George Zimmerman found not guilty

[bart]

The last sane man in America!

[Jorge]

The last sane man in America!

[simple schoolboy]

I wonder with which media outlets Harry Lime is most acquainted.

If it weren't for the edited CNN/NBC transcripts, would there be much national media coverage? Whoever makes the most noise early on tends to control the narrative, it would seem.

[shinkdew]

George Zimmerman Emerged From Hiding for Truck Crash Rescue
July 22, 2013
By MATT GUTMAN and ALEXIS SHAW

George Zimmerman, who has been in hiding since he was acquitted of murder in the death of Trayvon Martin, emerged to help rescue someone who was trapped in an overturned truck, police said today.

Sanford Police Department Capt. Jim McAuliffe told ABC News that Zimmerman "pulled an individual from a truck that had rolled over" at the intersection of a Florida highway last week.

The crash occurred at the intersection of I-4 and route 417, police said. The crash site is less than a mile from where he shot Martin.

It's the first known sighting of Zimmerman since he left the courtroom following his acquittal last week on murder charges for the death of Martin. Zimmerman, 29, shot and killed Martin, 17, in Sanford, Fla., on Feb. 26, 2012. The jury determined that Zimmerman shot Martin in self-defense.

The acquittal prompted dozens of protests across the country this past weekend and his lawyers have said that Zimmerman has been the subject of death threats. His lawyers said Zimmerman has been wearing a bullet-proof vest when he ventures out in public.

Zimmerman's parents told ABC News' Barbara Walters they too have received death threats and have been unable to return to their home.

Zimmerman's Parents in Hiding from 'Enormous Amount of Death Threats': ABC News Exclusive

"We have had an enormous amount of death threats. George's legal counsel has had death threats, the police chief of Sanford, many people have had death threats," Zimmerman's father, Robert Zimmerman said."'Everyone with Georgie's DNA should be killed' -- just every kind of horrible thing you can imagine."

[elliseamos]

George Zimmerman Emerged From Hiding for Truck Crash Rescue
July 22, 2013
By MATT GUTMAN and ALEXIS SHAW

George Zimmerman, who has been in hiding since he was acquitted of murder in the death of Trayvon Martin, emerged to help rescue someone who was trapped in an overturned truck, police said today.

Sanford Police Department Capt. Jim McAuliffe told ABC News that Zimmerman "pulled an individual from a truck that had rolled over" at the intersection of a Florida highway last week.

The crash occurred at the intersection of I-4 and route 417, police said. The crash site is less than a mile from where he shot Martin.

It's the first known sighting of Zimmerman since he left the courtroom following his acquittal last week on murder charges for the death of Martin. Zimmerman, 29, shot and killed Martin, 17, in Sanford, Fla., on Feb. 26, 2012. The jury determined that Zimmerman shot Martin in self-defense.

The acquittal prompted dozens of protests across the country this past weekend and his lawyers have said that Zimmerman has been the subject of death threats. His lawyers said Zimmerman has been wearing a bullet-proof vest when he ventures out in public.

Zimmerman's parents told ABC News' Barbara Walters they too have received death threats and have been unable to return to their home.

Zimmerman's Parents in Hiding from 'Enormous Amount of Death Threats': ABC News Exclusive

"We have had an enormous amount of death threats. George's legal counsel has had death threats, the police chief of Sanford, many people have had death threats," Zimmerman's father, Robert Zimmerman said."'Everyone with Georgie's DNA should be killed' -- just every kind of horrible thing you can imagine."

he probably caused the accident himself.

[---]

.

[verb_to_trust]

Was the person he saved black or white?

[Man in Black]

Folks, let's make this a teaching moment.

For all you libs, share with the group how you felt when you found out Zimmerman wasn't white.

I'm here for you.

[Fuck You Jobu]

Zimmerman juror from Chicago speaks out: He 'got away with murder'

A juror in the George Zimmerman trial who had recently moved to Florida from Chicago said today that Zimmerman "got away with murder" for killing Trayvon Martin and feels she owes an apology to Martin's parents.

"You can't put the man in jail even though in our hearts we felt he was guilty," the woman, identified only as Juror B29 during the trial, told ABC's "Good Morning America. "We had to grab our hearts and put it aside and look at the evidence."

She said the evidence, under Florida law, did not prove murder.

The court has sealed the jurors' identities. While she allowed her face to be shown during the interview, she used only a first name of Maddy.

The woman is a nursing assistant and mother of eight children. She was living in Chicago when Martin was killed and was selected as a juror five months after moving to Seminole County, Fla. She is 36 and Puerto Rican, the only minority among the five women on the jury. Zimmerman, 29, is Hispanic and Martin, 17, was black.

But Maddy insisted that the case was never about race, at least to her. "George Zimmerman got away with murder, but you can't get away from God. And at the end of the day, he's going to have a lot of questions and answers he has to deal with," Maddy told the show.

When the jury began deliberations, Maddy said she favored convicting Zimmerman of second-degree murder, which could have put him in prison for the rest of his life. The jury was also allowed to consider manslaughter, a lesser charge.

"I was the juror that was going to give them the hung jury. I fought to the end," she said.

But on the second day of deliberations, Maddy said she realized there wasn't enough proof to convict Zimmerman of murder or manslaughter under Florida law. Zimmerman admitted he shot and killed Martin on Feb. 26, 2012, but maintained he fired in self-defense.

"That's where I felt confused, where if a person kills someone, then you get charged for it," Maddy said. "But as the law was read to me, if you have no proof that he killed him intentionally, you can't say he's guilty."

The juror said she has had trouble adjusting to life after the verdict, and has wrestled with whether she made the right decision. "I felt like I let a lot of people down, and I'm thinking to myself, 'Did I go the right way? Did I go the wrong way?'" she said.

"As much as we were trying to find this man guilty. . .they give you a booklet that basically tells you the truth. And the truth is that there was nothing that we could do about it," she said. "I feel the verdict was already told."

She said she believes she owes Trayvon Martin's parents an apology because she feels "like I let them down."

"It's hard for me to sleep, it's hard for me to eat because I feel I was forcefully included in Trayvon Martin's death. And as I carry him on my back, I'm hurting as much Trayvon's Martin's mother because there's no way that any mother should feel that pain," she said.

Maddy is the second juror to speak in a televised interview, and the first to show her face.

Juror B37, whose face and body were hidden, appeared last week on Anderson Cooper's CNN show, and said she believes Zimmerman's "heart was in the right place" when he became suspicious of Martin and that the teenager probably threw the first punch.

Since then, four other jurors distanced themselves from B37's remarks and released a statement saying B37's opinions were "not in any way representative" of their own.

[Peeps]

she did the right thing

justice isnt about what you feel in your heart, but what is the letter of the law

[simple schoolboy]

she did the right thing

justice isnt about what you feel in your heart, but what is the letter of the law

I pity the guy tried for minor pot posession by a jury with Peeps on it. I'd agree that emotion is not a good justification for a guilty/ not guilty decision, but frequently the letter of the law is equally bad.

[Peeps]

its very simple.

was the law broken.

what was the intent.

was there extenuating circumstances?

guilty or not guilty.

[broken iris]

she did the right thing

justice isnt about what you feel in your heart, but what is the letter of the law

I pity the guy tried for minor pot posession by a jury with Peeps on it. I'd agree that emotion is not a good justification for a guilty/ not guilty decision, but frequently the letter of the law is equally bad.

Yo, Peeps is right here. This juror did the morally right thing as it's not up to the her to try and put a little fixin' on laws by not following them or ignoring the orders of the judge, not matter how misguided they may be. I feel Zimmerman is guilty of manslaughter, but I was not a juror on that case and if the prosecution didn't meet the standards of Florida law, then he must be found innocent.

[Fuck You Jobu]

I don't think she really understand the law...

She says, "He got away with murder" ... Yet she acquits him of the same charge.

"As much as we were trying to find this man guilty. " This line also bugged me. Her intent wasn't to follow the law or administer justice, until she was convinced that her thinking was incorrect.

I guess the system works, but I don't think she understands it.

[elliseamos]

Folks, let's make this a teaching moment.

For all you libs, share with the group how you felt when you found out Zimmerman wasn't white.

I'm here for you.

the same as i did during every point of this story.

zimmerman killed somebody in self-defense after starting a fight with travon. the stand your ground law sounds stupid, it wrongfully protected zimmerman during the initial investigation and the prosecution over-reached trying to make this a murder case.

[Peeps]

but the thing is, you say he started the fight, the evidence that was at hand (not the presumption of what happened cause you think its a shitty law) suggested otherwise

[simple schoolboy]

she did the right thing

justice isnt about what you feel in your heart, but what is the letter of the law

I pity the guy tried for minor pot posession by a jury with Peeps on it. I'd agree that emotion is not a good justification for a guilty/ not guilty decision, but frequently the letter of the law is equally bad.

Yo, Peeps is right here. This juror did the morally right thing as it's not up to the her to try and put a little fixin' on laws by not following them or ignoring the orders of the judge, not matter how misguided they may be. I feel Zimmerman is guilty of manslaughter, but I was not a juror on that case and if the prosecution didn't meet the standards of Florida law, then he must be found innocent.

You folks do have conventional wisdom on your side but the entire purose of a jury is lost on me if it is not intended to serve as an outlet for popular opinion. If we go by Judge Dread rules where the law is the law and the only metric for morality, then why not opt for a continental system where a panel of judges tries a case. After all, they are well schooled on matters of law.

[Norah]

I definitely don't want to live in a world where juries serve as an outlet for popular opinion.

[Birds in Hell]

You folks do have conventional wisdom on your side but the entire purose of a jury is lost on me if it is not intended to serve as an outlet for popular opinion.

The purpose (as I understand) is to provide transparency to the legal system. Were it not for the jury system, legal decisions would be the exclusive domain of state-appointed judges. It's also intended as some kind of fail-safe as the prosecution needs to prove their case beyond reasonable doubt in the eyes of 12 random individuals (with the presumption that this may be a higher bar to meet than were it before only a learned judge). Popular opinion really has no role to play (nor should it).

If we go by Judge Dread rules where the law is the law and the only metric for morality...

I don't think this is what anyone is claiming. On that point, however, I don't think there exists any higher authority than law. We all have our own individual sense of morality, of course, but I have little time for any person claiming moral authority to act outside of the law - or, to be more specific, little time for those claiming the legal repercussions of doing so are somehow undeserved or unjust.

[oasisfan35]

I definitely don't want to live in a world where juries serve as an outlet for popular opinion.

Part and parcel that is what they are, a garnered collective of the common [people] which used to be assumed as the popular opinion. Is your issue here how they're interpreted and realeased by the greater media?