Comments on: Will Stand Your Ground change the outcome of the Martin/Zimmerman case?

By: No, Paranoid Progressives, the Koch Brothers Had Nothing to Do with Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” Law

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 19:10:45 +0000

[…] even though ALEC had nothing to do with the passage of the Florida law, which probably will not even affect Zimmerman’s odds of being acquitted. (ALEC used Florida’s law as a model for other […]

By: ALEC Unfairly Demonized Over “Stand Your Ground” Laws

ALEC Unfairly Demonized Over “Stand Your Ground” Laws — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 21:57:03 +0000

[…] about how the laws work. In the case of George Zimmerman, as legal commentator Walter Olson noted, Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law will “make no difference one way or another on George […]

By: Zimmerman in custody, charged with second degree murder

Zimmerman in custody, charged with second degree murder — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 13:35:39 +0000

[…] at trial (on which see my Cato colleague Tim Lynch’s writing here and here, as well as mine), Ann Althouse asks: “Why inject an inapplicable, controversial issue? To inflame passions? […]

By: Jim Collins

Jim Collins — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:09:59 +0000

I have to go with Jerry on this one. I have to wonder if Martin was White would this incident even make the news, unless of course Zimmerman had been arrested.

By: Eric T.

Eric T. — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 01:15:00 +0000

I agree that the best guess for using the kid’s first name is that, legally, he was still a kid.

That theory should be quite easy to prove/disprove by looking at other articles with kids and seeing how they were referred to.

By: Peter K.

Peter K. — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 01:14:33 +0000

Does being Jewish or having a Jewish or Jewish-sounding surname like Zimmerman seem to disqualify one from membership in the “oppressed” Hispanic “race”?

The question first occurred to me when Sonia Sotomayor was nominated as the “first Hispanic” justice on SCOTUS. What was Benjamin Cardozo? Chopped liver??

Just askin’.

By: antiredistributionist

antiredistributionist — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 18:13:02 +0000

The Buddy Jacobs piece is remarkably weak. He assumes that the fact that justifiable homicides went up after the revision to the statute is necessarily sinister – that is, people who should have been convicted were acquitted. But it could just as easily reflect that people who would have been unjustly convicted before the change were instead properly acquitted. His speculation that a case he prosecuted might turn out differently today is laughable.

By: tim maguire

tim maguire — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 17:02:29 +0000

There’s probably something to that Jerry, except “Zimmerman” gives an inaccurate (but useful from the standpoint of an activist) mental image of the accused’s (is he the accused yet?) skin color (he’s hispanic, or, as the NY Times calls him, “white hispanic”).

As things unfold, it seems more and more to me that this will turn on when Martin became justified in using violence to defend himself. Does he have to wait for Zimmerman to strike first? If he hit too soon, Zimmerman gets off. If he waited long enough, Zimmerman goes to jail.

By: Jerryskids

Jerryskids — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:05:52 +0000

(Whether they should have worked harder to develop evidence of probable cause is a separate question.) It is indeed, and one I would like to see addressed.

From recent stories about Florida cops, it isn’t any work at all to come up with probable cause. Just having dark skin seems to trigger the ‘probable cause’ in the cop’s eyes which courts later dismiss as ‘no probable cause’.

And would it be wrong of me to suggest that the Sentinel’s literary style might lead one to suspect that is used simply because we all ‘know’ what color a Trayvon and a Zimmerman are whereas a Martin and a George might not let us know this important fact?

By: Calvin A

Calvin A — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 13:43:42 +0000

Maybe they thought his name was Martin Trayvon.