Zimmerman Trial for Trayvon Martin

[Thanas]

Please continue the discussion here.

I'm not sure if putting his neighbors on the stand was a good idea or not. They have had several months to think over their statements and 'rewrite' the memory of what they heard/did that night.

Although I do think that the prosecution was right to push for the prior phone calls to the police to be admitted. They seem to show that Zimmerman was frustrated and seem ready to go vigilante

[Flagg]

IT's "Trayvon" not Trevan.

[Meest]

Wow the last person to talk to Martin on the phone got destroyed on the stand, defense cross-examiner just had to stall and frustrate her and she contradicted herself on statements made just minutes before. She did not seem intelligent and really would seem to say anything to get out of there and keep things going. Hope the forensics paints a better picture.

[Haruko]

Wow the last person to talk to Martin on the phone got destroyed on the stand, defense cross-examiner just had to stall and frustrate her and she contradicted herself on statements made just minutes before. She did not seem intelligent and really would seem to say anything to get out of there and keep things going. Hope the forensics paints a better picture.

Hm, an article today on that mentions the inconsistencies, but did not place emphasis on that aspect of her testimony. Still interesting for anyone wanting to read up on the testimony alluded to:

Trayvon Martin was followed by "creepy" man, witness tells murder trial

By Tom Brown and Barbara Liston, Reuters
Posted: 06/26/2013 05:54:39 PM PDT

SANFORD, Fla. — Shortly before he was fatally shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer, unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin complained about a "creepy" man who seemed to be hunting him down, a key witness testified at George Zimmerman's murder trial on Wednesday.

Rachel Jeantel, 19, whose identity had been a closely guarded secret until her appearance in court, said she was on the phone with Martin for several minutes while he tried to evade Zimmerman.

"Get off!, Get off!," were Martin's last words, before the line went dead, Jeantel testified.

Jeantel said Martin, 17, "kept complaining that the man was looking at him," as he walked back to the house where he was staying with his father in the central Florida town of Sanford.

Zimmerman, 29, was a neighborhood watch volunteer in the Retreat at Twin Lakes community in Sanford at the time of the Feb. 26, 2012, killing. He has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and could face life imprisonment if convicted.

Martin was a student at a Miami-area high school and a guest of one of the homeowners. He was walking back to the house after buying snacks at a nearby convenience store when he was shot in the chest during a confrontation with Zimmerman.

Martin family lawyer Ben Crump has asserted that Jeantel's testimony would help undermine Zimmerman's claim that he acted in self-defense.
In opening statements, prosecutor John Guy told the jury that Martin's phone went dead two minutes after Zimmerman hung up with police to report a suspicious person, suggesting that it was Zimmerman who crept up on Martin and surprised him.

Jeantel, with whom Martin had been friends since elementary school in Miami, told the court in sometimes emotional testimony that Martin tried to run away and thought he had lost the stranger, until he reappeared. "He told me the man looked like 'a creepy ass cracker,'" Jeantel said, using a pejorative term for Southern whites.

She heard Martin ask the man, "Why are you following me?" before the voice of a hard-breathing man replied, "What are you doing around here?"

Next she heard "a bump, the sound of grass" and Martin saying, "Get off!, Get off!" before the line was cut.

Under cross-examination, which will continue on Thursday, the defense sought to poke holes in Jeantel's testimony, noting that she lied about her reasons for not attending a wake for Martin after his death. Jeantel originally told the Martin family that she missed the wake because she was in the hospital, which she admitted was a lie.

"I didn't want to see the body," she told the court, wiping away tears at one point.

Feisty at times, Jeantel was asked by a defense lawyer why she didn't call police to tell her story and waited almost a month before speaking to Martin's family.

"I thought they supposed to call you," she said.

"Do you watch First 48?" Jeantel added, referring to a homicide investigation cable TV show. Friends also told her that the man who shot Martin had been caught. "I thought case closed," said Jeantel, who is a high school senior.

The racially charged case triggered civil rights protests and debates about the treatment of black Americans in the U.S. justice system, since police did not arrest Zimmerman, who is part Hispanic, for 44 days.

Earlier on Wednesday, jurors listened to telephone calls that Zimmerman made to police in the months before he killed Martin.

Defense attorneys objected to use of the tapes in the trial, describing the five phone calls made between August 2011 and February 2012 as "irrelevant" and contending that they would tell jurors nothing about Zimmerman's thinking on the night he shot Martin.

Seminole County Circuit Judge Debra Nelson allowed the calls to be entered as evidence on Wednesday.

Prosecutors have said the calls, in which Zimmerman reported what he described as suspicious activity by black men, demonstrated "profiling" and were key to understanding the defendant's state of mind on Feb. 26, 2012, when he called police to report Martin, minutes before shooting him in the chest at point-blank range.

To win a conviction for second-degree murder, the prosecution must convince jurors that Zimmerman acted with "ill will, hatred, spite or an evil intent," and "an indifference to human life," according to Florida jury instructions.

"It's not a whodunit. It is what was Zimmerman's state of mind before he did it, and did he act in justifiable self-defense," said David Weinstein, a Miami lawyer and former prosecutor.

In the Zimmerman phone calls, he can be heard reporting what he described as suspicious behavior by various black men, using words or phrases similar to those he used to report Martin to the police.

"They typically run away quickly," he said in one call, referring to two men whom he said matched the description of suspects in a recent neighborhood burglary.

[Gaidin]

Wow the last person to talk to Martin on the phone got destroyed on the stand, defense cross-examiner just had to stall and frustrate her and she contradicted herself on statements made just minutes before. She did not seem intelligent and really would seem to say anything to get out of there and keep things going. Hope the forensics paints a better picture.

The problem being that she's a teenager and nobody expects a teenager to maintain a high level of credibility in a situation like that. And when a lawyer starts just chipping away at her like he did he risks alienating the jury to an extent I think, but he has no choice.

[Cosmic Average]

Is she a witness for the defense or prosecution? Because damn, she's making the prosecutor's case look very, very bad.

She just admitted that she can't read a cursive letter, despite swearing under oath that she was the one who wrote it:

George Zimmerman Witness Can't Read Letter She 'Wrote' About Shooting

A teenage friend of Trayvon Martin was forced to admit today in the George Zimmerman murder trial that she did not write a letter that was sent to Martin's mother describing what she allegedly heard on a phone call with Martin moments before he was shot.

In a painfully embarrassing moment, Rachel Jeantel was asked to read the letter out loud in court.

"Are you able to read that at all?" defense attorney Don West asked.

Jeantel, head bowed, eyes averted whispered into the court microphone, "Some but not all. I don't read cursive."

It sent a hush through the packed courtroom.

Link

[Jub]

I can't read my own printing from time to time if I was rushed in taking notes and I might be able to write in cursive if I looked up the forms. If I wrote cursive, for some reason, I might not be able to read it back. That means precisely dick.

[Cosmic Average]

I can't read my own printing from time to time if I was rushed in taking notes and I might be able to write in cursive if I looked up the forms. If I wrote cursive, for some reason, I might not be able to read it back. That means precisely dick.

She didn't say that she couldn't read her own cursive, she said she doesn't read cursive, as in at all. If she can't read cursive, how can she write in it?

Or how about yesterday when she struggled to read, period? It's clear she's not the one who wrote the letter.

[Flagg]

I can't read my own printing from time to time if I was rushed in taking notes and I might be able to write in cursive if I looked up the forms. If I wrote cursive, for some reason, I might not be able to read it back. That means precisely dick.

She didn't say that she couldn't read her own cursive, she said she doesn't read cursive, as in at all. If she can't read cursive, how can she write in it?

Or how about yesterday when she struggled to read, period? It's clear she's not the one who wrote the letter.

I can barely read my own cursive and damned sure would have a problem reading a letter I wrote a year later.

[Losonti Tokash]

Maybe it was dictated? Who knows. Why is Trayvon's name misspelled in the thread title?

[Jub]

I can't read my own printing from time to time if I was rushed in taking notes and I might be able to write in cursive if I looked up the forms. If I wrote cursive, for some reason, I might not be able to read it back. That means precisely dick.

She didn't say that she couldn't read her own cursive, she said she doesn't read cursive, as in at all. If she can't read cursive, how can she write in it?

Or how about yesterday when she struggled to read, period? It's clear she's not the one who wrote the letter.

You missed the part where I said that I can fail to read my own printing if I write it fast and messy, the same for my cursive, yet I can rather clearly read printed letters. I also have issues reading most people's cursive because I don't see it very often often and if asked I might say that I can't or have difficulty reading it. Now her having issues reading period hurts her case, but that doesn't mean she didn't get help writing it even though she can't even read what she wrote. My little brother has issues reading and writing but with help he can write pretty neatly on a card, damned if he could read it later though. This makes it less likely that she wrote it, but it hardly means anything.

[energiewende]

Her poor reading skills seem more likely to be a result of her significantly below average intelligence. There's no evidence she can read anything. That's not fatal in itself but given the huge inconsistencies in her testimony it indicates she's treating this as a child would: saying what people are pressuring her to say or what she thinks she is 'supposed' to say.

[Meest]

I can't read my own printing from time to time if I was rushed in taking notes and I might be able to write in cursive if I looked up the forms. If I wrote cursive, for some reason, I might not be able to read it back. That means precisely dick.

She didn't say that she couldn't read her own cursive, she said she doesn't read cursive, as in at all. If she can't read cursive, how can she write in it?

Or how about yesterday when she struggled to read, period? It's clear she's not the one who wrote the letter.

I think she mentions a friend helping her or wanted a friend to deliver the letter, can somewhat salvage that but she's not very clear when she tries to articulate her points. It makes me wonder if she's just a social butterfly that just can't get her stories straight because she talks to so many people or is trying to hide some coaching they gave her. Came across that she never wanted to be involved, that can be some emotional wall she puts up to keep a strong woman reputation for her street cred or something like that, or in general doesn't like letting her walls down. But she'll never explain things that way or think too, she's getting crushed by the pressure.

[TimothyC]

I can't read my own printing from time to time if I was rushed in taking notes and I might be able to write in cursive if I looked up the forms. If I wrote cursive, for some reason, I might not be able to read it back. That means precisely dick.

I can barely read my own cursive and damned sure would have a problem reading a letter I wrote a year later.

Maybe it was dictated? Who knows. Why is Trayvon's name misspelled in the thread title?

Dictated is about the least bad option right now because here is a copy of the letter (Linked to preserve formatting.). If you can't read that, there is no way on Earth that you wrote that. You might have authored it and had someone else take dictation, but that's not writing.

[Jub]

I hadn't seen that as I'm not following the case overly closely, but that does look like something that she would have dictated to a third party. She might have a limited vocabulary or not see the big difference between if she wrote it or dictated it.

[energiewende]

(Linked to preserve formatting.)

To go off topic for a moment - this letter repeats the apparent error "Trevon" in the title of the thread. Is Trevon the correct spelling?



edit: Nothing about this seems to add up. It's dated like school work and has "Thank you" written at the end. It also contains an apparent error ("the man wouldn't follow him" presumably supposed to be, "the man wouldn't stop following him"?). It's difficult to understand why a dictated letter would include these things. Or why it would be signed (that is what is blacked out, right?) by the girl with no reference to the dictation. We can't see if the handwriting is even the same.

This smells very much like this girl is a patsie for the Martin family to try to strengthen the case. Unfortunately/fortunately, if this is true she isn't clever enough to carry off the deception. The only parts of her testimony that haven't been shot to pieces - and the only parts directly relevant to George Zimmerman's guilt - are those parts which are not verifiable by any other means. I don't see this witnesses's evidence carrying any weight at all.

Listening to the commentary, the only ray of light for the prosecution is that the defence attorney seems to have acted in such a way that would admit Zimmerman's domestic incident as evidence, which otherwise would be disallowed as hearsay. I don't think that's enough without something directly fingering him as the one who started the fight, but it at least gives a semblance of a motive.

[aerius]

To go off topic for a moment - this letter repeats the apparent error "Trevon" in the title of the thread. Is Trevon the correct spelling?

Nope. The correct spelling is Trayvon. Also, goddamn the education system is a fucking failure down there. If I didn't know better I'd think that the letter was written by a 10 year old.

[Simon_Jester]

(Linked to preserve formatting.)

To go off topic for a moment - this letter repeats the apparent error "Trevon" in the title of the thread. Is Trevon the correct spelling?

No, but names in the subculture are sometimes prone to odd spelling conventions (i.e. whatever you want, as long as it pronounces right, as with Shakespeare signing his name "Shakspere"

edit: Nothing about this seems to add up. It's dated like school work and has "Thank you" written at the end. It also contains an apparent error ("the man wouldn't follow him" presumably supposed to be, "the man wouldn't stop following him"?). It's difficult to understand why a dictated letter would include these things. Or why it would be signed (that is what is blacked out, right?) by the girl with no reference to the dictation. We can't see if the handwriting is even the same.

How much experience do you have with teenagers that read below grade level?

This reads a lot like it was written by a girl who never writes anything except for school, and who does that at about what we'd call a 6th-8th grade level. So her idea of how to write is heavily influenced by that. She writes in short, rather simplistic sentences, which again supports that premise.

The handwriting is a bit neater than I'd expect if I asked some of my own students for an essay, but I could totally see it being authentic.

To go off topic for a moment - this letter repeats the apparent error "Trevon" in the title of the thread. Is Trevon the correct spelling?

Nope. The correct spelling is Trayvon. Also, goddamn the education system is a fucking failure down there. If I didn't know better I'd think that the letter was written by a 10 year old.

She is far from the only teenager out there who writes at a 6th grade level. Dammit.

[energiewende]

edit: Nothing about this seems to add up. It's dated like school work and has "Thank you" written at the end. It also contains an apparent error ("the man wouldn't follow him" presumably supposed to be, "the man wouldn't stop following him"?). It's difficult to understand why a dictated letter would include these things. Or why it would be signed (that is what is blacked out, right?) by the girl with no reference to the dictation. We can't see if the handwriting is even the same.

How much experience do you have with teenagers that read below grade level?

This reads a lot like it was written by a girl who never writes anything except for school, and who does that at about what we'd call a 6th-8th grade level. So her idea of how to write is heavily influenced by that. She writes in short, rather simplistic sentences, which again supports that premise.

The handwriting is a bit neater than I'd expect if I asked some of my own students for an essay, but I could totally see it being authentic.

Right, but she says she can't write or read cursive, so it wasn't actually her who wrote it. She seems to accept this (although her statements are rarely clear).

So someone else wrote it, in such a way that it was meant to look plausible that she had written it. To me that indicates the likelihood of deliberate intent to fabricate evidence, controlled by someone more intelligent than this girl but not substantially so. The friends/family trying to "help out" the case seems increasingly plausible, and this makes anything she has to say of dubious value, especially where none of it can be substantiated by other evidence.

[Losonti Tokash]

Wouldn't there be a huge issue if the person taking dictation wasn't writing what the girl is actually dictating?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I'd heard it was being reported that she had admitted during her testimony that she had a friend dictate the letter and then she just signed her name to it. Is this confirmed anywhere?

[Grumman]

The problem being that she's a teenager and nobody expects a teenager to maintain a high level of credibility in a situation like that.

That works both ways. Conceding that she can be easily manipulated into saying black is white and up is down does not help the prosecution, because it is they who need her to be a credible witness.

[Simon_Jester]

I hadn't seen that as I'm not following the case overly closely, but that does look like something that she would have dictated to a third party. She might have a limited vocabulary or not see the big difference between if she wrote it or dictated it.

Agreed.

Right, but she says she can't write or read cursive, so it wasn't actually her who wrote it. She seems to accept this (although her statements are rarely clear).

So someone else wrote it, in such a way that it was meant to look plausible that she had written it.

Or someone took dictation and she signed it; it's not exactly hard to believe that she'd give a verbal disposition that was written down by a stenographer as part of the pretrial. Reading this with an eye to that, I could very easily imagine Dee-Dee saying that. It's ungrammatical, but it's ungrammatical in exactly the ways I'd expect a girl like that to speak.

The combination of perfect spelling (of everything except the name "Trayvon"), broken grammar and simplistic sentences immediately calls to my mind someone transcribing her spoken deposition onto paper by hand.

I note that the people in the trial would DEFINITELY be able to find out the provenance of the letter...

The problem being that she's a teenager and nobody expects a teenager to maintain a high level of credibility in a situation like that.

That works both ways. Conceding that she can be easily manipulated into saying black is white and up is down does not help the prosecution, because it is they who need her to be a credible witness.

Yeah.

If the prosecution loses the case, Dee-Dee should become the poster girl for the importance of good education for minority groups- her inability to express herself coherently in public is costing the case dearly.

Ignorance has a price.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

We now have a prosecution witness saying he saw Zimmerman pinned to the ground by Trayvon, who was throwing punches at Zimmerman. And on cross-examination, he said that Trayvon in fact performed a "mixed martial arts" maneouvre called the "ground and pound" on Zimmerman. WTF? This guy is a prosecution witness? These prosecutors are worse dopes than the ones who tried OJ.

[Gaidin]

An opinion piece on Rachel Jeantel's performance I found interesting.

LOS ANGELES, June 27, 2013 — Rachel Jeantel’s testimony on the witness stand during the George Zimmerman murder trial was cringe-inducing, embarrassing, and mortifying to watch. As a Black woman I have been ridiculed for “talking white” and “thinking I’m white” because I navigate quite well outside of Black culture. Frankly, I would rather take that type of flack than be an embarrassment across worldwide media because of my inability to do so.

If we take nothing else away from Rachel Jeantel’s testimony, it should be this: Literacy involves more than being able to read and write. It involves the ability to effectively operate in the overall society when it matters most. Unfortunately, Rachel failed this test. We will see how it affects the outcome of this trial, and whether it helps or hurts the prosecution’s case.

It would be wonderful if this sparked a wider conversation on the failure of modern Blacks to instill a love of words, literacy, and knowledge in our young, and greater still, the failure to encourage and teach our children how to maneuver outside of their everyday reality. This used to not only be a matter of practicality, but of progress, and safety. We appear to no longer give this proper weight, let alone thought.

Ebony, a history-making Black publication, could have penned a thought-provoking piece about how far we have fallen from this cultural norm, how we must return to it, and how we can begin again. Instead, the editorial writer went into attack mode: “The chastising of this woman’s speech and body language belied the fact that many themselves were rejecting their own self-reflection. For far too many of our community members that epitomize Drake’s ‘started from the bottom’ mantra would like to forget the places from whence they came.” When You Make Fun of Rachel Jeantel, You Make Fun of Us.

Ebony shoots, Ebony misses. My single mother made sure I knew how to read and write, as well as how to talk to adults and authority figures. If reality and sitcom television is any indicator, this has become a lost art. Christina Coleman, writer at the Global Grind, takes the “you’re not black enough to understand Rachel” tack: “And as Rachel Jeantel sits on the stand, nervous, mumbling and annoyed, it’s not that she’s just a ‘hoodrat with no media training from a hostile environment.’ It’s just that your world and our world are … excuse the cliche … worlds apart.”

This excuse is not only lousy, but lazy. Some critics of Rachel Jeantel may have come from the bottom, some may come from a middle class background, while others may even be upper class. But here is what we all have in common: Parents (single and otherwise) who made sure that no matter how down and fly we were at home, we knew how to interact, engage, and compete outside of the home. This is a necessary component in finding success for any person of any background or race. Knowing this was one way to ensure you did not stay at the bottom, and you were not limited in your opportunities.

You cannot discount that being on the witness stand is not easy, even for the most cultivated or collected of persons. The purpose of cross examination is to dispatch and discredit the witness as quickly as possible, so being grilled on the stand is akin to being baptized by fire. But we do not help ourselves when we fail to have a grasp of standard English, cannot read cursive writing, do not know how to speak up when spoken to, or how to address an officer of the court.

My mother would say, “You can talk like that here, but don’t you embarrass me outside the house.” I took this seriously, and so did many of my peers, but no longer. Now when young people tank themselves, instead of honestly looking at the reasons and the whys, we blame the critics.

Chicago Sun-Times columnist John W. Fountain wrote a thought-provoking and pointed article on “Talking Right—Not Talking White“. Fountain makes this assertion: “I have come to understand that your speech does indeed betray you. For one’s enunciation and command of the English language can be as revealing about one’s roots as a buttered southern drawl. But in my mind, mastering the King’s English is no more a betrayal of one’s roots than choosing a mode of transportation to get you to a destination. The point in either case is access.” [emphasis mine]

Let’s take that a step further: It’s not only about access in terms of career and life opportunities, but when you are required to enter into arenas outside of your normal realm, you have a foundation to draw upon and you stand firm, instead of wrecking what little credibility you could have had.

The emphasis mine in brackets is a part of the article, the bolded parts are emphasis added by me.