Unarmed Florida Teen Shot

[billc]

New photo of Zimmerman after the fight...

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/12/03/Photo-of-George-Zimmerman-Shows-Bloody-Nose-on-Night-of-Trayvon-Martin-Shooting

 

[arnisador]

That'll surely help his case--if verified.

 

[Carol]

ABC News is reporting that a black and white version of the photo has been up on a web site dedicated to Mr. Zimmerman's defense. If that is indeed the case, then the photo is not new, or a surprise to the parties involved, what's new is rhe public release of the image in color.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlin...-lawyers-say-bloody-nose-photo-creates-doubt/

 

[billc]

Some are suspicious as to why only the black and white photo was released to the defense...

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/12/04/to-what-lengths-did-someone-go-to-scapegoat-george-zimmerman/

The “new” photo of George Zimmerman raises some very disturbing issues. Take a look at the black and white version of the photo, which the Florida prosecutor gave to the defense as part of the discovery process shortly after his altercation with Trayvon Martin.



Other than color, what else is missing from this photo?
Can you tell how old George Zimmerman is? To me, he looks like he could be any age from 20 to more than 50. But the graininess and lack of visible hair on the top of his head suggest that he is an older man.
The lack of color in the photo obscures Zimmerman’s race as well. As a friend of mine pointed out to me, the man in that photo is brighter in complexion than the man is in reality. The black and white photo renders Zimmerman a pale white. The whites of his eyes and his facial skin are nearly the same tone. The contrast makes his face emerge harshly from the shadows behind him.
The man in the photo above looks somewhat menacing. The misshapen nose suggests a history of brawls, the color having been drained away, taking with it the reds and purples indicating a fresh wound from a very recent attack. The vacant look in his eyes suggests no remorse for the killing of a young man, which the man in the photo had done moments before the photo was taken.
“This man might be a thug.” That’s the nonverbal message of the photo above.
Now, look again at the color photo. This is the unaltered photo, from which the grainy, black and white version was manufactured.

Seen in color, the “thug” who might be, becomes a wounded young man. Shock and fear ring his eyes. There may be small wounds or acne on his forehead. Blood drips from his nose and his lip appears to be busted open. His nose appears to be freshly broken. Instead of being a white ghoul emerging from shadows, he is a wounded man sitting in a car after a life-changing, possibly life-destroying, event has happened. The ghoul has flesh and blood after all. He bleeds.
From that color photo, taken in color at high resolution by law enforcement officers moments after the altercation, someone manufactured the grainy black and white photo and made the decision to hand that version, but not the full color version, over to Zimmerman’s defense. Who did that? Who manufactured that photo? How did they manufacture it? Why did they manufacture it?

 

[billc]

Well, we have updates...Martin's girlfriend is alleged to have comitted perjury that will effect her appearing in court...and Martin apparently was a fan of MMA...

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/03/why_florida_persists_in_the_zimmerman_prosecution.html

The witnesses to the February 2012 shooting of 17 year-old Trayvon Martin are proving even more troublesome than the angels. The state's case took a hit last week when Witness #8, Martin's alleged 16-year-old sweetheart "Dee Dee," was caught in falsehoods so flagrant that even the Trayvon-friendly Orlando Sentinel noticed them. Conceded the headline, "Lawyer: State's main witness in George Zimmerman murder case lied."

An hour after the shooting, Witness #6 told the Sanford Police Department (SPD) that he saw a "black man in a black hoodie on top of either a white guy. . . or an Hispanic guy in a red sweater on the ground yelling out help." According to #6, the black man on top was "throwing down blows on the guy MMA [mixed martial arts] style."

"The person calling for help would be the person underneath, you think?" asked the SPD officer.
"Yes, that was the one getting beat up," said Witness #6. "He was the one with the red sweater on."
As a side note, soon after the shooting, bloggers uncovered ample evidence in Martin's social media accounts of his keen interest in MMA style fighting. The media have ignored that too.

Here is what she committed perjury about...

http://pjmedia.com/blog/witness-in-trayvon-martin-case-lied-will-it-even-go-to-trial/

The key prosecution witness in the second-degree murder trial of George Zimmerman has allegedly been caught in a significant lie:

Trayvon Martin’s girlfriend, the state’s most important witness in the George Zimmerman murder case, was caught in a lie, it was revealed Tuesday.
It was not the first piece of misinformation tied to her, but it was the most damaging to date and left prosecutors in a very awkward position.

They had to publicly acknowledge that their star witness had lied under oath and had to answer questions about what they intend to do about it.
Reporters asked: Will you charge the 19-year-old Miami woman with perjury?
The state’s lead prosecutor, Bernie de la Rionda, gave an ambiguous answer: “You can all read the law and make your own decision.”
​

The 19-year-old woman — who had originally claimed to be just sixteen at the time of the shooting, when she was in fact two years older — was caught in a second lie. She had told prosecutors that she was in the hospital during Trayvon Martin’s funeral, a claim that investigators for the defense now claim is false.

 

[celtic_crippler]

Isn't it fascinating how initially the mainstream media jumped all over this story, yet as the state's case against Zimmerman continues to fall apart they continue to distance themselves from it?

 

[billc]

When they thought it was a "white," guy shooting an unarmed teenager because of racist motives...they could barely keep the drool in their mouths...

And then...he was a "hispanic," white guy...and the teen had some trouble in his past and may have initiated the attack...and their little hearts broke...

 

[zDom]

I am ashamed of our national media. For them to pursue their agenda (anti-gun and hate mongering between races) and skew stories so far from the truth is despicable.

This isn't a Democrat / Republican issue. This is an "American people deserve the TRUTH from news to inform their world-view" issue.

 

[billc]

Well, with the pre-trial motions happening we are starting to get a better picture of the real Trayvon Martin...the one the press tried to suppress...

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/new_evidence_shows_trayvons_life_unraveling.html

As his social media accounts show, Martin was a student of mixed martial arts. The fight followed the MMA format. A day later, he would tell a friend that his opponent "got mo hits cause in da 1[SUP]st[/SUP] round he had me on da ground nd I couldn't do ntn." As his girlfriend complained, Martin was "always" fighting. He was also something of a sadist. His opponent, after all, did not bleed enough. Why might this be relevant?

​

​

Martin was not the innocent little boy that the media relentlessly and corruptly portrayed him to be. At the time of his death, he was five feet, eleven inches and weighed 158 pounds. To put this in perspective, legendary boxer Tommy "The Hitman" Hearns was six feet, one inch and 145 pounds when he first won the world welterweight title as a twenty-one-year-old.


Before leaving for Orlando on February 21, 2012, Martin had already missed 53 days of school that year and been suspended three times, most recently for possessing drug paraphernalia, the time before that for getting caught with women's jewelry and a burglary tool. Why might this be relevant?

On January 6, 2012, Martin got into trouble at school again. When asked why, he told a friend, "Caus I was watcn a fight nd a teacher say I hit em." Said the friend, "Idk how u be getting in trouble an sh**." By this time, Martin's mother had thrown him out of the house for "fightn," and he had moved in with his aunt and uncle.


The multiple texts about "weed" and the photos of marijuana plants confirmed his interests in drugs -- a friend called him "weedhead" -- but the new photos pointed to an even more dangerous new hobby -- namely, guns. Indeed, one of the photos of Martin's showed a hand, likely Martin's own, on a pistol.

This doesn't mean he should have been killed, but it does show that the shooting may well have been justified at the time it happened...
​

 

[arnisador]

I didn't know about the MMA angle. I wonder if he was a student as we think of it here, or just watched the fights and mimicked them, like kids with pro wrestling.

 

[billc]

More on the pre-trial supression of evidence...

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/trayvon_george_and_the_homeless_man.html

On Zimmerman's defence of a homeless man beaten by police...

Although Ware suffered a concussion, and there was video evidence of Collison's action, no action was taken against Collison for nearly a month. Upset at the lack of media attention, Zimmerman and his wife Shellie printed fliers demanding that the community "hold accountable" officers responsible for any misconduct.


They then drove the fliers around to area churches and passed them out on a Sunday morning. Later, at a public meeting in January 2011, Zimmerman took the floor and said, "I would just like to state that the law is written in black and white. It should not and cannot be enforced in the gray for those that are in the thin blue line."

​

This meeting was recorded on video. As a result of the publicity, Police Chief Brian Tooley, whom Zimmerman blasted for his "illegal cover-up and corruption," was forced to resign.


Ironically, perhaps, Zimmerman headlined his fliers with a famous quote from Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." He would have been better off quoting another Anglo-Irishman, Oscar Wilde: "No good deed goes unpunished."

The local NAACP, with whom Zimmerman worked on the Sherman Ware case, instinctively turned its back on him as soon as he was accused of racist profiling in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. On March 26, a month after the shooting, George's older brother Robert sent an impassioned letter to local NAACP head Turner Clayton asking him to "call off the dogs. Period. Publicly and swiftly."

On Martin and his proclivity for fighting...

O'Mara countered by saying that Martin not only attended fights, but that he also recorded them on video, including "one where two buddies of his are beating up a homeless guy." The video recorded a crime. The State of Florida had had this video in possession for months and took no follow-up action. As O'Mara made clear at the most recent hearing, the State had concealed critical evidence all along. He even produced a whistleblower from the state attorney's office to hammer home his point.

 

[billc]

Here is a question...does anyone want to start a seperate thread for the Zimmerman trial...or do you want to keep trial coverage under this thread. I suggest this only because this thread is so large already, and the pre-trial stuff is starting to come out and it is fresh material?

As to more pre-trial stuff...scream analysis...who screamed and the experts...

http://legalinsurrection.com/2013/0...called-absurd-ridiculous-and-imaginary-stuff/

Even based merely on their relative training and experience the defense expert witnesses appear to vastly outclass those brought forward by the State. For example:

State Expert #1, Tom Owens: A one-man audio forensics operation whose highest academic degree is a BA in History, who has no formal academic training in speech recognition or speaker identification, whose standards for analysis are self-written and in any case subject to self-violation in order to ensure a “finding”, who uses as his primary speech analysis tool a computerized “biometric” system in which he has a substantial financial stake, and which in any case he has used for less than two years and tested about as an expert witness only once before.

State Expert #2, Dr. Alan Reich, PhD: A long-retired college professor with an avocational interest in speech recognition and identification who manages to hear words and phrases in audio recordings that cannot be heard by world-leading experts in the field, much less by layman.
Compare and contrast with the defense expert witnesses:

Defense Expert #1, Dr. Hirotaka Nakasone, PhD: A senior scientist with a 17-year career with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, currently the Head of the Bureau’s Voice Recognition Program, and the Head of the international working group establishing the first formal scientific standards for speech recognition and speaker identification.

Defense Expert #2, Dr. J.P. (Peter) French, PhD: Dr. French earned his PhD in the analyses of recorded conversations, he is the Director of J.P. French Associates, the United Kingdom’s longest established independent forensic laboratory specializing in the analysis of speech, audio, and language with 6 full-time scientific staff, and a Professor in the Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York.

Defense Expert #3, Dr. George Doddington, PhD: Dr. Doddington conducted his doctoral thesis on speaker recognition, and since 1970 he has been leading the development and evaluation of speech recognition and speaker identification technologies and methodologies at a wide variety of top-level institutions, including Texas Instruments, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and currently at the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). Interestingly, he was deeply involved in the development of the voice recognition technology used in the F-16 fighter aircraft.

[h=3]“It’s pretty much axiomatic in the community that you can’t compare screaming with speech.”[/h]When asked whether a sample recording of someone shouting or screaming would create particular challenges to forensic audio analysis, Dr. French was adamant that they would. In fact, he said it would be impossible to compare a normal speaking voice to a scream made in distress, or vice versa.
French: “When people shout, we have to realize that shouting is not simply speaking made louder, people have got completely different vocal settings when we shout than when we speak. It is very difficult, if someone is genuinely shouting rather than just speaking with a raised voice, to do a comparison.”