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The Zimmerman trial
My friend Don Kates emails that it is an unusual prosection
"a) the defendant is clearly innocent;
b) the prosecutors know it -- but for wholly political reasoms have been ordered to prosecute [or should I say persecute?] him;
c) the prosecutors are simply going thru the motions -- presenting witness after witness whose evidence confirmis that GZ was feloniously attacked and was simply defending himself;
When a prosecutor has to move to strike their own LEO's testimony, saying that he found Zimmerman credible, that tells you all you need to know.
And consider, so far as I know, they haven't called the Medical Examiner who did the autopsy (they did call one to opine that Zimmerman's injuries didn't prove his head was being banged on concrete). All the issues about who was on top should easily be settled by the ME. If Martin was on top the shot would have ranged upward through his body. If Zimmerman was on top, the bullet would probably have passed through at right angles.
d) the prosecution has NO witnesses who have facts to support the prosecution theory of the crime.
Don also points out: "ndicative of the media's endless cacophony of bias and inaccuracy is the result of a voice stress (lie detector) test of GZ: It showed "no deception." Now I have no idea what, if any, credibility should be given such testing. The truth that deserves emphasis here is this: the media
sued to force the police to reveal the test results but when it found that the confidential report had concluded "no deception," this apparently disappointing result was barely mentioned or ignored
completely! "
Here's a reference to the test.
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Sean Hannity found a former lady prosecutor who says that even if Trayvon threw the first punch and even if Trayvon was hitting Zimmerman's head on the concrete, Zimmerman is still guilty of manslaughter because he scared Trayvon by following him, and a couple small scratches on the back of the head aren't indicative of a life threatening fight. She apparently thinks Zimmerman has lied about a few things and thus I guess she doesn't believe Trayvon actually threatened to kill Zimmerman or went for his gun. Lets hope the jury isn't made up of ladies like that.
I'm suspicious that she might be playing devils advocate, but actually I think it is probably her true opinion. She may have formed her opinion back when there was much less accurate information about the case available, and is too stubborn to admit her initial impressions were wrong.
My dad is pro gun but is against Zimmerman because he thinks it is sort of like a police state thing to have someone follow you and watch you just because you're a stranger wandering around in the rain oddly after several burglaries.
On the persecution front, the prosecution did manage to put his full SSN, date of birth, etc. on TV.
A comment somewhere on Legal Insurrection remarked that the effort to keep the color originals of key photo evidence away from the defense, giving them only lower-quality black and white images, doesn't look like just going through the motions. That kind of playing fast and loose with police evidence may be much more routine in practice than it should be, but it's still formally a serious violation of code of conduct for lawyers, right? Why court that kind of trouble in a highly visible case except if highly motivated to convict? (Is it so routine that concealing such evidence *is* going through the motions?)
IANAL, but
If the prosecutors (or persecutors?) were going to throw the trial, why were they acting so unethically about discovery?
Examples include lying about W#8 (age, relationship w/ TM, and phony hospitalization) and delaying the turnover of the discovery material? They turned over the complete cell phone records only AFTER the prosecutors IT person squealed that they were hiding the records. The IT person had to hire a lawyer to blow the whistle on the failure of the state to deliver it's discovery information to Zimmerman's defense team.
I am not sure if they are unethical, or corrupt, or incompetent. After seeing their trial performance, it may be all three, along with a streak of arrogance.
RD,
Well, for good or bad, I am a lawyer, although I don't play one on TV.
The lawyer who is the representative of the state, at least in California, has an obligation to turn over to the defense, all potentially exculpatory evidence. It's part of his extra duty as a District Attorney to go for justice, not just favorable results.
This holding out is a stunt you'd expect from "civil" litigators, and I'd expect a couple motions to compel by now, with sanctions awarded along with costs of bringing the motion.
I'd like to know the opinions here on two things. 1. The prosecutor deliberately lying in his closing statement about what Zimmerman said to the witness about "Tell my wife I shot him" the prosecutor said in closing that Zimmerman said "Tell my wife I killed him".
2. The judge repeatedly asking Zimmerman if he was going to testify over the objections of his council.
It does not matter if the defendant is innocent and the persecutors know it.
The 0bama administration, thanks to the NSA, can get enough embarrassing information on the judge and jurors to influence their decisions.
And of course, a few hours after I wrote that, the jury finds him not guilty.
It's obviously a plot by 0bama to discredit me.
Can the defense question the prosecutor or investigators about why it took 44 days to arrest Zimmerman? That would seem to indicate that the police found his story very credible and that the trial is just a slow motion lynching.