Wow! It sounds like the JUDGE, not the jury, may have freed Zimmerman.

[TorchTheWitch]

221. We can't know the details

All the details come from Zimmerman and Zimmerman alone. During his phone call with the dispatcher at one point he said that Martin ran away which is when he got out of his car and pursued him. Where he was, what direction he ran, or if he really did run at all really isn't known since this information all came from Zimmerman alone. However, Zimmerman saying that he ran away should have worked against him since it does show that Martin did attempt to get away from him.

How they encountered each other is the crux of the case. Zimmerman claimed he never tried to pursue Martin, that he got out of his car not to pursue him but to get an address, and that while walking back to his car Martin appeared out of non-existent bushes and ambushed Zimmerman which he changed to appeared from no where, they exchanged words and Martin punched him. The time frame between where Zimmerman said he was in relation to his car when he ended the phone call and said he started returning to his car and the time of the physical encounter starting going by Rachel's phone logs since she was on the phone with Martin at the time was two minutes. That time frame and Zimmerman's changing his story of how they encountered each other goes to prove that it is not how they encountered each other at all.

Given the time frame, the obvious lie that Zimmerman only got out of the car to get an address and not to pursue Martin especially since the dispatcher asked if he was following Martin and he admitted he was, the physical evidence of Rachel being on the phone with Martin at the time of the encounter, that he was wearing his headset and carrying his phone as both were found in the grass next to his body show to any reasonable person that Martin did not attack Zimmerman, that Zimmerman did continue to follow Martin and caught up to him, that several other witnesses testified that they heard running footsteps of more than one person on the sidewalk just before the physical encounter that Zimmerman lied about how he encountered Martin and that the physical altercation started because of his pursuit of him and catching up to him.

The judge choosing to leave out all of this from the instructions was not her choice to make and for the jury to decide whether or not Zimmerman's story of how they encountered each other and who was the aggressor at that time. The judge removed that decision from the jury which was rightfully their decision to make since the defense and the prosecution greatly differed on this point and it had everything to do with whether or not Zimmerman was legally defending himself or not.

Still, the jury could still have and should have had found him guilty given that a reasonable person would not believe he was actually in fear of imminent death or great bodily harm since Zimmerman's own actions of lying about how his injuries occurred given the physical evidence and testimony of two doctors one of whom actually saw him the next day and was his own doctor and his not believing himself he needed medical care. His lying about and/or grossly inflating how he acquired his injuries shows that not even he believed they were significant and reasonable for a jury to find that he was in imminent fear of death or great bodily harm.