{"id":8644,"date":"2013-07-14T16:47:46","date_gmt":"2013-07-14T16:47:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/07\/14\/on-the-zimmerman-acquittal\/"},"modified":"2013-07-14T16:47:46","modified_gmt":"2013-07-14T16:47:46","slug":"on-the-zimmerman-acquittal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/07\/14\/on-the-zimmerman-acquittal\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Zimmerman Acquittal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">A. W. e-mails and I comment:<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">I know you&#39;ve been following this case. I must say I&#39;m impressed by the outcome. Even though I believed that Z&#39;s account of the events was consistent and that the prosecution&#39;s case was incredibly weak, I was expecting the all-female jury to cave in to the pressure and declare him guilty or, at least, to come back with a lesser charge.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #6000bf; font-family: georgia,palatino;\">MavPhil:&#0160; That&#39;s&#0160; what I was expecting: a cave-in by the female jurors and a manslaughter conviction.&#0160; So I was extremely pleased that justice was done.&#0160;&#0160; The state had no case whatsoever as became very clear early on from the testimony of the state&#39;s own witnesses.&#0160; Objectively speaking, it was all over after John Good&#39;s cross-examination by the magnificent Mark O&#39;Mara.&#0160; He impressed the hell out of me: calm, clear, respectful, logical, thorough, low-keyed, bluster-free.&#0160; A patient, relentless,&#0160;digger for the truth.&#0160; Good was impressive as well. That segment of the trial made me very proud of our system.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\"><span style=\"color: #6000bf;\">Zimmerman should not have been charged in the first place, and initially he wasn&#39;t.&#0160; It was only after the race-baiters got wind of the story that local law enforcement buckled under national pressure.&#0160; Among the race-baiters was our very own hopelessly inept president, Barack&#0160; Obama, with his irresponsible remark to the effect that if he had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin.&#0160; Here again we have Obama meddling in a local matter just as he did before about four summers ago in the <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amnation.com\/vfr\/archives\/013806.html\" target=\"_self\"><span style=\"color: #6000bf;\">Henry Gates affair<\/span><\/a><span style=\"color: #6000bf;\">.&#0160; <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #6000bf; font-family: georgia,palatino;\">So was the trial about race or not?&#0160; <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #6000bf; font-family: georgia,palatino;\"><em>Objectively<\/em>, &#0160;the case had nothing to do with race.&#0160; Objectively, the case was about the use of deadly force to repel an attack of deadly force.&#0160; A very fit young man physically assaults an obese, out-of-shape older man.&#0160; The older guy ends up on the ground with the younger guy on top of him doing the &#39;pound and ground,&#39; slamming the older man&#39;s head into the pavement and telling him that tonight&#0160;he will die.&#0160; Now is it legally permissible to use deadly force in a situation like this, a situation in which one is about to be killed or suffer grave bodily harm?&#0160; Yes, the law allows the use of deadly force in such a situation. Note that we are not talking about morality here, but about <em>legality<\/em>.&#0160; Whatever one&#39;s moral intuitions or moral theories, there is a hard fact about what the law permits, and that is not in dispute.&#0160; The only question is whether on that particular evening George Zimmerman was indeed fighting for his life.&#0160; <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #6000bf; font-family: georgia,palatino;\">The defense team made a very strong case that he was on the bottom fighting for his life against the strapping youth who&#0160;thought of him as a &#0160;&quot;creepy-ass cracker.&quot;&#0160; The defense didn&#39;t have to make that strong case; all it had to do was show that the above was a likely scenario in order to raise a reasonable doubt about Zimmerman&#39;s guilt.&#0160; In a criminal&#0160;proceeding the probative standard is set very high, and rightly so.&#0160; The accused is presumed innocent and the burden of proof rests on the prosecution to show that the accused is guilty of the crime charged <em>beyond a reasonable doubt<\/em>.&#0160; But the defense succeeded in doing both: it showed that Zimmerman &#0160;was not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and, as O&#39;Mara remarked after the trial, it proved that he was innocent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #6000bf; font-family: georgia,palatino;\">So, objectively, the case had nothing to do with race.&#0160;&#0160;The racial veneer was superadded by the race-baiters of the Left so that they could use this trial to further their own political agenda.&#0160;&#0160;Among the race-baiters are the&#0160;editors at the <em>New York Times<\/em> who decided that Zimmerman was a &#39;white Hispanic.&#39;&#0160; They would never refer to Obama as a white black even though he is half-white and half-black.&#0160; They applied the &#39;white Hispanic&#39; appellation in order to inject race into a non-racial case.&#0160; If both parties to the dispute were black or both Hispanic we wouldn&#39;t have heard about it.&#0160; Meanwhile, blacks are killing blacks in record numbers in Chicago and other places.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#0160;<\/p>\n<div><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">The Left is raging at the moment. They say young blacks aren&#39;t safe anymore. But, were they before this single incident? I haven&#39;t heard a single word about the dozens of young blacks who are murdered by other blacks every year. All I hear is a lot of moralizing about poverty, racism and gun legislation from upper-middle class people who live in 95% white communities and have never seen a gun in their lives.<\/span><\/div>\n<p>&#0160;<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">I think it&#39;s something else. Maybe it&#39;s the realization that they&#39;re not so powerful. That their enormous govt.-approved media campaign to portray this as a racially motivated murder of a kid was not enough convince a jury of six women (which, by the way, included a black hispanic lady). That they could not only notice the absence of racist armed vigilantes on the hunt and young harmless children walking home, but also act accordingly.&#0160; Maybe it&#39;s too much for them, even after six years of getting everything they wanted.<\/span><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #bf00bf; font-family: georgia,palatino;\">MavPhil:&#0160; I basically agree with you.&#0160; Let the leftist loons rage.&#0160; It is music to my ears and blog-fodder for my blog.&#0160; We conservatives are going to have a lot of fun exposing their contemptible lies and inanities.&#0160;<\/span><\/p>\n<fieldset class=\"zemanta-related\">\n<legend class=\"zemanta-related-title\">Related articles<\/legend>\n<div class=\"zemanta-article-ul zemanta-article-ul-image\" style=\"margin: 0px; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden;\">\n<div class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li-image zemanta-article-ul-li\" style=\"list-style: none; margin: 2px 10px 10px 2px; padding: 0px; width: 84px; text-align: left; font-size: 11px; vertical-align: top; float: left; display: block;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/maverick_philosopher\/2013\/07\/race-and-grievance.html\" style=\"padding: 2px; border-radius: 2px; text-decoration: none; display: block; box-shadow: 0px 0px 4px #999;\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i.zemanta.com\/184602916_80_80.jpg\" style=\"margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px currentColor; width: 80px; display: block; max-width: 100%;\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/maverick_philosopher\/2013\/07\/race-and-grievance.html\" style=\"padding: 5px 2px 0px; height: 80px; line-height: 12pt; overflow: hidden; text-decoration: none; display: block;\" target=\"_blank\">Race and Grievance<\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li-image zemanta-article-ul-li\" style=\"list-style: none; margin: 2px 10px 10px 2px; padding: 0px; width: 84px; text-align: left; font-size: 11px; vertical-align: top; float: left; display: block;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/maverick_philosopher\/2013\/07\/the-case-against-george-zimmerman.html\" style=\"padding: 2px; border-radius: 2px; text-decoration: none; display: block; box-shadow: 0px 0px 4px #999;\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i.zemanta.com\/182116276_80_80.jpg\" style=\"margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px currentColor; width: 80px; display: block; max-width: 100%;\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/maverick_philosopher\/2013\/07\/the-case-against-george-zimmerman.html\" style=\"padding: 5px 2px 0px; height: 80px; line-height: 12pt; overflow: hidden; text-decoration: none; display: block;\" target=\"_blank\">The Case Against George Zimmerman<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A. W. e-mails and I comment: I know you&#39;ve been following this case. I must say I&#39;m impressed by the outcome. Even though I believed that Z&#39;s account of the events was consistent and that the prosecution&#39;s case was incredibly weak, I was expecting the all-female jury to cave in to the pressure and declare &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/07\/14\/on-the-zimmerman-acquittal\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;On the Zimmerman Acquittal&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,32,153,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-and-punishment","category-current-affairs","category-morality-and-legality","category-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8644\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}