Well, it’s looking like the George Zimmerman verdict probably will come down to how much racism may lurk in the hearts of the jurors. Much snarking has been aimed at Rachel Jeantel, the young woman who was on the phone with Trayvon Martin until minutes before he was killed. Her testimony has been called a “train wreck.” Zimmerman supporters made much of her testimony that Martin called Zimmerman a “creepy-ass cracker.” Like that proves something.
This is the only bit of the testimony that I’ve seen. I say it’s purely in the eye of the beholder to determine who comes off worse, Ms. Jeantel or the creepy-ass cracker defense attorney questioning her.
Hey, the question was retarded. The attorney seemed to be insinuating that Trayvon Martin was attacking George Zimmerman while he was on the phone — good trick, that — and lying to Ms. Jeantel about it. Huh?
What we’re not hearing as much about is that the white and properly articulate neighbors have been giving conflicting testimony.
The boy in the dark-colored hooded sweatshirt straddled the man in red, doing a mixed-martial-arts-style “ground-and-pound.â€
Or the boy in the hoodie was on the bottom, crying out for help.
I don’t much care who was on top. The central issues of the trail are summed up pretty well here —
The big question hanging over the trial is whether it was an unarmed Martin who claimed his self-defense rights against an armed adult stranger following him in the dark, and whether Zimmerman waived his self-defense rights when he made the decision to pursue Trayvon after noting to a 911 dispatcher that “these [guys] always get away.â€
Yes. However,
Yet the potential for Jeantel’s testimony to illuminate that central question appeared to sink beneath a wave of commentary about aesthetics, as Christina Coleman summarizes in a Global Grind article called “Why Black People Understand Rachel Jeantel.â€
Fortunately, the jury is sequestered, so they aren’t being influenced by the trial about the trial.
This case is showing how disgusting some people still are. Earlier in the week I read a bunch of articles seemingly blaming Martin’s parents for Trayvon’s death. Acting like if he was raised better or if they hadn’t divorce- he would still be alive. Or snarking that they suddenly care about their kid when the promise of making money off his death is out there, or that this is the most time they’ve spent together since his conception. Forget that a lot this has no basis on reality, they lost their kid- shouldn’t they be off limits?
Questions to ask:Why are we more willing to give a pass to a man who admittedly shot a teen than a girl who’s biggest crime is maybe having poor grammar? Why is so important for it to be ok that this kid is dead? Are the “OMG he called him a cracker!” people also the people who feel bad for poor, old Paula Deen who made “one mistake”?
Between this and Stubenville, why is our first instinct to blame the victim?
You know, all of this time has passed, and I didn’t know until now that Martin was a young white female, with some Latino blood!
That has to be the case.
5 of the juror’s of “peers” are white women, and the other one, a Hispanic woman. And, while 2 of the 4 alternate juror’s are male, all 4 of them, are white.
If the peers on the jury are supposed to reflect Martin, then he couldn’t be a he, she’d have to be a white female.
Oh, wait!
Silly me!!!
It’s a jury of ZIMMERMAN’S peers!!!
Only they’re white females, and not white males.
D’OH!!!!!!!!
And then, if the decision comes down in Zimmerman’s favor, everyone will say, “Why are the black people in Florida and this country so upset? It was a fair trial!”
Yeah, maybe ‘favorable for Zimmerman, but not fair for Martin.
I’m going to hope that this jury can see through something besides melanin-biased glasses.
One guy did something the police specifically told him NOT to do.
And that wasn’t the dead black kid, carrying Skittles and iced-tea in a gated community. The cops never told Martin, “Don’t go in there, kid!”
It’s the fat white guy on trial. They specifically told him to stay put, and that they’d handle it.
And THAT has to stand for something, doesn’t it?
DOESN’T IT?
Yeah, I know…
Let me try to summarize the story without any mention of anybody’s race.
1. An armed man sits in a truck in a residential neighborhood.
2. A teenage boy walks by.
3. The man calls 911 and reports that he’s seen a teenage boy who’s acting kinda funny.
4. 911 tells the man to leave the kid alone.
5. The man follows the kid.
6. The kid tells his friend on the cell phone that a man is following him. The word “creepy” is used to describe the man.
7. There is some kind of confrontation. Shots are fired. The kid dies.
So yes, obviously the whole thing turns on what precisely his friend meant when she used a particular word to describe the killer.
As far as being offended, I’m white, but I’m not a cracker, so no. I could be wrong, but my understanding is that a cracker isn’t just any white person, but specifically a white southern racist. Black kids in Florida will have experience with this type.
Oh, and of course black people understand her. They speak the dialect. I remember in The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker analyzes a chunk of an inner-city black kid’s speech, and points out that he is following a grammar. “Incorrect” constructions are used, but not randomly.
Of course Rachel Jeantel is at a disadvantage here because she doesn’t speak the mainstream/dominant/white dialect. The creepy cracker white attorney is a dick because he’s putting the whole burden of communication on her. He demands that she understand him, but makes no effort to understand her.
On the facts, an armed Zimmerman pursued a kid against clear police instructions and accosted him closely enough to become engaged in a struggle he had provoked, and shot the kid. All the errors are on him.
“What we’re not hearing as much about is that the white and properly articulate neighbors have been giving conflicting testimony.”
Given the racial circus around Jeantel, you’d have thought she was the only witness, and that Zimmerman’s fate will be determined by the extent she has “endeared” herself to white folk.
Given the known facts of the case — Zimmerman carrying a gun as a neighborhood watch person, ignoring a dispatcher command to stop following Martin, stating his intent to pursue with the statement “these a**holes always get away” and Martin pursuing him anyway and then confronting Martin. The central question of the doesn’t resolve in Zimmerman’s favor.
The only way that resolves in Zimmerman’s favor is if they ignore all that, and focus on the fight between them. But then the decision means several things that the law couldn’t have intended:
1. Only the person with the gun in a confrontation has a right to self defense.
2. The person who initiates a fight but finds himself losing has a right to self defense.
3. Minding your own business does not give you the right to self defense if accosted by a person with a gun.
I agree with the previous comments, but will add, that if Zimmerman had grabed Martin by the crotch, he’d be in prison. The right to bear arms is the most important thing followed by Florida’s “stand your ground law”,Sad.
Following up on Stephen Stralka: Why is it that the guy with a gun can claim self defense. But the unarmed kid who may have wrestled the guy wit a gun – WHO WAS PURSUING THE KID FOR NO APPARENT REASON – not given the same assumption of self defense even if it involved attempting to beat his pursuer’s head into a sidewalk?
Oh yeah – the kid is dead… guess I answered my own question.
Herm. CSM, and others – he was not *ordered* not to follow. He was told “we don’t need you to do that”. I don’t say this to defend Zimmerman; I just want things to be clear.
And in fairness, there are things Trayvon Martin could have done that would have justified Zimmerman’s actions. What really frosts me is how many people seem willing to assume that he did them, just based upon the self-serving testimony of a man who will go to jail for a long time if the jury doesn’t believe that Martin provoked a reasonable need for lethal force. That Martin may have had control of the fight, and given Zimmerman a couple of minor injuries comparable to what I suffered in fistfights before I was 12 doesn’t impress me.
(What’s worse is, I’ve seen people waving around the claim that Martin was a boxer. If this *is* true – that to me establishes that he was being careful *not* to injure Zimmerman. If a boxer really wants to hurt you, and gets you one in the nose, you won’t see just a bit of blood under the nose, as Zimmerman’s photo shows. )
I don’t know the truth; I don’t know if we ever will. So I really hope that the jury comes to a verdict consistent with the truth.
Yes, but after all this time we still haven’t been told one suspicious thing Martin was doing, other than walking while black. Zimmerman hasn’t even come up with a good lie about what he saw Martin doing.
“her testimony that Martin called Zimmerman a “creepy-ass cracker.†Like that proves something.”
But no doubt if Zimmerman had referred to Trayvon as ‘a creepy-ass nigger’ that would most definitely have proven something! Although what exactly, I have no idea.
Oh, let me guess. Another white guy wallowing in self-pity because not everyone respects his all-glorious whiteness. Well, dude, unless you are an albino I’m probably whiter than you are, and I say, get over it. You really think “cracker” and the infamous n-word are equally weighted? Please.
And since Zimmerman was the aggressor — he was stalking Martin, not the other way around — anything he might have said would be evidence of his motivations for stalking Martin. On the other hand, that Martin expressed alarm because a stranger was stalking him helps to justify any action Martin might have taken to defend himself, IMO.
BTW, I hate racists. Get off my site.
We all need to remember that we are witnessing an adversarial “legal” system at work, not a “justice” system.
In his police statement, Zimmerman claimed that he got out of his truck to check the street sign, and then, while walking back to his truck, was confronted and assaulted by Martin.
I don’t find this credible for two reasons. First, it’s practically a textbook (literally, as in, Zimmerman studied some criminal law) set up for Zimmerman having no duty to retreat. If Zimmerman got out of the car to accost Martin, he may have a duty to retreat, regardless of Stand Your Ground laws because he initiated contact. Instead, he was both not accosting Martin *and* was in retreat (going back to his car).
Second: his claim that Martin just out-of-the-blue assaulted him only makes sense if Martin was actually engaged in criminal activity. We know he wasn’t – but Zimmerman, at the time he was giving his report, didn’t. This has always been what’s struck me as the most damning thing about the case. There were times when I could imagine a 17 year old version of myself deciding to settle a situation with my fists. But if I was a young black man, knowing I was in the right, but knowing if I punched a white man, I’d probably be tagged as a hood, wouldn’t that be what was in the forefront of my mind? Probably.
So Zimmerman did claim that Martin basically did everything wrong – initiated contact and attacked him, and since (Zimmerman claims) Zimmerman was in retreat, Martin couldn’t claim that he was responding to a perceived threat.
As I said, I don’t believe this is what happened, but that was Zimmerman’s story.
LHW — That story never made sense to me, either, particularly if you look at the interactive map of exactly where things happened. Zimmerman’s vehicle was parked on a street corner, but the confrontation took place some yards away from the road. It was near a sidewalk that cut between back yards. You don’t walk around in peoples’ back yards to find a street sign.
LHW, I did not use the term “ordered” to describe what the dispatcher said — that was your term. I said Zimmerman “ignored a command” to not follow. And I think here it goes without saying that the dispatcher could neither “command” (my choice of word) nor “order” Zimmerman to do anything, since Zimmerman had no official connection with police business. The point is, I noted that the purpose of that communication to Zimmerman from the dispatcher was to “remind” him of the practice of Neighborhood Watch in the area, that they are not to pursue who they may think are suspects, but to call the police, and let them decide.
A better way to put it is, Zimmerman was *reminded* of this by the dispatcher, and thus we can take off the table whether there was any confusion in his mind about responsibility for what he did. This is the first I have heard of the story about the street sign, but I don’t see how that squares with where the altercation took place, as well as Zimmerman’s statement about the “a**holes always get away.” And I believe this is key.
But based on what we do know, I can’t think of anything else Martin could have done to avoid this confrontation, which would not have occurred had Zimmerman followed police procedure — I say police because it is the police department that trains and oversees neighborhood watch programs — with respect to neighborhood watch practice, and stopped the pursuit.
Again, I don’t see how Zimmerman can prevail, without leaving an ugly precedent that codifies “walking while black” as an offense that justifies lethal force from anyone who catches you doing that.
Another thing, and maybe I’ve missed this because I have not been able to follow the trial goings on, but I had read that Zimmerman has a past history with the police, and its not good, that he “assaulted” a police officer. He also has some skeletons regarding abuse and other things that, while not directly relevant to the actions of the case, do speak to character.
Since Martin is dead, and Jeantel and other witnesses only have bits and pieces, a lot of what the defense is asking the jury to accept is Zimmerman’s word. But given his background, he does seem to have a credibility issue.
Lastly, given the known facts of the case, you can take race completely out of the picture, and looking at the facts, there is not way for Zimmerman to prevail here.
It sounds like you’re bothered by my emphasis of the word – I didn’t mean to suggest you’d done something wrong. I just wanted to emphasize that he was not ordered/commanded/whatever, just advised, as you say.
Sorry – tone doesn’t carry in a text medium, so I didn’t realize how that might “sound”.
On what basis do you designate me as a “racist”?
And in your world in which words are “weighted”, who exactly does the ‘weighing’?
And if, as I suspect, you ‘weigh’ the word ‘nigger’ very heavily then may I ask what action you will be taking against the script-writers and black actors in “The Wire” (perhaps the best TV series ever) who regularly referred to each other as, er, ‘nigga’?
Jest askin’, as I believe you say ‘over there’!
By what you wrote, including the second post. Only white racists are clueless enough to wonder why it’s OK for blacks to use the n-word and not them. It’s a major “tell” of white racism, in fact. However, if you need it spelled out, here’s an article about it.
Bye.
One thing you can say about ithe whole WMD-in-Iraq debacle: any winger with even a shred of respectability had to eventually admit there were no WMD or shut up about it.
At least when the wingers get in lockstep, it’s in service of some winger cause. But, when liberals get into lockstep, it simply HAS to be the worst possible target imaginable.
If you feel so strongly about this case, may I suggest that you spend at least some time going through the daily proceedings?
Or, if that is too much to ask, how about this: if you feel really strongly about the *verdict*, I’d suggest that there’s some obligation to lookup what happened during the actual trial.
I spent a lot of time with this story last year (see Trayvon Martin archive), and I have read enough about the trial to know that nothing really new has come out in anyone’s testimony; little that we didn’t know or suspect a year ago. About the only thing that’s been clarified is that Zimmerman’s head was not repeatedly slammed into pavement, as he claimed, but everything else I already knew.
Fair enough and, anyway, you’ve indicated that your opinion isn’t really affected by who was on top and who was screaming for help.
If the verdict is what you’d consider just, that’s that. However, suppose it isn’t and you feel it’s due to juror racism. Well, that’s a pretty potent charge to lay on ordinary citizens from a media platform, right? So I hope you’ll at least quote the portions of the testimony which, to you, show strong proof of guilt which the jurors ignored.
For example, here’s something from the comments. *You* didn’t say this, it’s just an example.
The commenter may find it a little tricky to show this from the actual testimony (even ignoring the distinction between order and suggestion). Which is fine if it’s just a side point. However, if something is central, please try and see if you can make the case using trial testimony before you vilify the jurors.
My opinion might be affected if I knew who was screaming for help, but it appears there is no way to know that with absolute certainty, just as there is no way to know who was on top, since the witness testimony is conflicting. Some say Martin was on top; some say Zimmerman was on top. I don’t see any way to settle the matter. But even if we knew that Martin was on top, the argument could be made that he was seriously in fear of his life from this bigger guy with a gun who was stalking him, and he had a right to defend himself.
Isn’t it remarkable that Martin was able to bloody Zimmerman’s face without getting blood on his hands or hoodie, though? Hmmmm.
The rest of your comment is word salad. I have no idea what point you are trying to make.
It’s possible the prosecution will fail to prove Zimmerman’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt, in which case I will be mostly pissed at the prosecution. However, if we find out the jury decided to disregard Ms. Jeantel’s testimony because she is not blond and articulate, that’s something else again.