Zimmerman Roundup

One thing I have to say is that I’m glad the Zimmerman case is over, because I’ve grown tired of this whole case. Of course, it’s over, or is it? The feds are deciding whether they want a stab at him too. Jonathan Adler has an excellent write up of that possibility over at Volokh. He seems to think the feds will take this Very Seriously, and then pass.

Meanwhile, Eugene Volokh suggests if the Zimmerman case suggests there should be anything changed in regards to Florida’s law, perhaps they should look at the six person jury law. In all but one other states, for serious crimes, juries are composed of 12 people.

Massas Ayoob has his say on the case, and will have more to say. He’s been silent because he’s been involved in the case.

Apparently people on the streets have more measured opinions than many in the media. That’s probably why there hasn’t been much in the way of rioting that a lot of people feared. Though, I’ve seen my share of people on Facebook who still think this was about 13 year kid who was hunted down for buying skittles, and who obviously didn’t follow the case or the trial one iota since they heard the initial narrative. But that jury, who actually heard all the evidence, how could they get it so wrong??

Mike Bloomberg thinks we need to stop with these “shoot first” laws, even though this was a pretty run-of-the-mill self-defense case where stand-your-ground never entered into the equation.

Michael Bane thinks it’s a huge victory for self-defense, and offers some useful advice. Tam has some similar thoughts about getting involved. I’m not your sheepdog. If it’s not my ass on the line, I’m not getting involved. The powers that be don’t want to see anymore of this. They’re from the government, and there to help, OR ELSE!

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has a predictable reaction to the Zimmerman verdict. They don’t believe in self-defense. To them, Hitler was a victim of tragic gun violence.

23 thoughts on “Zimmerman Roundup”

  1. Frankly, I don’t see how either self-defense or gun rights was helped in any way by the case. For one thing, a jury decision is not precedent-setting in any legal sense, so nothing was decided in this case other than that the charges of manslaughter or murder were not proven.

    The case started out as, and remained, a sounding-board for SYG, even though SYG never actually became a legal issue. But meanwhile, whatever faction or percentage of the population was taking the anti-Zimmerman position, they will now forever believe they were the losers and the victims in an SYG case. (“Forever” being as long as their memories last.)

    (Please don’t argue that is illogical; politics is not about logic. It is about mass psychology.)

    The case started out with everyone running to their expected camps, and that is where they remain. In that way nothing has changed except their levels of motivation. Maybe now the anti-Zimmerman side has their “Remember the Alamo” cry to reawaken their motivation whenever it serves them.

    We would be better off if this had never happened. It is a waste of time to say “If only the media hadn’t. . .,” because it was tailor-made for the media — both mainstream and ideological — to do exactly what it did. As I said above, everyone ran to their own camps with something juicy.

    I am as perturbed by people on the Zimmerman side believing they are somehow vindicated by the outcome, and the things they say were “proven” in the trial, as I am by the people who feel “they” were somehow victimized by the outcome. The best we can hope for is for memories of this incident to quietly go away over several years.

    1. I disagree. I would say that a lot of people started out being “Anti-Zimmerman” when the case first came out. I know I was, and Sebastian was. As more facts came out, I started questioned myself. At the end, I think Zimmerman should have been acquitted- even if he was in the wrong for creating the situation.

        1. “We will probably never really know what really happened.”

          That is exactly the problem. But, the majorities in both camps remain convinced that they “know” beyond reasonable doubt what happened. The pro-Z side firmly believes that what they always “knew” was vindicated in court; the anti-Z side feels their position was railroaded. I can’t think of any examples of evidence in the case that became slam-dunk persuasive for either position; one had to become committed to a position before the evidence supporting it became persuasive (in my opinion). Otherwise it all reduced to, Zimmerman being the only surviving guy who could tell a plausible story.

  2. To them, Hitler was a victim of tragic gun violence.

    Well, he was a favorite among progressives of his day.

  3. Thought you might find this interesting.

    Chapter 776: JUSTIFIABLE USE OF FORCE
    776.032 Immunity from criminal prosecution and civil action for justifiable use of force.
    (1) A person who uses force as permitted in s. 776.012, s. 776.013, or s. 776.031 is justified in using such force and is immune from criminal prosecution and civil action for the use of such force, unless the person against whom force was used is a law enforcement officer, as defined in s. 943.10(14), who was acting in the performance of his or her official duties and the officer identified himself or herself in accordance with any applicable law or the person using force knew or reasonably should have known that the person was a law enforcement officer. As used in this subsection, the term “criminal prosecution” includes arresting, detaining in custody, and charging or prosecuting the defendant.
    (2) A law enforcement agency may use standard procedures for investigating the use of force as described in subsection (1), but the agency may not arrest the person for using force unless it determines that there is probable cause that the force that was used was unlawful.
    (3) The court shall award reasonable attorney’s fees, court costs, compensation for loss of income, and all expenses incurred by the defendant in defense of any civil action brought by a plaintiff if the court finds that the defendant is immune from prosecution as provided in subsection (1).

      1. I have never liked this practice of trying defendants in several different courts (state, civil, federal) as The State strives for a jury that will get the right answer, though I am of course aware of the legal distinctions. It smacks of double/multiple jeopardy. I could see the point back when local juries in the south would not convict murderers and church-bombers, but as applied since, it seems inappropriate to the spirit that is supposed to characterize our system of justice.

        I obviously haven’t thought it through, but I have daydreamed about a system where all claims and charges relative to an incident or event would need to be presented at the same time. Perhaps that would require three separate juries and six separate legal teams in the same courtroom, but it just seems like all the facts to be presented in one case should be laid out in one trial.

        Just some idle fantasy. . .

  4. He’s been silent because he’s been involved in the case.

    I found it interesting that he was pretty much silent on the case at MAG-40 a couple weeks ago, since the Zimmerman/Martin incident is practically a real-life advertisement for classes from Mas and/or Southnarc.

    I surmised the reason, but have been keeping my cakehole shut about my suppositions. I’m moderately tickled that my guess was correct.

  5. i definitely don’t think this case will aid in the cause of normalizing concealed carry – if anything, the pro-carry folks who flocked to defend Zimmerman have put themselves in bed with some dumbass who provoked a confrontation killed a minor. anti-carry advocates will be able to point to an episode of injustice and say “see! this is why we shouldn’t have concealed carry!”

    Plus, the gun rights story on this isn’t over, as someone is sure to take a shot at him sometime in the future.

    1. Then why bother having concealed carry, or allowing firearm ownership at all, if a gun is just a piece of bling that you daren’t use regardless of the provocation.

      1. As a rule of thumb, I am much more polite, well-behaved, and non-confrontational when I’m carrying, then when I’m not. I don’t want to create the thinnest pretext of a situation that could escalate to shooting. For those who enumerate rules, I think that is among someone’s rules for carrying, but I’ve just called it common sense for the past 50 years or so. (During which I have carried off and on, with and without State blessing.)

        Zimmerman violated that rule. He went looking for trouble when there was no need for him to intercede in what he observed. Today we are all worse off for it.

        1. Andy B., you are speculating. To date, there’s no proof he was seeking confrontation. (Yes, there’s no proof he wasn’t — hell, there’s no proof, and sufficient time, that Zimmerman and Martin didn’t struggle briefly, then determined in the best bad-movie tradition that one of them had to die and matched pennies to find out who it would be. Pretty unlikely, though.) We don’t know. Neither does the Court. And when guilt cannot be proven beyond reasonable doubt, when the glove doesn’t fit, the American justice system errs on the side of not punishing the innocent. “Better ten guilty men go free than one innocent is punished.”

          Feel free to assume the guy is a stone killer if that makes you happy. But consider, just for a minute, that nobody here actually *knows.*

          1. I’m reluctant to reply, because we could continue to plow this same ground forever, but we DO know that 911 asked Z if he was following the guy, Z said yes, and 911 said there was no need to do that. Unless you will maintain that at that point M could have come and pulled Z out of his truck — contradicted as I understand it by the 911 recording of the truck door opening and closing, but without additional disturbance — it means Z left a secure position after he had interceded sufficiently to prevent a crime from being committed, had one been in the works. He increased his own danger and increased the probability of an incident, for no rational reason.

            Allow me to reiterate that I would have found as the jury did. But as I’ve heard more than one commentator say in the past couple days, you can be solidly behind what the jury found on legal grounds, while still believing that Z was responsible for the incident and got away with something. He made a fundamental “carry” error, and got away with it.

            1. So he was following the guy? Because he didn’t want to lose him, so that the cops could get him? What kind of world do we live in where we are scared to help out our neighbors. I’ve never gotten that argument.

              1. Also, Zimmerman only got out of teh truck in the first place to answer the dispatcher’s qwuestions as to where Martin had gone and what he was doing at that moment. . . after Zimmerman had lost sight of him because he ran away. You can hear it on the dispatch tape, including the “door open” chime of truck.

            2. Um, the confrontation occurred while Zimmerman was getting closer to his truck after being told he didn’t need to follow the subject.

              Meanwhile, Martin, who had already broken contact and gotten away cleanly (as testified by the dispatch tape AND the prosecution star witness), subsequently doubled back to confront Zimmerman, when he would have been home, inside the house that he was headed for, behind a closed door had he wanted to.

              By his own actions after breaking contact, martin established he was not in fear for his life.

              The problem with the whole “Dude with a gun stalked an unarmed kid” schtick is that we factually know that immediately subsequent to the actual confrontation, it was the other way around.

              Which of course makes sense when you look at the totality of the documented evidence and the backstory of both participants which never got used in court. Martin idolized and affected a tough guy attitude, one where doubling back to beat up the short fat “crazy ass craker” would have fit right in, esp[ecially to impress the female he was on the phone with when he decided to do so.

  6. “I’m not your sheepdog. If it’s not my ass on the line, I’m not getting involved.”

    There’s a quote out there by a firearms instructor, might be Clint Smith, that I now can’t find that basically said that people have a choice to carry a firearm. If you see somebody being attacked and not fighting back, then obviously they made their choice and what gives you the right to unmake it?

    1. The unfortunate thing is, I don’t honestly believe passing by someone being attacked is the right thing to do. Nor do I think it’s right for people to ignore their community and so completely mind their own business that they are willing to overlook crime, even petty crime.

      But doing that is wrong is what society demands. That’s the lesson of the Zimmerman case. Shut up. Mind your own business. Don’t snitch. Look the other way.

      1. Yeah, it is. But “right” doesn’t always equal “legal”.

        That goes for cops too. If I see a cop being attacked I will call 911 and report it. But no way am I going to help and risk being Zimmermanned.

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