{"id":2391,"date":"2013-07-23T11:52:58","date_gmt":"2013-07-23T15:52:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/?p=2391"},"modified":"2013-07-23T11:52:58","modified_gmt":"2013-07-23T15:52:58","slug":"the-zimmerman-verdict-part-6-what-if-versus-what-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/the-zimmerman-verdict-part-6-what-if-versus-what-is\/","title":{"rendered":"THE ZIMMERMAN VERDICT, PART 6: \u201cWHAT IF\u201d VERSUS \u201cWHAT IS\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Much of this case came down to speculation versus fact. We saw it in the trial, we saw it in the prosecution\u2019s case, we see it even in comments on this blog.\u00a0 In the spring of 2012, in the question\/answer session that followed the CATO Institute \u201cStand Your Ground Symposium\u201d, a sincere young man who happened to be African-American asked me if SYG protection would have been in effect for Trayvon Martin if he had been violently attacked by George Zimmerman, and had killed Zimmerman in self-defense.\u00a0 My answer was \u201cYes, of course.\u201d And I would give the same answer now.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

The only problem with that hypothetical is, there is nothing to substantiate it, and there is a large body of facts in evidence to support the jury\u2019s verdict that Zimmerman was not guilty of murder, or any lesser included offense. A large body of collective evidence showing that it was Martin who attacked Zimmerman, and not vice-versa.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat if <\/i>Zimmerman hadn\u2019t gotten out of his car, and just driven on to his destination, the Target store?\u201d \u00a0Well, certainly, the confrontation would not have occurred. But that pales in comparison to what if <\/i>Trayvon Martin had not attacked him and smashed his head into the sidewalk? In following a strange man who was looking into windows in a community riven by burglaries and even a home invasion, Zimmerman never broke the law. Indeed, had it not ended in death, most would have appreciated him taking notice and calling the authorities\u2026as people had done earlier, when the head of the homeowner\u2019s association in that community had chased down and captured a burglary suspect.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat if <\/i>Zimmerman had avoided any danger by not getting involved at all?\u201d Well, if the nineteen firefighters killed<\/a> last month in Arizona hadn\u2019t \u201cgotten involved,\u201d they wouldn\u2019t have died either. Does that make them responsible for their own deaths? Review the case of Kitty Genovese<\/a> \u00a0and then get back to me with your \u201cDon\u2019t get involved\u201d argument. But take a long look in the mirror, first, and ask yourself how long you\u2019d want to live with looking in the mirror of the face of someone who \u201cdidn\u2019t get involved\u201d enough to pick up a phone to help Kitty Genovese, and didn\u2019t do what a reasonable and prudent person would construe the voice of authority on that phone asked you to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat if <\/i>Zimmerman hadn\u2019t carried that evil gun?\u201d\u00a0 Well, with Zimmerman having his head smashed against the sidewalk and being unable to escape, Trayvon Martin would probably have stood trial for the murder of George Zimmerman. The evidence and testimony are consistent with Zimmerman\u2019s account of what happened. So is something the jury never learned of during trial: the lie detector test (voice stress analysis) which Zimmerman passed shortly after the shooting, and which confirmed that he was telling the truth.\u00a0 He also passed the \u201cbullshit detector test\u201d of not one but two veteran police officers who expertly and vigorously interrogated him, without defense counsel present.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat if <\/i>it turned out that Zimmerman had made the first confrontation and pulled his gun on Martin, causing Martin to jump him and beat him in self-defense?\u201d That WOULD have been justifiable for Martin\u2026but there is ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE TO INDICATE THAT IT DID HAPPEN. Stop and think: would a man hungry to kill, with a loaded gun already in his hand, have taken the savage beating Zimmerman did, for at least 40 seconds, before firing?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat if\u201d is not the standard of the law, nor the standard of logic. \u201cWHAT IS\u201d remains the standard for both.\u00a0 The evidence, not a hypothetical \u201ctheory of the case,\u201d is what counts in every aspect of the real world\u2026the real world of the courts, and the real world of the streets.<\/p>\n

A duly empanelled jury determined the truth from the facts in evidence and the testimony presented.\u00a0 Even the testimony of the prosecution\u2019s <\/i>witnesses overwhelmingly favored the defense.<\/p>\n

And that was only the evidence the jury was allowed to see.\u00a0 There was much more evidence which was confirmatory to Zimmerman\u2019s account of a clear-cut self-defense shooting. We\u2019ll get to that soon in this space\u2026and why the jury was not allowed to see it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Much of this case came down to speculation versus fact. We saw it in the trial, we saw it in the prosecution\u2019s case, we see it even in comments on this blog.\u00a0 In the spring of 2012, in the question\/answer session that followed the CATO Institute \u201cStand Your Ground Symposium\u201d, a sincere young man who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2391","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-firearm-owners-civil-rights","8":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}