[mlmpetert]

Originally Posted by mlmdub130

The fact is the police said so not pursue, he pursued and a conflict occurred. Had he not pursued this would not be an issue. And if the stand your ground law didn't exist Zimmerman would be in jail. IMO Zimmerman is guilty of at a minimum manslaughter and should serve years in jail, but due to this terrible law he may never see a jail cell. If anything hopefully this law gets repelled in every state. From what I understand you could pick a fight with someone, start losing that fight, pull out a gun and shoot the person. Such a joke.

A dispatcher, who happened to be a police officer, said "We dont need you to do that" in regards to Zimmerman indicating that he was following Martin. Thats a little different than a police officer telling Zimmerman not to pursue.

Zimmerman 911 Call Transcript – Trayvon Martin « Phoebe's Detention Room

I dont think Zimmerman had any idea that the dispatcher was a police officer. Also i think i heard FL law (maybe federal) says you dont have to adhere to anything your told over the phone from a police officer, 911 dispatcher, or anyone else. Its all advice, nothing official. Perhaps thats why the dispatcher said "we dont need you to do that" as opposed a command like "do not do that". Regardless, it seems by all accounts Zimmerman stopped following Martin at the advice of the dispatcher. Unfortunately the media usually ends the recording prematurely and makes it sounds like Zimmerman kept going after Martin.

The trouble i have in siding with Zimmerman is that he got out of his truck and followed Martin in the first place, when there was no reason to believe Martin had yet committed a crime, and more specifically a crime against Zimmerman or his family.

I was a victim of violent crime and one surprising thing i learned is that preceding separate acts cant be used against you. The example is if you see someone driving recklessly, then they leave your sights, and moments later you see that car involved in an accident, your previous account of them driving recklessly cant be used against them. The thought is you have no idea if they stopped speeding or driving recklessly immediately before the accident.

So they law may see what happened as 2 separate acts.

1) Zimmerman got out of his truck to follow Martin. At this point if he had encountered Martin and the result was the same, I fully believe Zimmerman would be guilty of manslaughter at a very minimum and deserves to spend time in jail. But he didn’t encounter Martin at this point and more importantly when told to stop he stopped. And he stopped long enough to give the dispatcher his information so that police could assist him. And according to Zimmerman he retreated to his suv.

Then:

2) Zimmerman was walking to his SUV and was confronted by Martin from behind and after they exchanged words Martin punched Zimmerman in the face breaking his noise and took him the ground and was slamming his head against the sidewalk. In the struggle and while under an reasonable impression that Martin had a gun or weaon he shot Martin in the chest.

So I think what people need to consider is; was Zimmerman acting in self defense specifically in the context of JUST the 2nd scenario. Sure I personally feel, like most of you probably do, that if not for Zimmerman getting out of his suv Martin would be alive, therefore Zimmerman was in the wrong and provoked the actions of Martin. But as wrong as Zimmerman was to get out of his car, he did stop and retreated at which point Zimmerman would be justified more so to defend himself when attacked.

* This is based off of Zimmerman’s accounts which obviously may be false. But it does match up with his injuries and the accounts of some witnesses. Im just going off of reported information. Also this is my understanding of law, which makes it completely worthless….

Something else that I think will be a legal issue is the girlfriend’s account on the phone. It gets into that whole hearsay issue. I learned that you generally (its tricky) cant reveal something someone told you. So if a witness called 911 because her husband told her to because one guy just shot another guy outside, she cant say that. There may be precedent to phone conversation, but the girlfriend may only be limited to describing what she heard but not what was said.

Also the gated community thing might complicated things further. I believe it becomes a little fuzzy about what is/isn’t considered his homestead. That combined with the knowledge he likely picked up as a neighborhood watchman of who does/doesn’t live within the restricted community and their common visitors may give him more rights in approaching a visitor of the neighborhood.