George Zimmerman... again.

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**Ouze**

cuda1179 wrote:
not salty, I was referring to myself.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. If I was on the jury I'd have acquitted Zimmerman reluctantly. However, if things had played out differently, and Zimmerman had died (shot by own gun, head beaten on concrete, whatever) I'd probably have acquitted Martin on any charges too.

Truthfully I think this is where I would have landed too. Actually I can just repost what i said in 2013.

it's possible that no one at all was technically, or legally, "wrong".

Zimmerman follows TM. No problem.

TM feels that he is in danger for his life, that he is being stalked by a dangerous, possibly armed, stranger. There are no witnesses and no evidence to what sparked the confrontation so we don't know what triggered the physicality. He decides under SYG to defend himself. He is technically and legally right - in fact, he could beat Zimmerman to death under this law and be legally OK in my opinion, under SYG, so long as he can later prove he had "reasonable" cause to fear for his safety - which again, is pretty damn nebulous.

Zimmerman is being beaten and is now also in fear for his life and employs deadly force. He is, again, legally OK.

So, we have a young man dead, but no actual crime was comitted - just a serious of really unfortunate events.

Ultimately in my opinion, under the evidence that we have and the facts that we have - justice was served. I think the prosecution overreached; and my only concern was that it appeared he would never be charged at all initially when I think there was ample evidence a crime may have been committed. Once he was charged, tried, and found not guilty - our system worked.

Morally, of course, he should probably have listened to the damn dispatcher and let the police handle it. He doesn't have to listen to the dispatcher, but he sure should have. Bad judgement in this case was not a crime, though

.

DominayTrix wrote:
I think the fact that the dude was hired by Jay-Z and the Weinstein Company is a significant factor that people seem to be overlooking. You have a PI being backed by a very powerful and wealthy individual who has an established history with the BLM movement including a 1.5M dollar donation. Jay-Z is also a longtime friend of the Martin family ever since the Treyvon's death. This is enough to question if the documentary was heavily biased and inconsiderate to Zimmerman's privacy. Then you add in the Weinstein Company's well established history of predatory use of PI's to control and harass people. Don't get me wrong Zman is an idiot to make death threats especially against public figures, but something here doesn't add up. It could be as simple as a publicity stunt to get the documentary coverage, Zimmerman being an idiot, or an actual frame job. It could even be a combination of any number of things. We do not have enough information at this point.

I don't see any reason why Zimmerman should get the benefit of the doubt in this situation even if you handwave away the number of calls and contacts (which, why would you?). I think his previous legal difficulties have amply proven the Raylan Givens maxim: "If you run into an donkey-cave in the morning, you ran into an donkey-cave. If you run into donkey-caves all day, you're the donkey-cave.'"

**jhe90**

Vaktathi wrote:
cuda1179 wrote:
Vaktathi wrote:
The PI made contact with Z's family, beyond that we dont know, but unless the PI was doing something illegal that would get his license revoked, there doesn't appear to be anything that would warrant 55 phone calls, 67 text messages, 36 voicemails and 27 emails of an angry and threatening nature, especially after being told to stop.

In most situations I would be giving the person in Zimmerman's situation the benefit of the doubt, but Zimmerman, even outside the Martin event, has a long and established history of escalating things far beyond necessary and going out of his way to generatr drama, to say nothing of his naked profiting from the death of a teenager and the bulk load of ugly cringe that was involved in him selling that weapon.

The guy has to eat man, and the gun was his to sell. He's virtually unemployable now. Wasn't he living like a hermit in a camper for a while?
No clue, he may be living in a camper, I dunno.

Yes, the gun was his to sell, I make no attempt to deny him that right.

However, the manner in which he did so, the attention it attracted, the group of people who were interested in it, and the rhetoric used in its sale was...well, lets just say it reflected well on nobody involved, putting it politely. Profiting off the death of a teenager in a nakedly crass manner impresses few people.

As is, given how the dude seems to find himself in new trouble like clockwork, and goes out of his way to revel in the drama in an aggressive and bellugerent manner, and uses his killing of a teenager as some sort of badge of honor/toughness display routinely, I wouldn't employ him either.

Gakky way to sell it but yeah...

He does own it and can sell it if like. However the fact is they have the right to refuse sale of such a hot item.

And well.. Yeah. I'm not sure what you can do with the guy... His name is toxic.

Its... Well he a walking target for anyone. His bad press would be massive, like a cargo ship of baggage.

**LordofHats**

jhe90 wrote:

And well.. Yeah. I'm not sure what you can do with the guy... His name is toxic.

Honestly his name isn't what's toxic. You don't keep ending up wrapped in drama like he does because your name hit the national press and stayed there for awhile. The world is full of such people who manage to go through life and simply fade away no matter what got them the fame in the first place.

The man is toxic by his nature.

**cuda1179**

Yeah, he is toxic. However unlike other infamous people, this and the Michael Brown incident sparked a national movement which helped Zman stay in the news much longer than would be expected.

When you are in the "high end" of psuedo celebrity status small things can easily bounce you back into the spotlight. I'm sure there are other people that used up their 15 minutes and still do stupid stuff. Yet we don't hear about it because it's not ratings worthy, or doesn't fit the media objective.

**Vaktathi**

cuda1179 wrote:
Yeah, he is toxic. However unlike other infamous people, this and the Michael Brown incident sparked a national movement which helped Zman stay in the news much longer than would be expected.

When you are in the "high end" of psuedo celebrity status small things can easily bounce you back into the spotlight. I'm sure there are other people that used up their 15 minutes and still do stupid stuff. Yet we don't hear about it because it's not ratings worthy, or doesn't fit the media objective.

I think, perhaps more importantly, people involved in those other incidents don't wear them like a defiant badge of macho pride, go out of their way to profit from the experience, or get themselves into altercations that involve the police every year or so.

We don't hear squat about say, Darren Wilson these days.

**cuda1179**

What is the running list of things Zimmerman has done since the trial ended?

He got into a domestic event with his wife

Tried to sell the gun

Rescued a guy in a car accident

Harrassed a PI.

Am I missing something there? That's four instances, but only three are bad. Even then, selling the gun might have been necessary for a guy that will likely never be employed again. I'd also like to hear all the facts about this PI shenanigans.

**Ouze**

cuda1179 wrote:
Am I missing something there?

Yes, but I also live in Iowa and know for sure we get Wikipedia here so you can read for yourself.

**daedalus**

Daaaaaaaaaaaamn.

**Vaktathi**

cuda1179 wrote:
What is the running list of things Zimmerman has done since the trial ended?
He got into a domestic event with his wife

Twice, and then later with an ex-girlfriend as well.

Tried to sell the gun

Successfully sold a gun yes. In an intentionally provactive manner, describing it as an "American Firearm Icon" and how he used it to" end the brutal attack from Trayvon Martin on 2/26/2012" and lying about how the Smithsonian expressed interest in it. That's a dude going out of his way to generate drama.

Rescued a guy in a car accident

Harrassed a PI.

Am I missing something there? That's four instances, but only three are bad. Even then, selling the gun might have been necessary for a guy that will likely never be employed again. I'd also like to hear all the facts about this PI shenanigans.

Stuff like retweeting images of Martin's body (with a confederate battle flag profile image created for a gun store owner who banned Muslims from his store), getting into trouble selling patriotic "paintings" with stolen stock imagery, openly bragging about killing Martin resulting in a barfight, and then getting into another barfight and using racial slurs, Doxxing an ex girlfriend and accusing her of sleeping with a "ditry Muslim", and I'm sure there's a couple others I'm forgetting about

Some of these could perhaps be explained away or set aside or even be seen as understandable (particularly the bar incidents), and I'm not including his 2005 era run ins with the law or the incidents where trouble went out of its way to find him (such as the encounters with Matthew Apperson which I don't blame Zimmerman for), but the dude is so provacative and deliberately offensive in his actions and statements, and runs into so much trouble, that they form a pretty clear pattern of a belligerent donkey-cave.

**cuda1179**

Ouze wrote:
cuda1179 wrote:
Am I missing something there?

Yes, but I also live in Iowa and know for sure we get Wikipedia here so you can read for yourself.

I would have wiki'd that, but it's harder than you'd think. At the time of my last comment I was on a device cobbled together from the internals of my daughter's broken tablet duck taped to the tiniest ever screen from an Android phone sitting in my lost and found box for two years. (Hey, slow day at work leads to idle hands).

**LordofHats**

Vaktathi wrote:
the dude is so provacative and deliberately offensive in his actions and statements, and runs into so much trouble, that they form a pretty clear pattern of a belligerent donkey-cave.

Basically. Sure he spawned a national movement, but the movement isn't about Zimmerman. When's the last time anyone talked about OJ? When he released that not confession book? Does anyone care about OJ since then? Probably Nicole Brown's folks but they're probably it. Roman Polanski gets brought up here and there, most recently when the Weinstein stuff was hitting but other than that how many people talk about Polanski?

Reality is that these guys only come up because they've done something recently, or someone did something else really similar. If Zimmerman wanted to fade away into the background of society and be left alone he easily could.

It's pretty damn clear that's not actually a priority for the guy. He doesn't know how to back down, even when it's patently for his own good which really just goes back to why he's famous in the first place.

The guy really doesn't seem able to help himself.

**cuda1179**

Well, OJ did organize an armed robbery in Vegas. He was also in the news for tax evasion, road rage, hiding income needed to satisfy the wrongful death judgement against him, he was implicated in money laundering and drug dealing (but never convicted), and sold illegal satellite TV descramblers.