Judge: Zimmerman Lawyers Can't Put Trayvon Martin on Trial

[wercal]

42. Where do I start

"What I recounted REALLY happened"

Actually I didn't want to mention it before, but that is not entirely true. Your statement: "Zimmerman left his vehicle, against the instructions of 911 personnel" is not true. If you listen to the tapes, the operator asks him if he is following Martin, and tells him not to ("you don't need to do that&quot . So its not true that he was admonished from leaving the vehicle, and he violated that order. I hope we can agree on that, ok? The only open question is whether or not Zimmerman continued to pursue Martin...and there are no witnesses to that, other than Zimmerman.

And "and tapes indicate he was a racist" will have to be backed up with an actual quote from the tapes...as I suspect you are referring to the edited version used by the media, while the original recording is far less damning. So I believe that to be an innaccurate statement as well.

On to whether or not he followed other people in the past...black, white whatever. Zimmerman's history of being a nosey busy body who called 911 at the drop of a hat is going to work in his favor, as far as a 2nd degree murder charge is concerned - not the other way around. If the defense can establish that he has indeed followed other people in the past, without a homocide, the litmus test for gross negligence is blown out of the water.

Your final paragraph presumes that Zimmerman has gone through some sort of formal neighborhood watch training...and his violation of that training establishes willful negligence. However, the general concensus is that he was not part of an official watch program, and I have never read that he had any training. As screwed up as it sounds, this works in his favor.

I believe that if this had been a manslaughter charge, the defense would have been sufficiently spooked enough to seek a plea deal, Zimmerman may have spent 15 years in prison, and there never would have been a trial. However, now that they are going all in on a 2nd degree murder charge, the state is very much at risk of not winning...and Zimmerman goes free.