[Peace-discuss] Comment on some recent faking & bluffing

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Here's the conclusion of the article in which Kunstler's view is quoted.]

In the Zimmerman case, it was the prosecution’s failure to get over that “beyond a reasonable doubt” bar that did them in. “Even after three weeks of testimony,” Lizette Alvarez and Cara Buckley wrote in the NY Times (14 July), “the fight between Mr. Martin and Mr. Zimmerman on that rainy night was a muddle, fodder for reasonable doubt. It remained unclear who had started it, who screamed for help, who threw the first punch and at what point Mr. Zimmerman drew his gun. There were no witnesses to the shooting.”

“Not guilty” is not the same as “He’s innocent.” All “not guilty” means is, “The prosecutor made a claim and then didn’t convince us beyond a reasonable doubt that it was true.” In a criminal trial in the U.S., there is no option for the jury to say “That person is innocent.” The best a defendant can hope for is what George Zimmerman just got: he was accused, but they didn’t prove it.

There is talk now of asking the Justice Department to take this on as a civil rights crime. Unless some startling new evidence surfaces, that is unlikely to go anywhere: it was a dark and lonely night on that street in Sanford, Florida, and only one living person knows what really happened there, and, by this point, he might not be too sure of anything either.

[Full at <http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/15/why-george-zimmerman-walked/>.]

On Jul 16, 2013, at 6:10 PM, Paul Mueth <paulmueth at yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: C. G. Estabrook <carl at newsfromneptune.com>
> To: Laurie Solomon <ls1000 at live.com> 
> Cc: "Szoke, Ronald Duane" <r-szoke at illinois.edu>; Peace Discuss <Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> 
> Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2013 4:09 PM
> Subject: Re: CP article & Comment on some recent joking
> 
> '...William Kunstler, the great civil rights attorney who died in 1995, once told me he believed in the jury system absolutely. “If I didn’t,” he said, “I’d quit this tomorrow and get a gun instead.”
> 
> '“Even in the South?” I asked him.
> 
> '“Even in the South,” Bill said.
> 
> 'It was his experience, Bill said, that even in bigoted communities, juries would, with rare exceptions, base their decisions on what transpired within the courtroom...'
> 
> Full at <http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/15/why-george-zimmerman-walked/>.
> 
> and if you read the article, the author says that this trial was fundamentally flawed because it left race out
> >>> 
> 
>  Zimmerman Juror Says Panel Considered Stand Your Ground In Deliberations: ‘He Had A Right To Defend Himself’  tho't I'd leave this line in again
> __________________________________________________________________________________
> This idiotic joking about coon and animal epithets probably doesn't deserve comment.  But .. . 
> Mencken's dispassionate etymology include the story of the 1889 song Every Race Has a Flag But the Coon,
> 
> This was a time of widespread lynching on the slimmest pretext. 1909 was the Springfield "race riot" that lead to the forming of the NAACP. It was really an attack on the least poor A-A neighborhood which was burned out, probably motivated in part by economic reasons.
> 
> The chuckling fraternity that says "Americans are too sensitive about particular words" ought to examine their callousness.
> 
> BTW I introduced the word "coon" because some are convinced that the 911 call transcript is wrong and does include Z using the word. It's peculiar there's no authoritative understanding of the truth of what was said and by who.