Florida Teen Shot

[wolfriverjoe 1,523]

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One more time, where is the evidence that "fully supports" GZ's version?
How do you know that GZ didn't keep looking after hanging up? Because he says so?

Summed up: "Prove to me that GZ is innocent!"

But that is not how the American system of justice works. The state must prove that he is guilty. If they cannot, he walks, no matter how fishy it feels to you.

Nope. The state has to prove GZ guilty. And I don't know if they have enough to do it or not.

But Rushmc keeps claiming that the evidence supports GZ's assertion that TM attacked him.

And I keep asking what evidence that is.

"There are NO situations which do not call for a French Maid outfit." Lucky McSwervy

"~ya don't GET old by being weak & stupid!" - Airtwardo

[normiss 800]

Isn't the only real evidence so far the 911 call from a resident and GZ's injuries?

[billvon 2,991]

>A case should not go to court if there is no evidense to support a trial

That's what trials are for - to present evidence and try to arrive at the truth of the matter. It's not a perfect system but it is pretty good, and is the best method we have of determining guilt or innocence.

Interesting that you are so dead set against using a trial to find out what happened. (Of course you've decided that you already know what happened, so I guess that's not a surprise.)

[normiss 800]

But if the law is written that the police should not charge someone.....

[Kennedy 0]

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Isn't the only real evidence so far the 911 call from a resident and GZ's injuries?

No. If you ignore all spoken "recollection" statements as evidence, you still have as physical evidence: the gun, the bullet, and stippling on TM, the angle of entry into TM, an other injuries (or lack thereof) and items noted by the medical examiner after autopsy. After that, but before getting into "interested party" statements (those by victims, suspects, and people favoring one or the other) you have police reports, the statements made to police by disinterested witnesses, THEN you have the 9-1-1 call and the photographs of GZ. And that's just what I know exists. There could be more, but I don't know.

witty subliminal message
Guard your honor, let your reputation fall where it will, and outlast the bastards.
1*

[Kennedy 0]

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>A case should not go to court if there is no evidense to support a trial

That's what trials are for - to present evidence and try to arrive at the truth of the matter. It's not a perfect system but it is pretty good, and is the best method we have of determining guilt or innocence.

Interesting that you are so dead set against using a trial to find out what happened. (Of course you've decided that you already know what happened, so I guess that's not a surprise.)

While there are criminal charges brought to trial on nothing more than statements/testimony, they usually involve direct eye witnesses who give statements directly implicating the accused.

Do you think the state should routinely arrest, charge, and try suspects when the suspect's statement does not imply guilt, there is no witness that contradicts the suspect's statement, and there is no evidence that contradicts the statement or implies guilt? Put another way, do you think there should be any requirements on the state before bringing a case to trial?

witty subliminal message
Guard your honor, let your reputation fall where it will, and outlast the bastards.
1*

[normiss 800]

I had seriously considered listing his story and it's correlation to the police reports (depending on which edited version apparently) but thought of how the discussion here goes when referencing his story/lie/racial hatred/blah blah blah....it is evidence I understand.
You do list some very good points with regards the other items though.

[billvon 2,991]

> Put another way, do you think there should be any requirements on the state before
> bringing a case to trial?

Yes. There should be a reasonable suspicion that a crime was committed. Such suspicion might reasonably come from (for example) the dead body of an unarmed teenager found near a man with a recently fired gun.

[normiss 800]

While I fully support a complete justification and satisfaction of the law when someone defends themselves with deadly force, I don't support prosecution without reasonable suspicion.
This case was just that until the race baiters came to town.

[kelpdiver 2]

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>A case should not go to court if there is no evidense to support a trial

That's what trials are for - to present evidence and try to arrive at the truth of the matter. It's not a perfect system but it is pretty good, and is the best method we have of determining guilt or innocence.

No, this is what the grand jury or prosecutor is to determine. A trial should not be an experiment - those people should have a strong belief that a crime has been committed and that it can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt in court.

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Interesting that you are so dead set against using a trial to find out what happened. (Of course you've decided that you already know what happened, so I guess that's not a surprise.)

A teacher rarely survives even an accusation of child molestation, never mind a trial. OJ was found not guilty, but no one believes it. And merely defending yourself against a minor felony costs you more than most people have in savings.

There was an article in the SF Weekly (free rag) a couple weeks ago detailing the events of a guy who was in jail for a year on tenuous charges of assault by a 'victim' whose story was so wildly inconsistent that the DA had to drop the case. Because bail was set in the upper 6 figures, he didn't have the money and so he sat in jail. He's free now, but he lost his job, his apartment, his financial status. More remarkably- the author of the story wrote that a majority of the people being jailed in SF (or was in California) were not convicts, but merely awaiting trial. Aside from costing the taxpayers a fortune, it flies against the concept of innocent until proven guilty. Most of them should be released OR, or tagged with an ankle monitor.

[billvon 2,991]

>A teacher rarely survives even an accusation of child molestation, never mind a trial.

Agreed. But that would be a very poor reason to ignore a case of suspected child molestation.

> A trial should not be an experiment - those people should have a strong belief that a
>crime has been committed and that it can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt in
>court.

Not a "strong belief" or "belief that it can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt." The standard in the US is "probable cause" which is defined variously as:

"a reasonable amount of suspicion, supported by circumstances sufficiently strong to justify a prudent and cautious person's belief that certain facts are probably true"

"information sufficient to warrant a prudent person's belief that the wanted individual had committed a crime"

BTW a trial IS an experiment; indeed the words are synonymous in the scientific world.

[skypuppy 1]

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I don't wish to condemn either side. I'm more interested in the truth.

This is what gets me, the poster starts with the above. Seems reasonable.........

The follows with........

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And GZ has admitted that he initiated the entire situation, by first following TM with his car, then escalating the situation by getting out of his car and pursuing TM after TM tried to evade GZ by running away.

The area had been robbed - a lot. GZ does follow someone, thats a fact and get's out of the car. Thats a fact. That seems to be all we know.

The TM group with say anything GZ says is a self serving lie.

It goes to trial what happens if there just isn't any more evideance? You put GZ away because nobody should ever use a gun to defend them selfs??

Did you mean this to be a reply to me?

It was probably directed at me, those quotes are my words.

So...

I don't automatically dismiss GZ's statements as "self-serving lies." But I don't accept them as unvarnished truth either. If you think about it, he would make a statement like he did no matter what actually happened.

And I'm certainly not saying that nobody should use a gun for self defense. Nor should they ignore suspicious behavior.

But I was taught that use of lethal force for self defense requires that the situation not be initiated by the person claiming self defense. And to never, ever, ever chase anyone. And GZ broke both of those basic rules. He put himself into the situation. Deliberately.

A couple of instructors and a lawyer have told me that here in Wisconsin, what GZ did, no matter who started the final fight, would probably have resulted in 2nd degree murder charges.

let's try it again. you said gz 'chased' tm. I've never heard gz say he 'chased' tm. he was following him. There is a difference. and again, there is no law against following someone. There may be a law about 'confronting' and 'threatening' someone -- and supposedly tm did confront and threaten gz.

And we know from his records that tm was prone to violence, and drugs. So this behavior would not be out of character for him.

If some old guy can do it then obviously it can't be very extreme. Otherwise he'd already be dead.
Bruce McConkey 'I thought we were gonna die, and I couldn't think of anyone

[skypuppy 1]

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Following someone is not a crime
Following does not start anything

Earlier in this thread (about 5,000 pages ago) someone (who I'm not going to bother looking up) said something much like this.

Let's try a little thought experiment.* Suppose your daughter (since this hypothetical anyway I'll assume you have a daughter) calls you up and tells you there is this guy who she doesn't know who is following her. When she speeds up, he speeds up. She changes direction, he changes direction.

Would you not be at all alarmed? Would your response to her really be "It's a free country, he can walk/run wherever he wants to."? Would you really have zero impulse to get in your car, go to your daughter, and ask this guy what the hell he is doing following your daughter around?

Lets make it a bit more interesting. Lets say she tells you that the guy has been following her for a week or so. She's noticed that he's always there when she gets off work, follows her as she goes shopping or walks to her car. He's always somewhere close by when she goes for lunch. He's across the street, watching, when she comes out of her house in the morning. But he doesn't speak to her or anything, just follows. All the time.

Would you be alarmed? He's "just following", after all. Free country and all that. No harm in following, right? Only a fool would feel threatened if a total stranger started following them, right?

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GZ is on a recording saying he lost sight of TM

So what? What else would you expect him to say?

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If he tried to escape, he would not have met up with GZ
If you are trying to escape, you do not confront

Neither statement is true if GZ caught up to or cornered TM.

Further, suppose you noticed someone following you in the manner I described above. Suppose you decide to approach them and ask why they are following you. Does that now make you the aggressor? Do you not have any right to ask why someone is following you?

Don

*For the literalists who are somehow unable to understand examples, analogies, or metaphors, I am NOT saying that GZ stalked TM for days and days. I am simply challenging the idea that "following" is a completely innocent activity that should never be taken as threatening or confrontational in itself. That is all.

** I started this reply, had to go to the lab for a while, can back and finished it, and then saw wolfriverjoe had suggested a similar "experiment". Great minds think alike/simple never differ? Take your pick.

doesn't matter if you think following is threatening -- it is not illegal (unless, as you attempted to infer, totally erroneously, it is actually stalking).

Confronting someone, assaulting someone, IS illegal.

If some old guy can do it then obviously it can't be very extreme. Otherwise he'd already be dead.
Bruce McConkey 'I thought we were gonna die, and I couldn't think of anyone

[normiss 800]

That is a beautiful statement of how this case went too.
The investigators INITIALLY believed he should be charged with second degree murder...slowly as the case developed that appears to have changed to not charging him.
There are four different versions of the initial police report as the investigation continued. Only one was signed.
I still say the cops followed the correct legal process as defined in Florida law.

[skypuppy 1]

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Sure. That could have happened. We don't know. We weren't there, and neither were any other objective witnesses.

As Kelpdiver said, in the absence of proof the benefit of the doubt will have to go to GZ, and that is preferable (IMO) to a system where one has to prove their innocence.

What I object to is this program of character assassination that retroactively seeks to paint TM as a drug-addled violent maniac who "needed killing", based on a couple of alleged tweets and a school suspension over an empty baggie. To "prove" that GZ was factually (not just legally) innocent, that in fact he had no alternative, it seems necessary to demonize a dead kid.

In a larger sense, I also object to the idea that I could be minding my own business, doing something I have every legal right to do in a place I have a right to be, and be legally gunned down by someone who gets a hair up their ass that I am somehow a threat to them. SYG has been used to excuse shootings where people have been shot in the back as they were leaving an altercation, to excuse someone shooting at workers who were just checking power lines, to excuse drug dealers shooting at each other during a car chase, and on and on. One driver nearly ran down someone who was walking (with their their dog) on a sidewalk as the driver exited a fast food restaurant; the guy on the sidewalk shook his fist at the driver and yelled at him, whereupon the driver stopped, got out of his car, shot the dog-walker dead, got back in his car, and drove away. He was arrested later, but successfully invoked SYG on the grounds that he "thought" he saw something that "might have been a weapon" in the dog-walker's hand (it was actually the dog leash). It has always been the case that you could use lethal force to defend yourself if you reasonably believed that no alternative was available. Now you don't have to consider alternatives, you just have to make a convincing case that you felt threatened. If you made a mistake, perceived a threat where there was none or even where most people would know there was none, that's OK as long as you believed there was a threat.

Don

Ever see the movie Deliverance? I don't like to think that could happen to me just for going canoing somewhere. Shit happens. How you react to it determines whether you get out or not.

If some old guy can do it then obviously it can't be very extreme. Otherwise he'd already be dead.
Bruce McConkey 'I thought we were gonna die, and I couldn't think of anyone

[rushmc 23]

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>A case should not go to court if there is no evidense to support a trial

That's what trials are for - to present evidence and try to arrive at the truth of the matter. It's not a perfect system but it is pretty good, and is the best method we have of determining guilt or innocence.

Interesting that you are so dead set against using a trial to find out what happened. (Of course you've decided that you already know what happened, so I guess that's not a surprise.)

No

I am not against using a trial when the situation warrents

This one however, smells of the state and media trying to save face after they first called racist reasons and more

The uproar all happed 40 days after the fact

After a newspaper started all the lies and got the black community in a tizzy

Now it is making news

Then a grand jury was NOT used (as it usually is) and a special prosecutor hands down an abitrary charge

So find things interesting if you want
But at least get it right

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[rushmc 23]

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While I fully support a complete justification and satisfaction of the law when someone defends themselves with deadly force, I don't support prosecution without reasonable suspicion.
This case was just that until the race baiters came to town.

+1

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[jakee 1,489]

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He had a history of violence, why is it surprising that he'd confront someone who was following him?

Assumes facts not in evidence.

Did he not get suspended from school for punching a bus driver?

I'm going to go with... no. He did not.



(Unless you have a better source of information than some other kid questioning a rumour on Twitter?)

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[normiss 800]

Wiki agrees

Possibly the best, most accurate, unbiased timeline of events I've found.

[linebckr83 3]

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He had a history of violence, why is it surprising that he'd confront someone who was following him?

Assumes facts not in evidence.

Did he not get suspended from school for punching a bus driver?

I'm going to go with... no. He did not.



(Unless you have a better source of information than some other kid questioning a rumour on Twitter?)

Apparently there's 3 different stories about why he was suspended.

he was in an unauthorized area on school property
Suspended for 10 days? Very doubtful

The current story is because of an empty marijuana bag. Having seen this when i was in high school (and a private one at that), it was never 10 days. That's a huge suspension.

His brother tweeted to him just a few days after his suspension and before he died "yu aint tell me yu swung on a bus driver"
Whether it was the cause of his suspension or not, I'd say he did swing on one.

In a different story, how the fuck is someone supposed to read this?
"@NO_LIMIT_NIGGA IMA MISS YU TILL I DIE DOG I KNOW YU WHOOPED HIS ASS DOE.. CUZ I PRAY GOD HELP ME AND WATCH YU LOVE YOU CUZZ REST ETERNALLY."

You're in school for a reason. Learn some damn english.

Edit: Good find there normiss, very detailed. I didn't realize he was suspended several times. Not surprised, just didn't know. Apparently his brother is a lousy source

"Are you coming to the party?
Oh I'm coming, but I won't be there!"
Flying Hellfish #828
Dudist #52

[jakee 1,489]

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The current story is because of an empty marijuana bag. Having seen this when i was in high school (and a private one at that), it was never 10 days. That's a huge suspension.

That has been the story ever since it emerged he was suspended.

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His brother tweeted to him just a few days after his suspension and before he died "yu aint tell me yu swung on a bus driver"

Your information is incorrect.

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Whether it was the cause of his suspension or not, I'd say he did swing on one.

Because of a question about a rumour on Twitter that no other information has surfaced about.

Oh well, I should probably defer to your special expertise on this one since you, uh, went to high school.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[rushmc 23]

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The current story is because of an empty marijuana bag. Having seen this when i was in high school (and a private one at that), it was never 10 days. That's a huge suspension.

That has been the story ever since it emerged he was suspended.

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His brother tweeted to him just a few days after his suspension and before he died "yu aint tell me yu swung on a bus driver"

Your information is incorrect.

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Whether it was the cause of his suspension or not, I'd say he did swing on one.

Because of a question about a rumour on Twitter that no other information has surfaced about.

Oh well, I should probably defer to your special expertise on this one since you, uh, went to high school.

Kind of like a pubic hair on and Coke can huh.......

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[jakee 1,489]

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Kind of like a pubic hair on and Coke can huh.......

Eh?

Ewwww!

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[rushmc 23]

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Kind of like a pubic hair on and Coke can huh.......

Eh?

Ewwww!

Actully I am sorta agreeing with you

but

Google it

I am sure it will show up

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[wolfriverjoe 1,523]

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I don't wish to condemn either side. I'm more interested in the truth.

This is what gets me, the poster starts with the above. Seems reasonable.........

The follows with........

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And GZ has admitted that he initiated the entire situation, by first following TM with his car, then escalating the situation by getting out of his car and pursuing TM after TM tried to evade GZ by running away.

The area had been robbed - a lot. GZ does follow someone, thats a fact and get's out of the car. Thats a fact. That seems to be all we know.

The TM group with say anything GZ says is a self serving lie.

It goes to trial what happens if there just isn't any more evideance? You put GZ away because nobody should ever use a gun to defend them selfs??

Did you mean this to be a reply to me?

It was probably directed at me, those quotes are my words.

So...

I don't automatically dismiss GZ's statements as "self-serving lies." But I don't accept them as unvarnished truth either. If you think about it, he would make a statement like he did no matter what actually happened.

And I'm certainly not saying that nobody should use a gun for self defense. Nor should they ignore suspicious behavior.

But I was taught that use of lethal force for self defense requires that the situation not be initiated by the person claiming self defense. And to never, ever, ever chase anyone. And GZ broke both of those basic rules. He put himself into the situation. Deliberately.

A couple of instructors and a lawyer have told me that here in Wisconsin, what GZ did, no matter who started the final fight, would probably have resulted in 2nd degree murder charges.

let's try it again. you said gz 'chased' tm. I've never heard gz say he 'chased' tm. he was following him. There is a difference. and again, there is no law against following someone. There may be a law about 'confronting' and 'threatening' someone -- and supposedly tm did confront and threaten gz.

And we know from his records that tm was prone to violence, and drugs. So this behavior would not be out of character for him.

A lot of people are parsing the difference between "Following", "Pursuing", and "Chasing." Continuing to follow someone after they try to escape and evade takes it beyond basic "Following," doesn't it?

If I was walking down the street and a guy in a car started following me, and when I tried to evade by going somewhere a car couldn't go and the occupant of the car got out and continued to follow me on foot, then I would call the cops and say "Someone is chasing me."

I agree that GZ never said that he chased TM. But saying that would be admitting an aggressive act that would damage his self defense claim.

And while there isn't any law prohibiting following someone, it is an action that can be very threatening and intimidating.

"There are NO situations which do not call for a French Maid outfit." Lucky McSwervy

"~ya don't GET old by being weak & stupid!" - Airtwardo