ABC’s Dan Abrmas explains why George Zimmerman is unlikely to be convicted of murder or manslaughter:
As a legal matter, even if jurors find parts of Zimmerman’s story fishy, that is not enough to convict. Even if they believe that Zimmerman initiated the altercation, and that his injuries were relatively minor, that too would be insufficient evidence to convict. Prosecutors have to effectively disprove self defense beyond a reasonable doubt. So what exactly would that mean based on the facts as we know them?
[…]
While prosecutors argue that Zimmerman’s statements to the 911 operator about the “f—— punks” always “getting away,” shows ill will, most legal analysts felt from the beginning that with a fight, a murder charge was overreaching.
Manslaughter is far more likely to create debate in that jury room (there could also be even lesser crimes they consider, where they could find him guilty of something).
Zimmerman’s injuries alone — his broken nose and cuts on the back of his head — are objective evidence to support his account that he shot Martin as he was being pummeled.
Just as important is the testimony of neighbor John Good, who lived directly in front of the location where Martin was shot. He very precisely (but reluctantly) testified that he saw the lighter skinned man in the red jacket on the bottom of the scuffle with the darker skinned man with the darker clothing on the top in a “mixed martial arts position.” He said he now believes that Trayvon Martin was on top of Zimmerman.
To be honest I was a bit surprised when the judge didn’t dismiss the case after the prosecution rested. If the published reports are to be believed, it certainly does not look to me as though the prosecution had made its prima facie case and, under the circumstances, the judge really should have dismissed. I can’t help but wonder if she decided to pass the buck.
At the very least there certainly seems to be reasonable doubt which means acquittal. Assuming, again, that the published reports have represented the proceedings fairly, conviction would require a sort of reverse jury nullification in which the jury convicts regardless of the evidence.
Andrew Branca has compiled a detailed legal argument supporting the position I suggested above, that Zimmerman should have been acquitted when the prosecution rested:
Immediately following the close of the State’s case on Friday, Mark O’Mara, the lawyer leading George Zimmerman’s defense team, stood before Judge Nelson and made his oral motion for a judgment of acquittal for his client (a parallel written motion was also submitted to the Court).
The motion was well-reasoned, and strongly founded on Florida’s case law. It was also doomed to fail before a Judge who has consistently denied reasonable defense motions out of hand, while rubber-stamping motions by the State that bear not the slightest relevancy to the facts of this case.
Details matter in the law, and in any case the quick-and-short reporting of Nelsons denial of the motion for a judgment of acquittal has already been widely reported (by us, among others). Here, we take a different approach, delving into the details of O’Mara’s motion. Part of this detail includes the full-length decisions of almost every court case cited by O’Mara in support of his motion.
Sounds to me like a good argument for legal error on appeal. It also sounds like a violation of Canon 3 of the Florida Code of Judicial Conduct.
Those types of motions are rarely granted, so I wasn’t surprised; but I was somewhat surprised that the judge didn’t take the motion under advisement to think about it. The State’s theory is somewhat difficult to keep straight and it necessarily depends on circumstantial evidence, but it really boils down to an admitted killing plus obscenities on a tape to the authorities prior to the killing. Whether or not those statements amount to a depraved mind, might be for the jury to determine. It does appear though that the State keeps replaying that recording and must be reducing its shock value, if it ever had any.
I believe a similar motion can be made after the close of all evidence, and also after the jury returns a verdict of guilty. I doubt those motions would be granted either.
I’ve followed the trial and witness testimony at TalkLeft’s Zimmerman forum and while they hand a bit to the left, the volunteers are detailed and analytic. I don’t get the sense that the mainstream media understood how poorly the trial was going, perhaps they were on vacation or perhaps they assumed the prosecution was building towards something.
And the coverage, particularly from the right, seems to have completely missed that the girl on the telephone with Martin did not testify that Martin used a racial epithet to describe Zimmerman, he used a homosexual slur. The irony here is that it would appear Martin misidentified Zimmerman as a dangerous pervert, followed him to confront him, when he could have just as easily gotten home to safety, but he was a community-minded busy body. Which is basically the accusation against Zimmerman as well.
Between being stuck in various planes, cars and hotels with little entertainment I’ve ended up hearing more than I wanted to. I tend to defer to the jury since they are presumably seeing more than I am. That said, I don’t see a case I’d vote to convict on.
Racial/gender-orientation epithets might be too much for conventional media, here is the question:
Do people know, or is their preferred media source reporting, that the police tested Zimmerman’s story by orchestrating a lie that someone had come forward with a videotape of the altercation, and Zimmerman responded “Thank God, I hoped someone had.” Or that the officer in charge of the investigation testified that either Zimmerman was telling the truth at that point or was a pathological liar, and he believe that Z. was telling the truth?
I don’t think any of that has appeared in my local paper’s AP reporting, probably because it was July and at the end of the day.
I certainly hadn’t heard that, PD. I’m being driven to the conclusion that this is an overly-zealous, politically-motivated prosecution.
That the chief investigator thought Zimmerman was telling the truth was the last testimony of that day. Perhaps the journalist had already turned in their stories and headed for the beach. Also interesting that the first thing next morning, the State moved to strike that last opinion (I thought Z. was telling the truth), which was granted, the judge then directed the testimony to be read or replayed and then she instructed the jury to disregard it. (I believe the ruling was that the ultimate opinion about Z’s credibility is for the jury to decide and witnesses cannot address it directly) Still, Zimmerman’s statement (“Thank god . . .”) is still in evidence and the jury heard what it heard.
The chief investigator was transferred out of investigation to patrol. The Police Chief yesterday testified that certain aspects of the investigation (voice recognition) were taken over by the City Manager and he was excluded. The City Manager played tapes of the scream before the entire family in the mayor’s office, something the Police Chief testified was not best practices since their opinions would influence each other.