ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - Using words like "false testimony" and "misled," a judge granted $1 million bail Thursday for neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, but questioned his honesty and suggested he had plotted to leave the country when he was out of jail the first time.Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester referred to Zimmerman with words like "conceal" and "flee" more than a dozen times in an eight-page order that lets him out of jail while he awaits his second-degree murder trial in the shooting of Trayvon Martin.
Zimmerman has been acting like he *wants* to go to jail over this, between this latest brouhaha over his money situation to his call to Sean Hannity. Now it looks like he has sufficiently angered the judge presiding over the case that he's endangered his very defense. When it boils down to your word against the prosecution, and you've been caught lying and talking in code, that's a big hill to climb to prove you were truthful before.
I think when this case is reviewed in the future, it's going to be seen as a case study for what not to do - on all sides. The opponents of concealed carry and "Stand Your Ground" laws were quick to jump on angelic little Trayvon Martin, brutally murdered by a racist cop wanna-be on his way back from getting candy at a convenience store. Except, of course, that he was on suspension from school for dealing drugs and taking things what didn't belong to him, and had been shipped out of town to get away from his hoodlum friends.
And George Zimmerman. Defense attorneys and Second Amendment lawyers will be busy for decades teaching Zimmerman's case as how not to do things. Keep quiet. Ask for your attorney. Let said attorney do your talking. Don't contact talk show hosts. Don't mislead the court about your money situation - while he might have gotten hit with high bail had the full extent of his finances been known, now he's in danger of going up on murder one. Should have taken the money hit, George.
And the media. We know they'll never learn, because they were too busy sensationalizing and pushing an anti-gun, anti-self defense agenda to even attempt to get the facts of the story. From misrepresenting Zimmerman's 911 call to publishing the names and addresses of his family, the media has been a willing accomplice in the lynching of George Zimmerman. It was their good fortune that he seemed content to help them out.
If he manages to get out of this without a long stint in jail I'd be surprised - and through no small doing on his part.
That is all.
Another dispatch from...
(image courtesy of Robb Allen)
10 comments:
I'm still trying to figure out how his wife saying she didn't know how much money had been donated and telling the court who would know and offering to get him on the phone translates to "George deliberately misled the court about his finances."
At this point I have to seriously consider the possibility that someone got to the judge - politically or otherwise - and is pressuring him to Zimmerman jailed and possibly to force a conviction.
The courtroom has replaced the Coliseum but the crowd still wants blood.
The judge will give thumbs-down and Zimmerman will be thrown into the Hell of Raiford Prison.
He'll only live if he submits.
I hope Zimmerman takes advantage of bail to flee. There is no hope of anything approaching a fair trial for the man.
At one time I was thinking of making a donation to his defence fund. However, there is only so much you can do to help a stupid idiot. I'll keep my money.
Point of contention. He didn't call 911, he dialed the non-emergency number.
He may get out of this criminally but he is absolutely screwed civilly.
Code in this case being leaving off the word thousand every time you mentioned the amount of money in the accounts. Which to me would be the perfectly rational way to refer to the money assuming you knew that you knew the basic amounts available. But it's apparently "code".
In addition to the money he has paid for bail (twice now) he also needs to pay for his defense and living expenses until his trial.
Someone needs to bring up the U.S. Constitution's 8th Amendment: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
See this for a discussion:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment08/
I am disappointed that there was no appeal for a reduction in the bail amount.
So much for presumption of innocence and the restriction on the use of bail for punitive detention before trial.
For less biased reporting on this case, see Reuters, a European based news agency:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/25/us-usa-florida-shooting-zimmerman-idUSBRE83O18H20120425
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/06/us-usa-florida-shooting-idUSBRE8650WI20120706
And for more information on the role of the Skittles and Arizona Watermelon beverage, see this:
http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2012/05/24/update-26-part-2-trayvon-martin-shooting-a-year-of-drug-use-culminates-in-predictable-violence/
Another lesson to be taught...
DON'T GET OUT OF THE F%#*ING TRUCK!!!
Honestly, what kind of idiot goes out on foot, especially when he's not sure whether the other guy is armed?
I had a scene today when I could have gone all armed-and-macho on a younger guy, but who wants to end up like George Z?
Cormac was right--Mistake #1 was pursuing the suspect after reporting him.
"I am disappointed that there was no appeal for a reduction in the bail amount."
Ed, if FL courts are anything like in VA, the problem here is that this is occurring at the Circuit level, so the only appeal would be to the FL Court of Appeals (or whatever they call the level between Circuit and the state's Supreme Court). The problem is that it takes so long for the appeals courts to hear anything that the trial would be over before they got to hearing the bond appeal.
I've seen this happen here, too. A circuit judge revoked someone's bond essentially because he demanded a jury trial, but there was no point in appealing that revocation because the trial would be done before the appeal. It's a dirty trick that judges at that level can get away with because following the only normally (legally) effective path to correct a judge's bad behaviour is useless in these cases.
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