Anguirus wrote:The Justice Department is investigating, but it may be difficult for them to make their case. It's a tough standard to nail someone on federal civil rights charges, and the "stand your ground" BS apparently makes prosecuting this guy ridiculously difficult in Florida.
Miami Herald“The department will conduct a thorough and independent review of all of the evidence and take appropriate action at the conclusion of the investigation,” the Justice Department said in a statement. “The department also is providing assistance to and cooperating with the state officials in their investigation into the incident. With all federal civil rights crimes, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person acted intentionally and with the specific intent to do something which the law forbids — the highest level of intent in criminal law.
“Negligence, recklessness, mistakes and accidents are not prosecutable under the federal criminal civil rights laws.”
I would think that there is more than enough evidence at this point to destroy Zimmerman's self-defense story, considering "Several witnesses said they heard cries that sounded like a boy wailing — howling silenced by the crack of gunfire — and were shocked to hear police later portray the cries as Zimmerman’s. One witness said police ignored her repeated phone calls." Another thing I've read several times (not in this story) is that a witness was pressured to change her testimony by a cop on the scene from Martin crying out to Zimmerman crying out.
This story is getting a LOT of attention, so there's hope.
"Stand your ground" laws strike me as dangerous, because they make it easy for you to justify a killing as 'self-defense' when it was in fact 'fighting.' People can feel threatened and think "what if the scary person chases after me and attacks me?" in situations where that fear is totally irrational, and where all they would have to do to prevent violence is just
back off instead of standing and sneering and going "go ahead, make my day!"
So having a law that violent idiots will understand to mean "It's okay to kill people when I feel threatened" will make for a lot of unjust and unnecessary killings.
Flagg wrote:Simon_Jester wrote:Flagg wrote:Oh the poor oppressed white people who are the single most privileged race in human history! Cry me a fucking river.
I'm not even seeing how this makes sense as a response. If she thinks there are people who refuse to believe 'brown people' can be racists, does that mean she is crying about some kind of oppression suffered by whites?
I'm seeing some very bad logic here. Arguably, you're confirming her own damn complaint- oh, that might explain it, maybe it's Zen humor and I didn't get the joke. Sorry. Nevermind.
You're a fucking illiterate idiot. Let me quote broomies mewling for you in nice big easy to read format:
Dumbass wrote: But then I'm white, so I must be wrong
Make things clear you goddamned imbecile?
No. I mean, if she'd said "why does everybody hate on white people" or something along those lines, I would understand. But instead she's saying "there are people who automatically ignore racism from 'brown' people and who automatically attribute racism to 'white' people," which doesn't mean white people are oppressed. And she's saying "there are people who automatically jeer at anything a white (such as me) says on matters of race, because they are white: I am white, so I must be wrong [if I say there are people who ignore anything whites say about race.]"
And on that subject you're making Broomstick's case for her, because
you personally are doing exactly the sort of thing someone would predict from reading Broomstick's post. As soon as she says "my point will be ignored because I'm white," you leap in with a pointless -1 post, a counterattack that doesn't actually refute her point, or even notice that it exists as far as I can tell.