Monday, July 08, 2013

Inadvertent lesson in logic

It looks like the problems for the prosecution in the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case go much deeper than flakiness on the part of the prosecution's witnesses.  In the linked article, John Lott points out that the prosecution is arguing two points which have no relevance in the case; whether Zimmerman was badly hurt, and whether Zimmerman understood Florida's "Stand your Ground" law.

The trick here is, as I've noted before, Zimmerman had little chance of outrunning a decent high school cornerback (which Martin was), and he'd just been thrown on his back by the same person.  Hence, Zimmerman had every expectation that Martin would inflict death or grievous bodily harm--and almost all states allow lethal self-defence in such a situation.  "Stand your ground" and the seriousness of Zimmerman's injuries have no relevance here.

Now granted, I'm not in the courtroom, but given the apparent collapse of prosecutor Angela Corey's case against Zimmerman on basic standards of evidence, it would seem extremely likely that Ms. Corey is soon going to find herself in the position of Mike Nifong.

And, quite frankly, if I'm understanding the case correctly, she should be treated exactly like Nifong.  Her wiki page discusses two other cases following the same pattern; dismissal of the past history of the victims and refusal to admit that the "perpetrators" did indeed have fear of death or grievous bodily harm.  It's a pattern that--again if I'm understanding the cases correctly--needs to be stopped.

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