The Official Zimmerman Trial Verdict Thread

[beagle9]

So far the only thing that I find George Zimmerman "at fault" for is failing to tell Trayvon Martin that he was part of the Neighborhood Watch and that was why he was following him...because of the rash of break-ins and because he didn't recognize Trayvon as someone who lived in the community.

That might have prevented a physical confrontation but I'm not even certain of that. I judge people in large part by the company they keep. If Rachel Jenteal's demeanor was any indication of Trayvon Martin's...then he very well might have called him a "Cracker" then and started a fight. This fairy tale that Trayvon Martin was some sweet angelic choir boy brutally attacked by a gun wielding vigilante is just that...a fairy tale.

These are good points if true, and so I guess it will come down to who has the best ability to paint the better picture for their side in the end, so it is what it is in the end, but was justice found ? I guess another case closes in great confusion or does it in the end ? If justice is found, will the side that it is found against, learn from this, and look to apply remedies in the real world as a result of, so that this won't happen to a friend or family member again ? If nothing is learned by it all, then more tragedies are sure to follow in the future.

 

[Foxfyre]

And she'll be back...Crump in tow.

Do you know how to depo in Ebonics? Another translator on the thread is golden.

Sorry dear, but my view of the world is very different from yours, and I rather appreciate mine better. I was interested in seeing what she had to say and was not interested in making fun of her or drawing hateful characerizations of her as some choose to do. I saw her as the typical uneducated young person, not by choice but by exposure to a specific culture and pathetic education system. I picked up on the probable truth that she had been thoroughly coached by the prosecution team, but I didn't sense that she was being purposefully dishonest.

And I don't think she hurt the defense's case.

Goes to if I can't have fun in the thread there's no point in showing up.

But if having fun means being unnecessarily cruel. . . . .

 

[Sarah G]

a Citizen's Grand Jury has no legal standing--pity.

Wish Sunshine could reason something like this out..

Are you a nurse yet?

Just about everyone in my family is in the medical profession, I'm not. At any rate, I've decided not to tease you about that anymore. It was fun for a minute but I guess I don't need to be so sarcastic.

Have a good 4th.

 

[SantaFeWay]

Fox,

Testarosa doesn't need me to defend her, but you were not participating at the time Rachel J testified and the majority of the thread was trying to understand her testimony to no avail. I felt Rachel could have been more articulate but chose not to because she had a poor attitude. Others felt the same. So it's not demeaning her lack of education, but commenting on her insistence on using the slang she uses with her friends, probably so she could "stick it" to the system. Also, her pre-testimony twitter postings were mocking of the court appearance which led many to think she was being disrespectful on purpose.

 

[Foxfyre]

Do you believe Dee Dee's testimony?

For what it was I did not draw any conclusions about what was authentic and what she may have made up or embellished. She was on the phone with Trayvon. I wasn't. I have taken hundreds of depositions from people and very few remember every detail exactly as it went down. Eye witnesses can be notoriously unreliable about details they think they remember.

But whether embellished, totally made up, or remembered accurately, I did not think her testimony did anything other than strengthen Zimmerman's recollections as reported to the police after the shooting.

I agree about eye witness creditability.

One time a lady was getting mugged by a guy with aknife on the street next to my house.

I ran to her aid and the crackhead escaped on his bicycle.

The cop asked what he looked like.

I said he had a beard and she said he did not.

She was bleeding a little but he was okay and he did not get her purse.

It can get pretty funny sometimes. Working an automobile accident involving a collision at an intersection, most especially if there are injuries, we could have access to maybe a dozen witnesses. They would remember all sorts of colors, makes, models of the vehicles involved, different counts for how many people were in the cars, and, as you say, different descriptions of the people involved. But most will be pretty much in agreement that the southbound car, whatever it was, ran the red light and broadsided the eastbound car.

Also those who purposefully become witnesses, i.e. show up to see what happened, will be far more likely to get it more right than those caught off guard and who witness an accident they were not expecting. But any are still likely to disagree on some details.

 

[Gadawg73]

Now I have the Kennedy Boy Toy sending neg reps because I am "ignorant".

 

[Snookie]

Fox,

Testarosa doesn't need me to defend her, but you were not participating at the time Rachel J testified and the majority of the thread was trying to understand her testimony to no avail. I felt Rachel could have been more articulate but chose not to because she had a poor attitude. Others felt the same. So it's not demeaning her lack of education, but commenting on her insistence on using the slang she uses with her friends, probably so she could "stick it" to the system. Also, her pre-testimony twitter postings were mocking of the court appearance which led many to think she was being disrespectful on purpose.

There is an old saying, You can take the boy from the country but you can't take the country from the boy.

She did not want to lose her street cred among her friends.

 

[Foxfyre]

Fox,

Testarosa doesn't need me to defend her, but you were not participating at the time Rachel J testified and the majority of the thread was trying to understand her testimony to no avail. I felt Rachel could have been more articulate but chose not to because she had a poor attitude. Others felt the same. So it's not demeaning her lack of education, but commenting on her insistence on using the slang she uses with her friends, probably so she could "stick it" to the system. Also, her pre-testimony twitter postings were mocking of the court appearance which led many to think she was being disrespectful on purpose.

I wasn't getting on Testarosa's case and didn't mean to come across that I was. I like her very much and have very much appreciated her posts. Nor have I observed her being unusually hateful or cruel or unreasonable. My comment was intended mostly for those who have been I thought unusually unkind, even cruel, to that young woman, and Testarosa was the unlucky one who gave me an opportunity to make that point. Sorry Testarosa.

And I agree, that the young woman was about as sad a witness as I've seen on the stand for awhile--especially when it was so obvious she didn't want to be there and they kept her there for so long. The funniest thing was the prosecution was unable to impeach their own witness--three times they ask her who initiated the confrontation between Trayvon and George, and three times she said it was Trayvon. She was unshakable on that point.

And I haven't missed the internet chatter about how she wasn't really his girlfriend--in truth they didn't look like a good match, yes?--and how her tweets didn't suggest she was upset that he had been killed, had a new boyfriend within days, yadda yadda. But I haven't seen any of that with my own eyes and am going purely by the internet chatter which, like eye witnesses at accidents and other stressful events, can be pretty unreliable at times.

 

[Snookie]

I don't like to see anybody get bullied.

 

[KissMy]

The brain is not permanently formed data on a computer hard drive. Every-time we remember something it is erased from one location, altered by current events, senses, thought & emotion then re-written in a new way in a new area. This is why we should only rely on the original statements given to police & not testimony now a 1-1/2 years later. We should also not assume they are lying because of inconsistencies.

Below are condenced quotes from the 5 page article in Wired Magizine: The Forgetting Pill Erases Painful Memories Forever

Scientists have come to realize that our memories are not inert packets of data and they don’t remain constant. Even though every memory feels like an honest representation, that sense of authenticity is the biggest lie of all. The very act of remembering changes the memory itself. Every time we recall an event, the structure of that memory in the brain is altered in light of the present moment, warped by our current feelings and knowledge.

Every memory begins as a changed set of connections among cells in the brain. it’s because a network of neurons has been altered, woven more tightly together within a vast electrical fabric. This linkage is literal: For a memory to exist, these scattered cells must become more sensitive to the activity of the others, so that if one cell fires, the rest of the circuit lights up as well.

Several dozen rats were taught to associate a loud noise with a mild but painful electric shock. It terrified them—whenever the sound played, the rats froze in fear, anticipating the shock. After reinforcing this memory for several weeks, Nader hit the rats with the noise once again, but this time he then injected their brains with a chemical that inhibited protein synthesis. Then he played the sound again. “I couldn’t believe what happened,” Nader says. “The fear memory was gone. The rats had forgotten everything.” The absence of fear persisted even after the injection wore off.

The secret was the timing: If new proteins couldn’t be created during the act of remembering, then the original memory ceased to exist. The erasure was also exceedingly specific. The rats could still learn new associations, and they remained scared of other sounds associated with a shock but that hadn’t been played during the protein block. They forgot only what they’d been forced to remember while under the influence of the protein inhibitor.

The disappearance of the fear memory suggested that every time we think about the past we are delicately transforming its cellular representation in the brain, changing its underlying neural circuitry. It was a stunning discovery: Memories are not formed and then pristinely maintained, as neuroscientists thought; they are formed and then rebuilt every time they’re accessed. “The brain isn’t interested in having a perfect set of memories about the past,” LeDoux says. “Instead, memory comes with a natural updating mechanism, which is how we make sure that the information taking up valuable space inside our head is still useful. That might make our memories less accurate, but it probably also makes them more relevant to the future.”

Lewis had discovered what came to be called memory reconsolidation, the brain’s practice of re-creating memories over and over again. To be more specific: I can recall vividly the party for my eighth birthday. I can almost taste the Baskin-Robbins ice cream cake and summon the thrill of tearing wrapping paper off boxes of Legos. This memory is embedded deep in my brain as a circuit of connected cells that I will likely have forever. Yet the science of reconsolidation suggests that the memory is less stable and trustworthy than it appears. Whenever I remember the party, I re-create the memory and alter its map of neural connections. Some details are reinforced—my current hunger makes me focus on the ice cream—while others get erased, like the face of a friend whose name I can no longer conjure. The memory is less like a movie, a permanent emulsion of chemicals on celluloid, and more like a play—subtly different each time it’s performed. In my brain, a network of cells is constantly being reconsolidated, rewritten, remade. That two-letter prefix changes everything.

Consider the study of flashbulb memories, extremely vivid, detailed recollections. Shortly after the September 11 attacks, a team of psychologists led by William Hirst and Elizabeth Phelps surveyed several hundred subjects about their memories of that awful day. The scientists then repeated the surveys, tracking how the stories steadily decayed. At one year out, 37 percent of the details had changed. By 2004 that number was approaching 50 percent. Some changes were innocuous—the stories got tighter and the narratives more coherent—but other adjustments involved a wholesale retrofit. Some people even altered where they were when the towers fell. Over and over, the act of repeating the narrative seemed to corrupt its content. “What’s most troubling, of course, is that these people have no idea their memories have changed this much,” she says. “The strength of the emotion makes them convinced it’s all true, even when it’s clearly not.”

Reconsolidation provides a mechanistic explanation for these errors. It’s why eyewitness testimony shouldn’t be trusted (even though it’s central to our justice system), why every memoir should be classified as fiction, and why it’s so disturbingly easy to implant false recollections. (The psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has repeatedly demonstrated that nearly a third of subjects can be tricked into claiming a made-up memory as their own. It takes only a single exposure to a new fiction for it to be reconsolidated as fact.)

The fact is we already tweak our memories—we just do it badly. Reconsolidation constantly alters our recollections, as we rehearse nostalgias and suppress pain. We repeat stories until they’re stale, rewrite history in favor of the winners, and tamp down our sorrows with whiskey. “Once people realize how memory actually works, a lot of these beliefs that memory shouldn’t be changed will seem a little ridiculous.

 

[SantaFeWay]

Right Snook. And she came off as being ignorant. I was just listening to the first part of her testimony and she spoke like a thug. Total gangster chick. Ole Bernie kept saying...OK, OK, Ok after every question as if they practiced it and she was performing. What a disgrace all around.

And this was the prosecution's STAR witness. Sad.

 

[Snookie]

Right Snook. And she came off as being ignorant. I was just listening to the first part of her testimony and she spoke like a thug. Total gangster chick. Ole Bernie kept saying...OK, OK, Ok after every question as if they practiced it and she was performing. What a disgrace all around.

And this was the prosecution's STAR witness. Sad.

Like a paint job, preparation is extremely important.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Did they really present a witness who couldn't read what she wrote?

Yep. The defense asked her to read the letter she supposedly wrote to the Martin Family and she said she wasn't familiar with cursive.

That's sort of irrelevant.

And not germane to her deposition. Neither is the way she spoke or her appearance.

Her deposition, I am so glad you brought that up.

Why would the states attorney interview a witness who claims to have been on the phone with the victim of a hooting in the home of the parents of said victim? Did you know she specifically said that she didn't want to upset Trayvon's mother and that was why she lied?

I would really suggest you go back to paying Tiddly Winks instead of watching Nancy Grace, you don't know anything about this case, or the law.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Grab a basketball and look at how your fingers are splayed on the round surface. Take particular notice of how the fingertips are placed. Also, look at the position of the thumbs. If Martin had grabbed and pounded GZ's head into the ground multiple time as claimed, Martin's thumbs would have been in GZ's eyes, corners of the mouth or around his neck!. So where are the thumb marks on GZ's facial or neck area? And surely, if there was a head slamming at all, Martin would have GZ's DNA all over his fingers and thumbs not to mention under his fingernails. Sallow was right.. the evidence does NOT back Zimmerman's story!

Zimmerman said Martin had his hand over his mouth, want to rewrite your post?

Which kind of flies in the face of the whole "Zimmerman screaming for help" thing, doesn't it?

Does it?

 

[SantaFeWay]

Yes Fox,

I don't know if she was the saddest witness, but they did keep her on the stand too long. And the defense got disrespectful at the end (West). True, she would not be shaken, stating TM was the one who approached and spoke to GZ first, and not the other way around. I thought that was sweet irony indeed, considering the lengths so many have gone to protect this young lady. Rumblings say she will be recalled during the defense presentation. We shall see. But thank you for giving further understanding of your comments.

And NO, I don't think Rachel and Trayvon would have made a good couple. LOL Didn't hear much about that, but she insists they were just friends since elementary school and I believe her. She testified he was interested or in a relationship with a 16 YO girl.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I think they DID put on a case.

The defense case.

Did they really present a witness who couldn't read what she wrote?

She can't read cursive.

It's a wonder she can write it.

No one who cannot read cursive can write it.

 

[koshergrl]

Sarcastic is okay.

It's the pure unadullterated STUPID that gets old.

I think perhaps you and noomi are twins separated at birth. You should go the genetic testing route.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Did they really present a witness who couldn't read what she wrote?

She can't read cursive.

It's a wonder she can write it.

She might not have physically wrote it.

There is no might, she flat out did not write it.

 

[Foxfyre]

Re KissMy's most recent post:

I was teaching a Bible class with a group of 15 -16-17-yr olds who had all grown up sitting every Sunday in worship looking at a colorful modern tapistry hanging behind the pastor's pulpit. A member of our church made it with recognizable symbols in it, but it was very abstract.

To illustrate how there are so many variables in Biblical accounts presumably by eye witnesses to the same events, I asked the kids one morning to describe that tapestry they had been staring at for at least once a week for most of the years of their lives. We even made it a group project. Not one could remember exactly the design on that tapestry or all the colors in it. Yet every one of them would have recognized that tapestry on sight.

Likewise, ask any group of senior citizens if they remember when Kennedy was shot and every one knows exactly where they were, who they were with, and what they were doing when they got the news. And all spent the next days glued to their TVs and radios watching the events unfold in the wake of that event all the way through the state funeral. But ask any one of them to relate those events, and all will get at least something out of order, will have this or that fact wrong, remember some details that others won't remember, and otherwise be credible that they were a part of it, but all will be imperfect in some of their recollections.

How well could any of us, without looking it up, put all the events of 9/11 into their proper sequence?

So you take a young woman who didn't want to be there, who was obviously barely educated, who resented the entire process, and who had obviously been coached over and over by the prosecution team in advance of her testimoney, and you expect a Rhodes scholar?

 

[IlarMeilyr]

Did they really present a witness who couldn't read what she wrote?

She can't read cursive.

It's a wonder she can write it.

No one who cannot read cursive can write it.

Ya think?