George Zimmerman found Not Guilty.

No it does not, the Police can choose if a case should be tried or not, they can and do let people go all the time without charges after said people have killed other people. I believe if someone is killed and the killer claims self defense, no matter the circumstances a trial needs to be held to verify that the self defense was valid. I don't care if 10 witnesses and video tape evidence shows a raving lunatic welding a weapon charging the suspect that then shots the lunatic dead, a trial needs to be held.

That list was nice, I particularly find it funny death by fireworks made it on the list at one in every 0.65 million deaths. Does that mean we should outlaw fireworks, no, but we could reduce death and injuries by fireworks by requiring that only say adults can by them and limit their explosive potential, even though these deaths are truly minuscule I see no reason why practical safety measure should be ignore. Likewise with guns as 9th most common cause of death and *only* killing one out of every 321 Americans I see no reason why we can't have more gun restriction and safety laws. We put seat belts in cars, require car insurance, car inspection, etc, etc and it kills people 3-4 times more then guns, meaning it would be prudent to put some restrictions on guns.

 

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The police do not make that determination. Not anyplace I am aware of anyway.

 

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They did in the Zimmerman case. The police did not charge him at first and they released him without any trial - or indeed any legal action at all. It was almost a month before prosecutors announced they'd be looking into charges, due primarily to public pressure.

 

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He was still arrested, put in handcuffs and investigated. He was charged later on, thats part of an investigation. My point was that it is not nearly as simple as ElectricFetus is making it appear. As to your point about being released without any trial, obviously it was not over that night. People are often released before being tried, happens all the time. They have to stick around for the trial though.

 

No, he was not arrested. He was handcuffed and taken to the station where they took his statement, took pictures etc. The police decided to not charge him and he was released. Had their not been a media stink he would have remained free to this day.

He was not charged with anything until over a month later. He did not have to post bail. No judge told him to stick around. He was 100% free to go and would have remained so if not for the media ruckus that followed. That was sort of the point of all the outrage; he was not even investigated.

In other words, if someone else shoots someone, the police may well take him down to the station, ask him a few questions, and then decide to release him without any further investigation. Which is what EF said.

 

Where do people come up with statements like this?
(Especially you billvon, you usually don't make mistakes like this)

From the Huffington Post...

George Zimmerman Arrested: How Newspaper Front Pages Covered Story (PHOTOS)
Posted: 04/12/2012 11:09 am Updated: 04/12/2012 11:24 am

The Trayvon Martin case reached a critical turning point on Wednesday when George Zimmerman was arrested and charged for murder.

Zimmerman shot Martin, an unarmed seventeen-year old, dead in late February. Martin's death and the controversial police handling of the case have sparked national outrage and calls for his arrest. The tragedy has become a national story, and continues to dominate the headlines as new developments emerge.

After spending weeks in hiding, Zimmerman was charged with second degree murder on Wednesday. He is now in police custody as he awaits a trial.

Below, see how newspapers covered the news of Zimmerman's arrest.​

Perhaps. in any event he was arrested after said media stink.

True enough.

The Daily Beast

Special prosecutor Angela Corey said George Zimmerman was not charged “in response to public demand.” But the arrest in Trayvon Martin’s killing took 46 days—and only came after a public uproar, says Jelani Cobb.​

Until he was arrested. Isn't that the way it should be?
Judge sets George Zimmerman bail at $1 million - USA Today

Of course he was "investigated". Unless you are using some bizarre definition of that word...

And this is the crux of the matter. This, IMHO, is where the system needs reform. You should not be able to go about shooting people without a mandatory formal investigation with some burden of proof being placed on the shooter to vindicate himself and his actions. We take gun violence far too lightly and recent legislative inaction on gun control illustrates this point quite well.

 

He was not arrested AT THE TIME, when he shot Martin. He was arrested and charged LATER. The cops did NOT charge him with anything. Later, after a public uproar, a prosecutor did.

The cops made the initial decision.

 

Yes they do, here in the USA. Stop denying reality, the police decide whom they will arrest!

 

Zimmerman juror is now writing a book and will profit from her role and decision in this case. Well that is certainly free market capitalism. However it does bring into question the legitimacy of the verdict and this jury. Were there ulterior factors and motives influencing this jury and their decision? Was their decision influenced by a book deal?

http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/15/justice/zimmerman-juror-book/index.html

 

I think I differ on the robber: if someone is burglarizing my home, I think I should have the legal right to set him on fire and piss on him to put him out.

I see your intent though, obviously: I don't know where I stand in this case. Zimmerman followed Martin, but was it chasing, stalking, or following? Zimmerman was, admittedly, the neighborhood 'security representative', whatever that is. He exceeded his mandate when he ignored the 911 operator - manslaughter could follow from that, certainly. He didn't need to confront him if he thought Martin was a thief.

But then again, if he only questioned Martin, that doesn't mean Martin can pummel him. Would that turn the process of intent on its head? Zimmerman might have been confrontational, but I don't think you can hit him for that. You can yell back, for sure. I'm at a loss to establish who was in the wrong and when. It seems a lot like two people that were on a collision course, both for reasons of indignation.

 

Nothing New, Ready for Redux

An interesting question; it's also worth noting that Martin Literary Agency. Sharlene Martin is the agent who handled O.J. Simpson's If I Did It.

This whole case simply reflects the low mores of America's Wang the Sunshine State. The entire point of SYG laws is to make it easier to shoot another human being. And as we saw in Texas a couple years ago with Joe Horn, no jury in these messed-up states is going to convict someone of a crime they want to commit.

This is Flordia. The same state where they acquit rapists because of a woman's clothing. Or a judge believes a teenage girl is safer in the custody of a convicted murderer and child molester than anywhere near her lesbian mother.

There's nothing new under the wang sun in Florida. The law and system both worked exactly how they are supposed to in Florida.

Bottom line: Stay the hell out of Florida.

Next up: Can you confront someone and then shoot them to death, drive home, call for a pizza, never call the police, and then lie in order to invoke SYG, and still be acquitted?

Stay tuned. Michael Dunn will soon answer a grand jury indictment with the excuse was that he just didn't think before shooting; whose fiancée, also present at the time of the shooting, didn't think it worth calling the police; who apparently had time while someone was aiming a fictitious shotgun at him to get into his car, open the glove box, retrieve the gun, chamber a round, get out of his car, and start shooting.

Will a Florida jury convict a man of murder for accosting someone, pretending to be scared for his life, and then recklessly shooting eight rounds at the fleeing victims?

And isn't that an astounding question?

 

An even more astounding question (at least to me) is how firing a warning shot can land someone twenty years in prison here in the wang of the US:

TAMPA, Fla. -- Marissa Alexander had never been arrested before she fired a bullet at a wall one day in 2010 to scare off her husband when she felt he was threatening her. Nobody got hurt, but this month a northeast Florida judge was bound by state law to sentence her to 20 years in prison.

Alexander, a 31-year-old mother of a toddler and 11-year-old twins, knew it was coming. She had claimed self-defense, tried to invoke Florida's "stand your ground" law and rejected plea deals that could have gotten her a much shorter sentence. A jury found her guilty as charged: aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Because she fired a gun while committing a felony, Florida's mandatory-minimum gun law dictated the 20-year sentence.

Her case in Jacksonville has drawn a fresh round of criticism aimed at mandatory-minimum sentencing laws. The local NAACP chapter and the district's African-American congresswoman say blacks more often are incarcerated for long periods because of overzealous prosecutors and judges bound by the wrong-headed statute. Alexander is black.

It also has added fuel to the controversy over Florida's "stand your ground" law, which the judge would not allow Alexander to invoke. State Attorney Angela Corey, who also is overseeing the prosecution of shooter George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin case, stands by the handling of Alexander's case. Corey says she believes Alexander aimed the gun at the man and his two sons, and the bullet she fired could have ricocheted and hit any of them.

At the May 11 sentencing, Alexander's relatives begged Circuit Judge James Daniel for leniency but he said the decision was "out of my hands."

"The Legislature has not given me the discretion to do what the family and many others have asked me to do," he said.

The state's "10-20-life" law was implemented in 1999 and credited with helping to lower the violent crime rate. Anyone who shows a gun in the commission of certain felonies gets an automatic 10 years in prison. Fire the gun, and it's an automatic 20 years. Shoot and wound someone, and it's 25 years to life.​

Huffington Post

Talk about arbitrary and capricious. Oh wait... You say Marissa Alexander is black? OK, that's different, now I understand.

 

Technically, can I walk into a bar in Florida, act like a jackass and start a fight, then shoot the guy when he's about to beat me senseless? What if I don't have a gun, just a handy pocket knife, is stabbing ok too? Would I be able to get off with a mere misdemeanor just for starting the fight?

Video surveillance would have settled this issue in minutes, but I'm guessing the citizenry doesn't want their government watching them visit stripclubs, even though half the government's employees are probably visiting them anyway.

 

I'm not a Christian but I do believe in reform over punishment. A burglar does no deserve to be burned alive and pissed on, no more then a teenage mail box batter deserves to be held at gun point by a farmer and forced to sodomized his co-criminal while the farm laughs with glee. Despite how much these would satisfy your desire for vengeance, especially how satisfying the latter case is, trust me, they are not appropriate punishments nor do they change the criminal into a better person, except the latter case perhaps. A robber should be arrested, ask why he robs and then placed though forced labour program and forced training so that he can enter the workforce upon release and never needs to rob again, or if he robs to pay for drugs should be put in rehab ,with forced labor, etc, etc, always force labor, prisoners must not be left idle, that a waste of man power, rather work them like slaves, make them useful and pay for all the cost of imprisoning them and training and educating them and rehabilitating them into better people with tortuous labour.

Zimmerman should not have followed, stalked or confronted, he should have called the police and left it to them. Zimmerman instigated it to start and that to me makes him guilty, end of story. A neighborhood watch is not a security force they should not chase down suspects, they should "watch" and report.

 

The (Florida) System Works

Well, right. It's Florida.

Actually, the interesting thing about it is that states like Florida, Texas, Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, and the Carolinas, among others, remind me that I'm just not a good capitalist. What does that have to do with anything? Well, as jurisdictions compete for businesses to open within their borders, offering all manner of financial incentives, I look at it in other terms. That is, had I the money to start a business, I would not start it in one of these jurisdictions where the locals are downright crazy, cruel, and dangerous. (Look at Boeing, who opened in South Carolina a couple years ago; all the people I know who work in Seattle and Everett are ready to beat the SC operation in to the ground. Money talks, to be certain, but it sure as hell ain't everything. Boeing got exactly what they deserved when they leapt down the Carolina rabbit hole.) After all, no city or town can offer enough tax breaks to make up for such low intellectual and moral quality so pervasive among their people.

But, yes, I would go so far as to suggest that the SYG law and Florida's judicial system worked exactly as they were supposed to.

 

Without getting into the substance of your second suggestion, I'll meet you halfway: I'll set him on fire and not piss on him. Fair?

 

Where I live, if some random guy I've never seen follows me down the street and blocks the sidewalk on me in the middle of the night, prevents me from walking away, I can hit him with everything I've got in self defense. What Zimmerman did is assault, in Minnesota.

That was the part that has been puzzling me: why is everyone on TV talking about Zimmerman's self defense, after he assaulted someone and then shot them as they fought back?

 

The real racists seem to be those who are prejudice and ignorant of the verdict. Those that chose to ignore the facts, yet want to speculate the outcome of a case that doesn't fit their own views, beliefs or agendas.

This trail shouldn't have gotten nation wide or even world coverage to begin with. Yet people and the media choose to ignore stories like this. http://www.westernjournalism.com/black-teens-kill-white-baby-media-silent/

 

No I see no reason to maim him period, guarantees he will be a drain on society.

 

In such a case, charges are not brought by police, they are brought by prosecutors.

Not sure what you think the police, detectives and prosecutors did if not "looking into charges" during that time.

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