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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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xp - Stand Your Ground laws
Ok so apparently Fla's stand your ground law allows for immunity from civil lawsuits. So if TM's family wanted to bring a wrongful death (civil suit), for example, gz can argue he is immune because he stood his ground. This is just insane. There is an issue though that the jury only received stand your ground in the jury instructions - there was no specific ruling on stand your ground so that issue will likely be litigated if this comes up.
Re: xp - Stand Your Ground laws
Here's a link explaining the jury instructions/syg
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/07/15/2301621/why-stand-your-ground-is-central-to-george-zimmermans-case-after-all/?mobile=nc
These dangerous wild wild west laws really need to go away.
of course not
(There are murders far more heinous than TM's and they do not make it to the big news hubbub. Why is that?
6 years back, there were 6 kids from my area who were shot in cold blood-- it was gang activity; 2 survived. That case didn't make it to the national media at all.
Took the case over 4 years to go to trial)
I agree with you that there seems to be an imbalance in what goes widely reported and what doesn't. It's all about the media's focal point and ongoing narrative for the time. They decide what this nation gets to care about.
I could not agree more. Kermit Gosnell routinely victimized low income and desperate women. His story could have just as easily been spun as an argument for pro-choice by saying that it's a shame that this was the only option these women felt they had (to go see him) and how the system failed to protect them. Because it dealt so gruesomely with unseemly details that the narrative doesn't like to address, they went with complete blackout instead.
Exactly. It was shocking, just shocking, how underreported this story was and it was HUGE deal too.
So what stokes your interest in this case if not the media hype? Are you local? The details are actually rather dry. Locally we had a white teenager brutally murdered by 4 black youths. They admitted they specifically targeted him and another victim who escaped earlier in the evening because they were white. They shot him in the head and took the sandwich he was carrying and ate it. A few months before that 3 other youths in my town robbed a chinese delivery man, stole the money and chinese food from him after they lured him to a false address then went back to the cab after eating the food and pilfered his body and cab looking for other items to steal. I don't think nearly so many people are following those cases of truly heinous behavior. Not nearly so many people seem to be following the near genocide of black youth in the city of Chicago. I don't get the interest in this vs any of the other ones aside from media exposure.
But what is your point, snp? Do you expect the national media to report on every story? I think it's pretty much universally agreed that the media sucks and cherry picks national stories.
Truly heinous things happen daily here. More than once a day. More than twice a day. Just last night, less than a mile from my house, a 20 year old employee was murdered and his female 20 year old co-worker kidnapped from a local dollar store. Did you hear about it? Is her face all over the national news?
I have to agree with lasposa...I don't get the relevance of this to the discussion. How does what the media does and doesn't report on relate to the Zimmerman/Martin tragedy? Are ya'll implying the media shouldn't have reported on it? And if so, why?
I completely agree with all of this. I feel that the media spun this story completely out of proportion, and made it into a civil rights case, even though both TM and GZ were minorities. There are many cases out there far more terrible than this, or *gasp* involving hate crimes against whites, but that gets no coverage. I do feel the media chooses to find some element, whether it exists or not, in a case and blow it up to make the story more sensational.
**6.30.12** I have found the one whom my soul loves.
Do you really not realize that not only minorities have civil rights? Please tell me you are kidding. If not, you should maybe have your citizenship revoked.
ETA: To claim that the media shouldn't report on this because there are worse crimes out there is just illogical. So, the media should only do a round-up of the most heinous, most horrifying crimes ever committed? This case was compelling because an unarmed kid, doing nothing wrong, was shot and killed after someone singled him out as "suspicious". Sorry you have no interest in the story...but many of us do.
Maybe it's not so much that the media *shouldn't* report (although for a purist journalistic perspective I think they should make better decisions) but rather that we should be better consumers of the news. This story was really nothing more than a local story just like many of the other ones mentioned here. However, someone powerful brought in Ryan Julison who is a mega PR guy (think celebrity scandals and banking disasters) to create a plan to drag the case into the media eye and part of that plan was to make the case seem as scandalous as possible. We have all just been advertised to not unlike the campaigns run by scandal ridden companies to try to win your trust back or create a buzz about a certain movie or tv show. All of the family appearances and such we scheduled, timed and crafted to create a certain narrative and there was nothing natural or normal about it.
Unless there is something truly and blatantly amiss such as using taxpayer funds to fund a human trafficking ring or tax law being applied unfairly, etc that we can actually do something about, I don't think it warrants the coverage it received. We have been dupes for a mega PR firm while plenty of other issues have been ignored. I have no issue with the case being publicized at all but more the extent and way it was publicized (ie turning it into a race issue) and the misinformation campaign the created more hard feelings rather than attempted to right a wrong.
We have been duped? How pathetic is it that it took the media to call attention to this matter so that the person who shot and killed a teenage boy would have a trial. The police questioned him and just took his word for the truth and didn't seem to think a charge was necessary. Unless you think that's okay?
We can't do anything about this? So, the law is the law and that's it? I'm sorry but I wholeheartedly disagree. If that were the case, there would be no progress, ever.
I also find it interesting that you claim to know so much about this case and keep posting about a case that you have the audacity to question other people's interest in. If you can't understand why people are interested in it, I have no words. If you're not interested in it, ok, no one's forcing you to discuss it but please stop telling people to not care about it because in your mind it's just a run of the mill local case and there are other things to care about. How dare you.
I think it is OK the media reported on the story. However I think it is wrong that they "spun" it. Remember how NBC Edited The 911 Tape Audio And Made George Zimmerman Sound Racist?
http://www.businessinsider.com/nbc-is-investigating-how-its-news-edited-the-audio-to-make-george-zimmerman-look-really-racist-2012-4
Reporting is OK, media bias is not.
Yes, I know. Journalism is dead. However, doctoring a 911 call to further their claim of racism...just plain wrong.
What upsets me is that not everybody understands this, and takes what is "reported" in the media as gospel truth. Way toooooooo many misinformed people walking about.
This. This is what interests me about the case.
A common myth in the case that I have seen posted on this board in just the past few days is that the detective seemingly begged to bring charges. In fact, the FBI report released reported EXACTLY the opposite. Sperino did NOT want to file charges. He was feeling pressured by 3 other officers to bring them (incidentally not responding officers to the scene and one of whom was friendly with the family). After the media mogul was hired to spin the unevidenced story of racism by a civil rights attorney connected to the family, the governor appointed Angela Corey as a special state prosecutor to investigate the case. Bill Lee, the police chief who had not brought charges and felt that there was insufficient evidence to do so, told Serino he must file a capias in order to give jurisdiction in the case over to the state vs. the Sanford police department. A capias has to have some recommended criminal charge as it is a type of warrant. Serino did as he was advised thus recommended manslaughter as that was the only thing he could see *might* be able to be charged. So essentially, in order to give the State Prosecutor the jurisdiction the governor called for he filed a form that recommended manslaughter. Not because he believed it to be so.
Someone stated that Zimmerman made 44 calls against black youth in the years preceding this. Obviously someone got this information from somewhere-either someone who makes gross errors or someone who was deliberately spinning the story. Either way this person's account was trusted and then shared despite it being provably and patently false.
Very little has been discussed about the lab whistle blower reported the prosecution in for not turning over his report to the defense as required by law who has now been fired for disclosing this information.
There are still people who believe that Zimmerman was bigger than Martin and that Martin was a small, slight middle school sized baby. Witnesses in court on this case testified that their very own testimony being used by the prosecution to convict him was SHAPED by the media reports.
Martin did not live with either of his parents yet they have been the ones making all of the national appearances and collecting money off of his death despite not even knowing what his interests or likes were or even where he was the night he died. That makes me a little sick.
No one is saying that there isn't rampant racism of all kinds in this country and no one (at least not here) is saying that a young person dying over a misunderstanding is anything less than sad. The problem is that when true and obvious racism rears its ugly head, people will have become jaded and numb to it a la the boy who cried wolf because of things like this.
The Martin family attorney, Benjamin Crump, was the key to getting this case the attention it garnered. The family didn't let this go, engaged Crump, and his media savvy made this case stand out.
This wasn't "luck" that got this case into the national eye, it was a media plan by a smart attorney.
DMoney will be a kickass big sister
I don't think you understood what I meant, clearly, because I didn't say that minorities don't have rights, because obviously they do. It's just irritating that the media reports that GZ as a white man and tries to stir up emotions by comparing the case to civil rights cases or old cases of white on black violence when it has no relevance because the killer was not white. All it does is cause racially-motivated retaliation and anger and resentment of other races. Guess I should have my citizenship revoked though for expecting the media to stay objective and actually report the facts.
**6.30.12** I have found the one whom my soul loves.
I think you are having a reading comprehension fail. YOU stated that this case couldn't be about civil rights because both parties were minorities. I pointed out that everyone has civil rights. It doesn't matter if they are a minority or not. A minority can violate another minority's civil rights. Get it?
And yeah, if you expect the media to actually report the facts, I would guess you haven't watched fox news, cnn, or any other "big" news channel lately. It's all spin.
wow, I had no idea about all the above info.
What happened to those 4 black youths?
After their involvement and whereabouts were hidden by their local community, they were captured. They did not wait for police to arrive, give as many statements and accounts as asked for, they did not voluntarily turn themselves in when faced with having their account decided by a jury. When many taxdollars were spent trying to find them failed, they were turned over by someone else who they had threatened. They then matter of factly stated, and the evidence supported, that they went out looking for white victims (they had attempted to rob 2 other people that evening). At that point they were arraigned and they were given benefit of a grand jury (something Zimmerman never got). No one has threatened their families, marched on their neighborhoods or screamed corruption despite charges already being lessened against 3 of the people involved before it ever goes to trial. In fact there has been quite a bit of outreach in the community about how to heal feelings in the black community so young men might not feel compelled to do something like this again.
Despite admitting that the victim was singled out purely over race, no one has been charged with a hate crime.