any given day of this trial? I will be in Sanford for about a week at the end of this month.
Lottery
…just left there yesterday, but this was a short trip.
I wish you could see opening statements but I’m guessing that day will be quite crowded. Too bad there isn’t a bigger courtroom for the trial. I have no clue as to how to get a seat – first come, First serve? A lottery? Ask marinade Dave maybe. Best of luck and if you visit the RATL please take a photo from the pool cam position for me!!
Link to State’s Motion to Hear Witness who is vital.George Pleasance was GZ’s teacher in college. As always, hope it’s blued for everyone
http://www.flcourts18.org/page.php?129
Really, the prof is the state’s witness? I initially thought it was a defense witness who might tell us what a good boy GZ was. Wonder what he’s suppose to testify to. The fact that GZ was a wannabe cop (oops can’t say that word can they?) but didn’t make the grade?
I think he will be asked about whether GZ knew of SYG, based on the curriculum.
“I think he will be asked about whether GZ knew of SYG, based on the curriculum.”
Well, he could testify as to whether he taught it, but not necessarily whether a particular student was paying attention and learned it at the time, but since SYG had nothing to do with this case and this case has nothing to do with SYG, what would be the point of having him testify about that?
The State is emphasizing Prof. Pleasance (formerly police lieutenant) as a definitive witness. I’d speculate that it might not be about SYG by name, but perhaps a course lesson on Justifiable Use of Force, and/or questions raised by Zimmerman in class or in private conversation.
@unitron, you’re right, he can’t directly prove that GZ learned about SYG, unless he had a copy of an exam where GZ answered questions about it. The defense might move to strike any questions relating to it because they’re not using SYG, but on the other hand, GZ did go on the Hannity show and said he had never heard of SYG at a time when his attorneys had not taken it off the table yet. So the prosecution might make say that it damages his credibility.
You left out the word “again”! Or “even more”. 😆
Judge Nelson has ruled on the Frye hearing issue. It appears that there will be no expert testimony regarding the 911 audio.
I’m not surprised. I had thought that we were going to hear opposing experts during the trial but instead we had a Frue hearing instead where we heard opposing experts.
Either way what I had written last year was that the FBI seemed to have laid down a “voice of authority” backstop when they seemed to say that the poor quality of the 911 call precluded any scientific certainty of answering the question about who was seemingly calling for help.
Instead what I said last year was that the prosecution would have the victim’s mother take the witness stand in an emotional high point of the trial and testify that she hears her son’s voice, and that a jury will be moved by this. Keep in mind now there will be no defense expert to refute her, only a Zimmerman family member who will be open to cross examination about their credibility. Preciously we had the father but at trial maybe it will be GZs mother. Either of them can be asked about thier role in money laundering and presumably background questions about their son’s overall credibility as well as their own which has hardly been exemplary.
“Is that your sons voice? And my next question, is the national basketball association a racist institution?”
That ought to go well…
Thanks Willi. Do you have a link?
I have to admit that I’m not surprised either.
I was not really convinced by Dr. Nakasone as he mostly referred to his semi-automated system that would fail ID’ing the voice of someone spelling his name, DOB & address. However, Dr. French was really convincing to me.
What concerns me is the additional momentum it lends to the defense.
The defense releasing of TM’s phone content really created that momentum and I believe it is not a surprise that they did it just weeks before the beginning of the trial.
The defense countering the states strikes of PJ’s E-6 & B-76 got me speechless. The defense argument was that the state should not strike 4 white women in a row. The judge answered that the race/gender thing is hard to argue given the make up of the PJ population. But then she decided to go with defense on E-6 & B-76.
Finally, if her conclusion is that no audio expert can testify then there is a risk of giving people and Jurors who are not sequestered yet the general impression that Defense is strong.
BTW. I’m too busy to watch the trial but I can read your live comments. So, I want to thanks you all for that.
Just one more comment:
I believe that there is another reason for the state wanting to strike E-6 & B76. The two jurors next in line were the 2 alternates B-72 (M young & bi-racial with knowledge in gym & wrestling) & E-13 (F, young & white who works as a surgical assistant).
B-72 would have been a major win for the state. Defense would possibly not have been able to strike him has they already stroke many black PJs.
the judge seemed to take a “wisdom of solomon” approach to the issue of “too many white women” by in essence deciding to split the baby in half. Of course the real Solomon used that trick as a ruse to draw out the real mom, who offered to give up her child rather than see the infant dismembered. Here, we just got a dismembered baby as the result, I fear.
It seems ironic that the state didn’t think to argue after that, that she had created a defacto situation where the whole jury, save one was made up of all white women. It would have perhaps given her pause to wonder if she were not “as guilty” of creating an unbalanced jury.
I’m sad there are no African Americans on the jury. I’m not sure if the state could have tried much harder however. Luck of the draw.
Lots of things that could have gone differently, but this is the jury we are stuck with. Let’s hope it’s sufficient to the task of weighing the evidence fairly. I don’t see any grand conspiracy at work.
I’m also optimistic that the slight pro-defense bias shown by a few of the jurors will vanish once they have been presented evidence in a courtroom.
Just as well. I was not impressed with the state’s experts, especially the one who said he could hear phrases like “these shall be” or something like that. But is the jury allowed to listen to that tape over and over if they want to dissect it out for themselves? That is, would they only be able to hear it played during court if at all? Perhaps during deliberation, they’re allowed to ask to see or hear recorded evidence again, is that right?
Here is the order: http://www.gzdocs.com/documents/0613/order_excluding.pdf
It actually is an order to exclude Owen & Dr. Reich. Does it mean that the other experts are admissible?
The FBI (Dr. Nakason) said that they would not make any conclusions.
But what about, Dr. Harry Hollien & Dr. James D. Harnsberger of Forensic Communication Associates can the State bring them to testify? If they can state that some of the cries match TM this is good enough.
good point. I an not a lawyer but ones that are have been known to drive the proverbial Mack truck through loopholes smaller than that.
I get the impression the judge based her decision at least in part upon hoping to appear unbaised, so as to ensure any appeals would fail.
Another cross-post from The Lounge:
—
Going back to my post from a few days ago… I argued that if the State really wanted to get their expert testimony on the screams admitted, they would have to bring more to the table on rebuttal than they did on direct. IMHO they should have been able to do so, but failed utterly. Owen offered nothing beyond the preliminary and scientifically weak analysis he had prepared for the OS. Reich’s report was also preliminary, and void of any key detail. In short, the State did not commission any original, rigorous study of the voice exemplars, but relied on some rather sketchy analysis that had been handed to them on a plate (and a flimsy paper plate at that).
Either the State didn’t really care about the voice ID, or they were grossly overconfident that JN would stay within the very loose standards established by Frye. If they really wanted to get expert testimony on the screams admitted, they would have forseen the possibility of JN’s ruling. It appears that Dr. Naksone and his colleagues have a long-standing beef with Mr. Owen. A bit of research could have uncovered this, and the potential effect the credentials of Nakasone, French and Wayman would possibility have on a judge.
What we did NOT hear from either of the State’s witnesses was a comparison of vocal characteristics of the screams to both GZ’s “Help me! Help me!” exemplars and the voice sample of Trayvon from his cell phone video, conducted with proper scientific controls for ‘researcher bias’, resulting in a valid relative probability of match between the screams and the two possible sources. Perhaps the State was reluctant to commission such a study for fear it would be inconclusive. (?) But going by my own ‘critical listening’ test, I would have been more confident. To my ear, the timbre of the screams sound much closer to Trayvon’s “We need a behind the scenes!” than to GZ’s “Help me! Help me!”
Reich did testify that he made a ‘critical listening’ comparison between the screams, Trayvon’s exemplar, and a variety of samples of GZ taken from the many recordings of his voice now available. His conclusion was that IDing the screams as far more likely to be Trayvon was simple and more or less obvious. This statement seems to have made no impact on JN’s ruling, which strikes me as a bit odd. Perhaps it got lost amidst all the other ‘noise’ of the Frye hearing, especially since it was mentioned only in Reich’s oral testimony, and not in his written report. Reich seems to have been disqualified in toto due to the skepticism over his word identifications: “these shall be”, “but not on me” etc., which do seem a bit ‘out there.’ If the State had gotten him to stick to the COMPARATIVE voice ID question, explain his methodology thereof, put it in writing, and leave out the word ID stuff, I think he would have had a much better chance of surviving the Frye hearing.
I would also guess that the Defense will attempt to introduce expert testimony that it is impossible for anyone using any method to accurately match the screams to their source, in rebuttal to Sabrina’s expected testimony of ‘That’s my son!’ I expect they will argue that JN’s ruling only prohibits expert testimony on the specific question of experts attributing the screams to either TM or GZ, not on the more general question of the science of speaker recognition by humans (as opposed to computers). If indeed the defense takes this route, I wonder how JN will rule…
Amsterdam had a good point about expert audio analysis. Why didnt any of the prosecution’s experts examine the car sounds?
Headlights, keys gear shorting etc all seem relaxant
Amsterdam had a good point about expert audio analysis. Why didnt any of the prosecution’s experts examine the car sounds?
Headlights, keys gear shifting etc all seem relavant to the “they went that away” questions
“Why didnt any of the prosecution’s experts examine the car sounds?”
They can say, hey the defendant says at this point he was doing this but we hear him doing that, and to us it sounds like he’s parking the car, do you agree? But then that’s highly leading and I don’t know if they’re allowed to tell the experts all they know or think because that could cause bias. Of course, I have no idea how these things work legally.
Maybe they did. Whatever they found would all be work product they don’t have to hand over. Or even say they have.
On the other hand, if they DO have phone GPS they don’t nee it. We needed it to work out the timeline accurately.
Well, not long to go now.
The state’s 18th supplemental discovery list includes emails from the defendant and what appears to be a couple of textbooks. Do y’all think that the emails are to the college professor and these were his course books?
Click to access states_18.pdf
They are course books. Got a description of one of them here.
http://tinyurl.com/km45u3c
Less than 15 hours Willis.
I wish there was more discovery. But boy oh boy am I counting the hours.
Many things are possible. BDLR better prove what GZ said wasn’t possible.
Intriguing, but I expect “y’all” will be right, but can’t help wishfully thinking if when GZ was trying to contact Corey to talk, he sent her a few emails giving us a couple more versions of his innocence for good luck !
Now this is a 319 post thread, wonder if whonoze will start a new one for trial… hint hint!
Today in the UK we awakened to another whistle blower, a police investigator, who was pressured into spying on the parents of our Trayvon Martin, Stephen Lawrence, a studious black teenager, hoping to become an architect, murdered some 20 years ago by 5 or 6 white supremacist thugs, only two of which were able to be brought to justice last year and only thanks to police reforms to deal with racism and changes to the UK’s double jeopardy law apropos of this case. Apparently the police wanted the investigator to dig up dirt on Lawrence’s parents and best friend to justify their actions. A quote from wiki:
Lawrence’s mother reached out to Sybrina soon after Trayvon was shot and the Martin’s visited here last year to meet the Lawrence family and pay homage to both teens. A tragic story, as Trayvon’s, but with a silver lining too.
Anyone interested, “The murder of Stephen Lawrence”, wikipedia entry covering all that had to change here to bring even two of the killers to justice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Lawrence
DAMN IT. No mention of car to pedestrian chase in opening statement.
(please can we have a new thread?)
also, no mention of phone calls relating to tip-off
no mention of the car being moved.
no mention of Mark Osterman, Wolfinger, Bill Lee, Serino or Singleton specifically.
No mention of the map GZ marked on.
no mention of the phone call in the bloody head photo
no mention of the shirt tucked in
no mention of broken nose proven or unproven – at one point Guy said “swollen nose”
what else?
Good opening statement, except I just thought he should have stayed away from the “dark and rainy night” novel-like statements.
GZ could see the kid just fine when he trolled the mail kiosk, and when he chased him down TTL with his car.
I think possibly Guy was ready with this opeing and BDLR was ready with the KISS opening, both in preparation for which way the judge ruled on the “excited utterance” exception business.
GZ is looking kinda worried about West’s meandering opening statement.
He’s worried because, although West says gz wasn’t following Trayvon — and everyone knows that it will be established that he should not have followed Trayvon — West starts gz at Taaffe’s then has them come together again at the clubhouse, and finally he’s over on TTL getting out of his truck and running after him.
Looking at the audience, who are watching the jurors, I don’t feel that opening went over too well with the jurors, who probably saw the 1, 2, 3 and are now waiting to here the defense try to explain no. 4. Things can only get worse for gz when the jury learns of the distances involved. Obviously gz wasn’t headed for the store when he passed the main gate, and since Trayvon was walking, it took him several minutes to move distances gz should have moved through in seconds.
West wound up saying that gz was at the clubhouse when Trayvon started running. Because he could not put gz’s care behind Trayvon walking on TTL. So he had to keep gz at the clubhouse to make his “not following” work. Not a good thing at all and gz knew it, you could see he wanted to crawl out of his skin.
There you have it, an admission of car to pedestrian following.
West admitted of GZ following TM by car. He also skipped the TM-circled-my-car event. This is good for prosecution.
Opening statements do not argue the case, it’s just a brief summary of the “story” each side believes the evidence will show. They each have a theory that proves their case, they’ve got to focus on getting the supportive foundation into evidence, so they can tell a convincing story in their closing statement. In closing they cannot use anything that has not been put into evidence. So, that’s the focus, our focus is much wider than what the trial will contain. Lots of nuances and things we’ve discovered will not be used.
Now that we have these new times:
1) GZ’s NEN call ended at 7:13:43pm
2) TM’s call with DeeDee ended at 7:15:44pm
So the 911 call began at 7:16:11 so we have only 27 seconds of
activity unaccounted for. Where we once believed there was as much
as a 70 second gap.
During the 911 call gz still has a dominant voice, portraying him as
the dominant person in the superior position.
“Now that we have these new times:
1) GZ’s NEN call ended at 7:13:43pm
2) TM’s call with DeeDee ended at 7:15:44pm”
2 is new, 1 is over a year old for anyone who could add, subtract, and remember to carry a 6 instead of a 10
You could have simply said that one is not new, but is now confirmed. Must you always be argumentative? There are no “points” to be won attempting to appear to have superior knowledge, all you accomplish by doing that is, collecting ostracism. That doesn’t play well with people of consequence, because they’ve got to be careful about who they alienate.
I missed most of West’s opening. I had to go to work at about the 30th min. Is there anything he said that looks major?
“Is there anything he said that was coherent?” is more the question. He’s echoing vaguely GZ’s false narrative and he’s presented nothing new nor novel of any substance. He is leaning heavily on John W6’s MMA “ground and pound” and the two photos that show some blood.
Like GZ, he’s used misdirection and bullshit to elude the movement from clubhouse parking lot to near the cut thru.
Only new thing is that the defense has a resident who say GZ’s car in the end position allegedly. No word on which way it was allegedly facing.
I’ve seen better openings on a bag of airline peanuts. West is pathetic. I suspect “the Chewbacca defense” is in play. (google it.)
WSI – i sorta missed that point about how West explained the move from clubhouse area to cut thru area. Can you describe it better?
If he admitted that, he’s an even bigger idiot than I thought. And trust me, he’s in a freefall for the bottom of a bottomless pit already with this rambling opening.
@willisnewton, oh I forget now, it took West so long to orient himself to the picture of RATL, it’s as if he was just handed it an hour before the trial. Through his rambling, he mentioned three main spots, GZ seeing TM over by the Taaffe cut-through where according to him no resident uses to get into the complex (guess he didn’t see the news video of kids cutting through there after school), parking over by the clubhouse and then following TM as he moved quickly away to where GZ finally parked. Kinda weird how he made such a point of having a witness seeing GZ’s truck.
West working on the “grand conspiracy” theory here. Blames city managers for some unnamed but perceived malfeasance since “law enforcement was not present.”
Whonoze – i think you may have a good working theory of the defense strategy, as posited over on leatherman law blog. It could be that the defense intends to draw out the prosecution into using it’s best arguments and evidence up first and thus “have the last word” in essence by limiting the defense presentation to opening and closing arguments as much as possible. The less the defense presents when their turn comes up, the less the state can destroy them with rebuttals.
Instead they have tried to fight the case in motions and pretrial sessions and everywhere but in the trial proper.
It seems clear that IF the prosecution has some “best evidence” they didn’t allude to it specifically at opening remarks. Let’s hope they actually have the ammo, and that they can present it at rebuttal to directly refute GZ’s defense LATE in the trial where it will have a big impact.
I also see the defense strategy as one set to sow confusion and misdirection as much as possible. It keeps the focus off the substantiative issues.
What are the real issues? Who did what where, why and how? Or in this case, where were they, and what did they do? It’s a simple case if you look at it that way.
“They” were by the clubhouse, then “they” were on TTL in a car to pedestrian chase, then they were separated in the dark on foot. Then someone closed a gap, and someone shot the other person. Since the defendant is provably lying about every aspect up to the gunshot, it shouldn’t take much to convince a jury he’s lying about the reason he fired his gun as well. Some circumstantial evidence of any kind ought to be sufficient.
But keeping the jury focused on these issues will be a challenge, given the “Secret weapon” of lawyer West who is a one man blizzard of bullshit.
West was already seeking to discredit the teacher’s testimony.
……as part of defense strategy to “sow confusion and misdirection”.
New thread up: