Category: trayvon martin
It is now 6:20PM, and the Jury in the Zimmerman Trial is waiting for more instructions on the manslaughter charge. The judge called all necessary participant to the court about a half an hour ago, and advised them that the Jury had sent a note.
The note read:
May we please have clarification on the instructions regarding manslaughter?
An educated guess would be that there is agreement among the jury on the more serious charge of second degree murder and need to know more about the manslaughter charge. If they find Zimmerman guilty of manslaughter, that charge carries a punishment of 30 years on jail.
The Judge has ordered a temporary recess as the Jury’s note is looked at.
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” — Howard Thurman
While we await on the jury’s deliberation on a verdict in the tragic Trayvon Martin murder case, regardless of the outcome, I know I must not be so focused on this forest that I forget to see all the trees.
When the verdict is made public, I will let my outrage– if it comes to that–or my sense of justification, be the pivoting point that spins in the directions of other mounting crises developing in our nation that deserve the unwavering attention I gave to Trayvon:
According to the New York Times, over 500 people were murdered last year in Chicago. PLACE OUTRAGE HERE!
At the start of this past Fourth of July, 2013 weekend, at least 55 people have been shot across Chicago, nine fatally.
Eleven people were wounded in shootings on the South and West Sides the following Friday night and early Saturday, the Tribune reports.
The weekend’s youngest victim was injured Thursday in a South Side park. Five-year-old Jaden Donald was shot in the abdomen and right leg while playing in a park just before midnight.
In light of the violence, it’s imperative that we continue to discuss positive solutions that will engage and keep our children safe. The Learn and Earn Program, a summer youth development program that engages hundreds of Chicago teens, is a model that is working.
It provides an academic enrichment and career development opportunity for approximately 700 Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) youth in order to prevent learning loss during summer time. The program also provides a “first real job” experience. This highly successful program is geared towards teens, ages 13-15, and is designed to reach scholars wherever they are on their learning journey.
source: Huff Post Chicago
On June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court effectively struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. PLACE OUTRAGE HERE!
In a vote of 5-to-4, the majority held that the coverage formula in Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, originally passed in 1965 and most recently updated by Congress in 1975, was unconstitutional. The section determined which states must receive clearance from the Justice Department or a federal court in Washington before they made minor changes to voting procedures, like moving a polling place, or major ones, like redrawing electoral districts.
Texas announced shortly after the decision that a voter identification law that had been blocked would go into effect immediately, and that redistricting maps there would no longer need federal approval.
Join Harlem’s famous First Corinthians Baptist Church as they partner with Al Sharpton and the National Action Network on August 24, 2013, on a sojourn to DC to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, the movement that spearheaded the proclamation of the VRA into law in 1965.
Interest rates on federally subsidized student loans could double by the time students return to campus this Fall. PLACE OUTRAGE HERE!
The possibility of rates soaring from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent is likely if Congress fails to reach a deal. Congress’ Joint Economic Committee has estimated the increase — unless and until it is reversed — will cost the average college student an additional $2,600!
President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, and Education Secretary Arne Duncan met with lawmakers Tuesday night to discuss possible options, including the market-based approach Obama included in his budget outline. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that a proposal to tie loan rates to the 10-year treasury note yield could never pass the Senate and that he couldn’t back something that doesn’t include stronger protections for students and parents.
In the past Democrats and Republicans voted for a few years of freebies in the form of reduced rates for student loans. It was a temporary fix to the escalating costs of getting an education in this country. The freebie is now expiring and some lawmakers are trying to bury the already financially strapped middle-class taxpayers, who btw are paying the highest loan interests ever, to keep the freebie rolling. No sense there!
Democrats, trying to find a stopgap measure to restore the 3.4 percent interest rates, have failed and are now simply looking for a way to lower rates for students before the Fall.
Education in America must not become a privilege. It must remain an inalienable right to all its citizens!
Apparently, a teenager realizing that a strange man is following him should not stand his ground and defend himself if he has to.
And if the strange man follows the teenager, pulls out a gun and kills the teen for defending himself, then the strange man’s lawyer gets to blame the murder of the teenager on the teenager.
It all unfilded today as George Zimmerman’s lawyer Mr. O’Mara, made his closing statement.
Earlier, O’Mara warned jurors against filling in holes in the prosecution’s case, cautioning against making presumptions and assumptions.
Yet he invited them to form their own conclusions about Martin, particularly in the four-minute gap that O’Mara said passed between Zimmerman’s losing sight of Martin and when Martin attacked.
He dramatized that length of time by pausing for four minutes, leaving the courtroom silent.
“Four minutes. You get to figure out what Trayvon Martin was doing,” O’Mara told the jury. “Four minutes to do what? To run home. To walk home.”
Instead, O’Mara said, Martin attacked Zimmerman
The New York Daily News reports as Zimmerman’s trial closed Friday, his defense lawyer declared in summation that the unarmed Martin was to blame .
“We know he had the opportunity to go home, and he didn’t do that,” Mark O’Mara said, brazenly turning the world on its head . “The person who decided to make the night violent was the guy who didn’t go home when he had the chance.”
So George Zimmerman was called “Physically soft” by his trainer. Adam Pollock, owner of Kokopelli Gym, even went on to call Zimmerman “non athletic.” Pollock’s testimony earlier this week was part of the defence’s efforts to say that Trayvon Martin was the aggressor and Zimmerman had no choice but to use his gun and take Trayvon’s life.
Of course, if Zimmerman had listened to authorities when they told him not to follow Trayvon, there would be no need for Pollock’s testimony calling Zimmerman “non athletic”, there would be no need for a Zimmerman trial and Trayvon Martin would still be alive today.
And there would be no need for Pollock to apparently try and profit from his testimony and Trayvon’s death. In a shocking ad, the owner of the gym where Zimmerman trained put up a “Zimmerman” page on his website, promising to send information on Zimmerman’s training to anyone who enter their name and email address in his website’s database.
Data collection in itself is one way websites make money. Data brokers are companies that buy this data from other sources, including websites, and use this data to target potential consumers. Pollock’s database has the potential to grow tremendously, because of the high publicity case his testimony is now a part of.
Below is a screenshot of Pollock’s request for your data.
“F**king punks, these a**holes always get away.” Those were the words spoken by prosecutor John Guy during his opening statements this morning as the murder trial of George Zimmerman began in Sanford, Florida. These exact words are, of course, the ones that came out of Zimmerman’s mouth during a 911 phone call he made to say that then-17-year-old Trayvon Martin was in his gated community acting suspiciously.
Guy and the rest of the prosecution are out to prove that not only did Zimmerman follow and shoot Martin because he unfairly profiled him as someone who would possibly commit a crime, but that he shot the teen because he “wanted to.”
“George Zimmerman didn’t shoot Trayvon Martin because he had to. He shot him for the worst of all reasons – because he wanted to.” The prosecutor also took time to poke holes in Zimmerman’s account to police about what happened on that fateful night in February. Guy claimed that statements made saying Martin had his hand over Zimmerman’s mouth aren’t true seeing as Zimmerman’s DNA wasn’t found on Martin’s body, and the teen’s DNA wasn’t found on Zimmerman’s gun or holster, refuting claims that Martin got his hands on Zimmerman’s firearm during their fight, according to Guy.
h/t – Madamenoire
The screams are clearly coming from a distraught male, whose repeated cries for help end abruptly with a gunshot. What is not clear from a recording of a 911 call, however, is the identity of the screamer: George Zimmerman, the volunteer community watchman, or Trayvon Martin, the unarmed 17-year-old he killed that night.
While jurors in Mr. Zimmerman’s second-degree-murder trial, in which opening statements are scheduled for Monday, may get to hear the recording in court, they will not hear the opinions of two audio experts for the prosecution about who the screamer is, or is not. One concluded that the voice was not Mr. Zimmerman’s; the other said it was very likely Mr. Martin’s.
In an order released on Saturday, the judge in the case, Debra S. Nelson, excluded their testimony. She said the science supporting the experts’ analyses “is not as widely accepted at this time” as the more established methods relied on by defense witnesses who said it was impossible to conclude whose voice it was.
A neighbor made the 911 call on Feb. 26, 2012, during the fatal encounter between Mr. Zimmerman, who is Hispanic, and Mr. Martin, who was black and was returning to a home where he was staying after buying snacks. Citing Mr. Zimmerman’s claims of self-defense, the police did not arrest him for six weeks, setting off protests nationwide.
Shocking, yea, I know. But it’s only shocking to you because you are thinking as a logical person. If you watched Fox News however, you might believe that Trayvon Martin caused his own murder.
That is the kind of information Fox is broadcasting. One of their guest, a former New York Police Detective Harry Houck, actually opened his mouth and made that statement, saying “… listen, Trayvon Martin would be alive today if he didn’t have a street attitude. That’s the bottom line.”
I supposed the “street attitude” Detective Harry Houck is talking about has to do with the Skittles Trayvon had when he was shot by Zimmerman. Or maybe it was the can of Iced Tea he bought at Seven Eleven. Those two things mixed with Trayvon’s skin color automatically equals “street attitude” in this Detective’s mind.
That is a scary statement, but it’s even more scarier coming from someone who was a New York Police detective. With an attitude like this, I wonder how many innocent people are imprisoned because of this stereotypical racist attitude from a detective.
All his cases should be reopened and examined thoroughly! It’s disgraceful that a detective would even entertain this way of thinking.
It is the case that shocked the nation, shocked the world for that matter. And today, the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin trial officially began with jury selection.
Zimmerman, 29, is charged with second-degree murder and faces up to life in prison if convicted. He has pleaded not guilty, contending he acted in self-defense during a confrontation with Martin, 17, in a gated community in this central Florida town on February 26, 2012.
After a brief opening session in the courtroom, where Zimmerman was joined by his wife Shellie, Circuit Court Judge Debra Nelson called a recess so that she, the prosecutors and defense attorneys could meet briefly with a pool of about 100 potential jurors.
The jurors were then to fill out a questionnaire before being summoned one by one into the courtroom for individual questioning.
It is unclear how long it will take for the judge and lawyers to select a panel of six jurors.
At the time of the Martin killing, Zimmerman, a light-skinned Hispanic, was the self-appointed neighborhood watch captain in the Retreat at Twin Lakes community. During a struggle, he killed Martin with a single shot to the chest from a 9mm handgun.
With just a few weeks before his second degree murder trail is set to begin, George Zimmerman’s defense team has hit another barrier. Earlier today (May 28) a judge barred the admission of Trayvon Martin’s text messages, social media posts, and other records during the trial.
Zimmerman’s team wanted to use the evidence to paint Martin as more of an aggressor than a victim. In looking into his previous school suspension records, alleged Mary Jane smoking, and other damaging actions, the defense hoped to prove that the accused killer shot Martin, 17, out of self defense.
“There’s is certainly enough evidence….that’s going to suggest Trayvon Martin involved himself longingly with fighting with other people,” Zimmerman’s lead attorney Mike O’Mara said.
Although the ruling is a blow, it may not be permanent.
From NBC News:
Judge Debra Nelson said that during the trial she will consider motions to admit details as evidence on a case-by-case basis, outside the presence of jurors who will decide if Zimmerman is guilty of second-degree murder in the shooting death of Martin.
Capping a slew of rulings on pre-trial motions, Nelson rejected a defense request for a trial delay and ruled that jury selection will begin June 10.
“This case has dragged on long enough,” prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda said in arguing for the trial to start as scheduled.
Over the course of two hours, Nelson granted numerous motions by prosecutors, who argued that details of the slain teen’s past are not be relevant to the Feb. 26, 2012, confrontation between Zimmerman and Martin and should not be discussed before the jury.
This isn’t the first time that Martin’s personal life has seeped into the media, as well as Zimmerman’s. Since the February 2012 incident, both have had unknown public records dragged into the spotlight, but it is unclear if any of the evidence will sway jurors in either direction.
Zimmerman’s trial begins June 10.
See more at: HiphopWired
George Zimmerman, charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, waived his right Tuesday to seek immunity under Florida’s “stand your ground” self-defense law before his June trial.
His lawyers have said they may seek immunity later.
Zimmerman, who has pleaded not guilty, is a former neighborhood watch volunteer of white and Hispanic descent who has maintained he shot Martin on Feb. 26, 2012, in self-defense after Martin attacked him.
The “stand your ground” law says people do not have to retreat if they believe they are in imminent danger of being killed or badly injured.