The Back Alley Archives

The morning's witness (Dennis Root)...I don't know how in the hell any of that testimony was admissible...but, it helped the defense.

http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/10/doj-p ... -protests/

I'm not surprised.

Me neither.

Closing arguments today. I expect the judge to give a manslaughter instruction.

It's too bad the jury won't know that the punishment for manslaughter of a minor is pretty severe - if I remember right, it's around 30 years mandatory. They might think they're avoiding a race riot by convicting him, while at the same time thinking the sentence won't be that bad.

If this plays out the way they say it's scripted in this post, you heard it here first...from me. Interesting to see if this comes to play...

http://theconservativetreehouse.com/201 ... more-65925

As a prosecutor, if you find yourself spending your first closing NOT talking about how the facts fit the elements and instead talking about "what if, this" "could have happened this way", "we don't know if", etc. - you have already lost. If you are trying to evoke emotion/bias (as BDLR SHAMELESSLY did today), rather than driving home the facts of the case, you have already lost.

On the emotion/bias note, BDLR should be ashamed of himself for that part of his closing today. Throwing around the skittles claiming that was TM's weapon, calling him the "dead innocent boy" at every passing moment, and worst of all, this quote:

I had a dream today that the witness would not be judged by the color of her personality, but by the content of her testimony.

Are you freaking kidding me???

Go to hell BDLR. Before that, I had placed the blame solely on Angela Corey for this circus, now, clearly, BDLR is feeding this machine as well.

I half-expect Mark O'Mara to just stand up for his closing and say "really?"

O'Mara: "You should tell the State they should not EVER bring a case like this again."

Bingo.

Finally, jury's got it. I'm thinking that a long deliberation (i.e., over the weekend) is bad for Zimmerman. Seems like a slam-dunk not guilty to me; they might take a couple of hours to get around to it, though, just to make it feel like they didn't rush to judgment.

[quote=DocZaius]Finally, jury's got it. I'm thinking that a long deliberation (i.e., over the weekend) is bad for Zimmerman. Seems like a slam-dunk not guilty to me; they might take a couple of hours to get around to it, though, just to make it feel like they didn't rush to judgment.[/QUOTE]

Agreed.

Verdict today (and somewhat quickly) for the following reasons, IMO:

1) Sequestered for a month from their friends and families.

2) Only six people

3) Slam dunk case for defense


There are however 27 pages of Jury Instructions and numerous exhibits...they'll go through it all once just to make sure - but, if I were Zimmerman, I would be as confident as one could be in such a circumstance.

I would really be pissed if I was on this jury. I mean honestly, not only should they not have to be there for this type of case, but in the end everyone is punting it to them.

Funny...just read this in a post on FB:

I know exactly what happened that night because I have been paying attention to the liberal media! 9-year old Trayvon Martin was on his way home from choir practice and delivering hot meals to the elderly.
He stopped to hold umbrellas for a Girl Scout Troop which was raising money for quadriplegic AIDS victims in Africa. After he helped the Girl Scouts, he then delivered 10 Golden Retriever puppies which were breach birth.
That's when George Zimmerman pulled up in his Hummer, on his way home from a White Hispanic KKK meeting. High on meth and shouting racist slogans, GZ saw TM and opened up with his twin roof-mounted 50 caliber machine guns.
TM saved all the Girl Scouts and then went back to save the Golden Retriever puppies.GZ ran out of ammunition so he unholstered two Desert Eagle .44 magnum pistols and started firing at the puppies and TM.That's when TM was hit in the back by 32 rounds of hollow-point, teflon-coated & explosive ammunition.
GZ then called his cop buddies who were at the KKK rally. They cleaned up the site and made the Girl Scouts and Golden Retrievers "disappear" in the Everglades so there would be no witnesses. They washed the blood from GZ's fangs after he gnawed on TM's still beating heart. And people want to let this man go free, Geeeezzzz.

Finally. NOT GUILTY.

Hope no one makes good on the threat of riots.

Still able to have faith in the system

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk 2

[quote=DocZaius]Finally. NOT GUILTY.

Hope no one makes good on the threat of riots.[/QUOTE]

Well my husband has been doing a lot of collecting and selling and our front porch is full of stuff I wouldn't mind if they came and looted. But seriously, I do have a few new firearms I wouldn't mind trying out either.

I think it is really ignorant to have believed that people would riot over this decision. How many times have people rioted over decisions like this? Does that mean the police shouldn't of had a plan of just in case, no, that is their job, but to truly believe it was going to happen is really selling people short IMO.

For the attorneys, is there a winnable civil case here? Obviously it was a stretch of a criminal case but I wonder if there could be a civil case against Zimmerman being that Zimmerman was told not to follow Martin and did so, possibly causing the chain of events to unfold. Just a thought.

Well the threshhold for a civil suit is much lower. I have to look at the statute again but there is some discussion that a criminal verdict of not guilty, based on self-defense might make Zimmerman immune from a civil suit.

I am not too clear on that though.

Ordinarily the cost of going after Zimmerman (who has nothing to recover against) would be too much to make suit practical, but the Martin family already got a big settlement (reportedly over $1 million) from the condo association. So they have the funds to finance it.

Also, the discovery rules in civil cases are much looser. All the stuff about the father's gang ties, mom not raising Martin and Martin's disciplinary history, drug use, etc. will come out.

The only asset Zimmerman may have after all is said and done will be the rights to his story. I am not hip to all the bankruptcy rules so I don't kniw if he can declare bankruptcy in the wake od an adverse civil judgment and then sell his story. There was some discussion about that with Casey Anthony's bankruptcy but I don't know what the resolution was.

Some of my friends that are liberals are pissing me the hell off. People are talking like this was a stand your ground defense and it wasn't. Had nothing to do with it. The amount of ignorance in our society (from both sides of the political spectrum and some nut-jobs in the middle) is really confounding to me at times.

Todd, I agree. I have seen ignorance on both sides of this issue too. But facts are facts. And I think in the trial it was proved that Zimmerman DID NOT follow Trayvon at all. He was trying to keep him in sight for the police arrival, but he did NOT follow him at all.

And I agree that a Civil Suit may be regretted if pursued. There is SO much information about Trayvon that was not permitted in the trial (and some of which should have been if not for the State's misconduct IMO) that really leads one to understand that the only thing that could have avoided this tragedy is if Trayvon had just gone home and wasn't on his way to becoming another statistic.

[quote=TheTodd]I think it is really ignorant to have believed that people would riot over this decision. How many times have people rioted over decisions like this? Does that mean the police shouldn't of had a plan of just in case, no, that is their job, but to truly believe it was going to happen is really selling people short IMO.

For the attorneys, is there a winnable civil case here? Obviously it was a stretch of a criminal case but I wonder if there could be a civil case against Zimmerman being that Zimmerman was told not to follow Martin and did so, possibly causing the chain of events to unfold. Just a thought.[/QUOTE]

I think the fact that it was pretty clear very early on that the State had a terrible case, that there was time to come to terms with the NG verdict. Had it been a close call, there may have been more raw emotion on display that could've turned into rioting. It would only have taken one or two idiots to start off the mob mentality.

The Stand Your Ground law does provide immunity from a civil suit, but I'm not sure if the way the defense handled the case has given him that immunity...at least not yet. I will bet every penny I have, though, that the suit will at least be filed.

I can only assume that Zimmerman will go forward with his suit against NBC...and he should win a LARGE settlement.

Here is one more thing to consider on this "he followed Martin when told not to" bit that is repeated ad nauseam, the evidence presented at trial was that the dispatcher continued to ask "what is he doing now?" - most people would assume that to mean - keep him in sight to give updates. Finally, at some point the dispatcher asks "are you following him?" to which, Zimmerman said, "yes". At this point the dispatcher says, "we don't need you to do that" - Zimmerman replied, "Ok"...

I will ask the same question O'Mara asked in his closing argument...Where is a SINGLE piece of evidence or testimony that suggests that after that point Zimmerman in any way continued to "follow" Martin?

I think he's going to have to have a separate hearing in any civil suit to handle the immunity issue.

You know, after this whole thing is said and done, wouldn't it be the height of irony to learn that Trayvon Martin was actually casing houses?

After all, he had previously been caught in possession of jewelry that had been stolen from a house half a mile from his school. He was never charged with the crime, however, supposedly because of a Miami-Dade School District policy of not arresting student-criminals in order to reduce the crime statistics.

Don't get me wrong - I'm just speculating here. There's no evidence that Martin was actually breaking into houses in Zimmerman's neighborhood, but the allegation is a pretty big coincidence, and you can bet it will be the subject of discovery in any civil suit against Zimmerman.