Today, I yammered about the Trayvon Martin case on the AlterNet Radio Hour, hosted by Joshua Holland.
Actually, I yammered via Skype on Friday, but the show aired this afternoon on We Act Radio in D.C. I, of course, streamed it on my iPad while tweeting about it, because it’s the twenty-first century and I’m nothing if not a slave to my iCrap.
The show is a good one, and has the added bonus of being fully-estrogenated. Three guests. Three women.
I’m second up (at around the 28 minute mark), after Dahlia Lithwick and before Sara Robinson. So… semper uteri! — or something.
Just roll the damn tape!
You’re welcome.
(I was also on the Hal Sparks Radio Show on Saturday. You can check that out here, if you like.)
[via AlterNet]
Amir Khalid
I’ve just been reading a rather long NYT story about Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, and their encounter. I wonder what you, as a lawyer, make of this claim.
ShadeTail
Any bets on how many comments it will be before one of the trolls demands to know why ABL is still posting here?
Anya
@ShadeTail: more like stalkers.
Michele
That’s awesome, ABL! I’ve just become acquainted with WeAct Radio so I’ll have to download it or wait for the rebroadcast. Exciting!
Michele
@Michele: Duh, I mean Alternet Radio…
Brian S
@Amir Khalid: One of the commenters at Coates’s place said the Sanford police are full of it, but not by much. Apparently, the law makes it so the police can be held liable if they arrest a person and it turns out the self-defense claim sticks, so police are loathe to arrest someone unless they’re sure they’ve got a solid case. And even then, it sometimes backfires, as in the other case in Florida where a guy chased down someone who’d stolen a radio from his car, stabbed him in the fight, denied it at first and then confessed. The fucking judge let the guy off based on stand your ground, even though he was clearly the aggressor at that point.
Anthony
Here’s the section Sanford PD are hiding behind
So I guess it depends on how liberal a definition you want to give to ‘probable cause’.
Warren Terra
@Brian S:
Apparently when the pursuer caught up to his quarry, his quarry “stood his ground” – swung a bag of stolen car radios at him. The court ruled this deadly assault by the quarry meant the pursuer had the legal right to stab him to death.
@Anthony:
Quoted there is seems a bit ambiguous, but certainly the way I’ve read about this section in the discussions since the Trayvon Martin death was publicized across the country matches what Brian S said above: that the police and especially the prosecutors are terrified they’ll be sued if they charge a killer who claims self-defense with a crime.
gwangung
@Warren Terra: Granted, it SEEMS like bullshit, but given the inexcusably bad way it was written, by NRA idiots who really don’t care outside of anyone outside of themselves, they are not wrong to think that way.
Martin
I DEMAND TO KNOW WHY abl IS STILL POSTING HERE!
Chris T.
The whole idea behind “stand your ground” is nuts. If you feel threatened, you can legally shoot anyone at any time. If I visit Florida and feel threatened because everyone there might (or might not) have a concealed weapon, everyone there should feel threatened because I might (or might not) have a concealed weapon, and therefore shoot them. Thus, they should all shoot me. Thus, I should shoot all of them.
I guess that’s one way to handle the insanity that is Florida: arm everyone there and they’ll all shoot each other and then there are no humans left there and the rest of us can take it over (or let it revert to the wild, which might be better, given that it’s … Florida :-) ).
Brian S
@Warren Terra: Apparently when the pursuer caught up to his quarry, his quarry “stood his ground” – swung a bag of stolen car radios at him. The court ruled this deadly assault by the quarry meant the pursuer had the legal right to stab him to death.
Which just shows how fricking ridiculous the law is. The pursuer instigated the contact. How the hell does he ever get to claim self-defense at that point? The judge basically said you have the right to hunt down and kill anyone who dares take your shit– all you have to do is claim they fought back when you tried to recover it. Are cops supposed to be irrelevant now? Will we turn them all into undertakers instead?
jheartney
@Chris T.: “Come visit Florida, where we play the Hunger Games every day!”
Bago
As an assassin, I felt that my paycheck was threatened by the target’s attempt to continue living.
Anthony
I feel like this is a law that was designed to be used selectively against ‘undesirables’, but it’s just so badly written that basically it’s out of control, and now they’re having it advertised on national television that murder is legal about half the time in their state.
gwangung
These people are so stupid that they don’t realize that using it selectively is a contradiction in terms. If it’s possible to go out of control and make it legal to murder half the time, that’s is EXACTLY what’s going to happen.
Conservatives used to sneer about liberals getting tripped up all the time by the law of unintended consequences—they’re now doing their damnedest to impale themselves on that same law.
Brian S
@gwangung: It’s not a contradiction in terms if you control who gets investigated and charged, which is what at least some of the law enforcement types in Sanford had in mind. The cop who “corrected” witnesses should never be allowed near another investigation, but I doubt anything happens to him.
slag
@jheartney: Good point. Maybe Florida is actually trying to change its nickname. The Sunstroke State?
gwangung
@Brian S:
Well, that’s what they THINK they can do, but what happens it incentivizes sloppy work, and that sort of thing is easy to get out of control.
burnspbesq
Bonus? Say what now?
I don’t judge pundits by the presence or absence of a Y chromosome. I judge them by what they say/write.
Why anyone with any pretense of objectivity or intellectual honesty would behave any other way is entirely beyond me.
Perhaps you’d like to explain where I’ve gone astray.
slag
Where to start?
Amir Khalid
@burnspbesq:
I think ABL is hinting that women aren’t often enough invited to offer their point of view on a show like this. I can’t imagine her suggesting that women are inherently better than men, except maybe where personal experience of certain gender-specific issues is relevant.
Citizen_X
@slag:
Humor: lack thereof …
Bnut
Have my babies.
Yutsano
@Bnut: Heh.
:: rubs hands together ::
brantl
@burnspbesq:You’re still breathing, and still, apparently,typing.
Lojasmo
@burnspbesq:
Your persistent defense of child-fucking, for a start.
Unsympathetic
Enough interesting facts have recently been uncovered that have put me squarely in “neutral” in the rush to judgement.
I WANT FACTS. Here’s most of my issues with the current story:
1) Why did NBC doctor Z’s 911 call to sound racist when in fact the exchanges were:
Zimmerman: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.”
911 operator: “Okay. And this guy, is he white black or Hispanic?”
Zimmerman: “He looks black.”
got translated to:
Zimmerman: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good, he looks black.”
2) All convenience stores have closed-circuit camera. If M was “on his way back from the store,” let’s see the camera footage to verify the story.
The following is the address from the police report –
2381 Retreat View Cir
Sanford, FL 32771
This could be an issue because the nearest convenience store is not close. Note that the nearest highway is not accessible by foot, you have to walk around. And it was raining at the time.
The story should be easy to verify. Has it been?
3) Eight felony grand theft burglaries in the last 14 months in M’s enclave alone — M is justifiably worried about unknown people at night wandering around aimlessly. He’s dismissed as paranoid, but here’s the thing: You’re not paranoid if you’re correct.
For those on this forum who claim that Sanford police are “racist” where’s the history of arresting and prosecuting the criminals who committed these 8 prior burglaries — most of which appear to be black?
4) The shooting:
IF at any point M mounted Z in a MMA-style “ground and pound” – that’s a perfectly justified shoot, case closed.
It does not matter whether Z called the cops 47 times in the last year.
It does not matter if Z is or not a racist.
It does not matter if M is or is not a thug.
It does not matter if the two of them had words.
It does not matter who pursued who.
It does not matter if M was confronted by Z.
It does not even matter if they got into a fistfight over their words.
If no, lock Z up.
The video of Z at the police station proves nothing for or against – in the undoctored footage you can see the cop stop and look at the back of Z’s head.
5) Eyewitness testimony that said Trayvon was on top – is this vetted?
6) The 911 tape that has the recorded screams: You would have a hard time convincing me that Trayvon who is bigger, stronger, younger, in shape, AND knows how to use his fists is going to scream like the person on that tape, because Z is beating him.
You hear screaming until the gun goes off. If only one of the two was screaming and only one of the two has injuries, well.
T’s own father told investigators that the screaming was not his son.
7) If you believe that Zimmerman wasn’t actually injured, remember that with that belief you’re also accusing both the EMT’s who treated Z at the scene and the police at the scene who took his statement as being accessories after the fact to manslaughter or worse.
Bubblegum Tate
Not to pick on you or anything, ABL, but it’s pretty annoying that Travon Martin has now been reduced to a hashtag. He was a human being, not something to be reduced to the level of #whatijustate and #winningwednesday.
Someguy
@burnspbesq:
You’re a white male, right?
Brachiator
@Bubblegum Tate:
This is the real problem. Was. Not alive and getting on with his life.
Not shit about hashtags.
Unsympathetic
ABL: You might be interested to learn that Zimmerman was the only community organizer in the area to support justice for Sherman Ware, a black homeless man who was beaten to death by the son of a Sanford police officer in 2010.