Obligatory Zimmerman Trial thread [OT] Yes, we're doing this

[UrbanMasque]

As a black dude who grew up in the DC area... I could not care any less about this trial. People get shot every day, I do not see why this incident is such a big deal.

Sad that you've become so numb.

http://gawker.com/the-zimmerman-jury-to ... -770650992

 

[Eyebrowsbv31]

I can't grasp your mentality dude. To hear you tell it their are posses of whitey going around lynching black people hourly. I understand that yes, it still sucks to be a black man in this country because there is always that obnoxious assumption that "he is black and he is up to no good because he is black," but is that really the massive threat to the black people as a whole? Because the statistics are totally against that as I've pointed out earlier in this thread.

I get that there is an assumed privilege of "being white." But maybe if we just stop thinking such ignorant thoughts, stop with the hate based on what is predetermined at birth, maybe we can progress as a species. I am white, and I don't really care, if I was black, I'd do my damn best to not care about that either. That article you posted has a single situation offending the author, and therefore all white people are like that? I'm honestly glad when I see a mix raced couple, because it means we are breaking barriers and trying something new; I love to see a black guy/girl with a white girl/guy, or an Asian, or whatever. We need more of that. That article again seems to be telling a wrong series of events as well, and that's perpetuating a lie.

"According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011, there were 279,384 black murder victims. Using the 94 percent figure means that 262,621 were murdered by other blacks.between the years 1882 and 1968, 3,446 blacks were lynched at the hands of whites. Black fatalities during the Korean War (3,075), Vietnam War (7,243) and all wars since 1980 (8,197) come to 18,515, a number that pales in comparison with black loss of life at home. It's a tragic commentary to be able to say that young black males have a greater chance of reaching maturity on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan than on the streets of Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, Newark and other cities."

 

[UrbanMasque]

I can't grasp your mentality dude. To hear you tell it their are posses of whitey going around lynching black people hourly.

Not going to lie

You're filth is no longer worthy of my consumption. Just wanted to put you on notice.

 

[MattAY]

/America

 

[Sourdeez]

73 year old Bay Area musician attacked after dedicating song to Trayvon Martin
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-575 ... on-martin/


The group vandalism seems to have calmed down. Probably a mix of increased security, government employees speaking out, maybe a federal investigation, and people calming down.


This is a article about monday night
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2013/ju ... tore-free/

 

[Eyebrowsbv31]

I can't grasp your mentality dude. To hear you tell it their are posses of whitey going around lynching black people hourly.

Not going to lie

You're filth is no longer worthy of my consumption. Just wanted to put you on notice.

That's fine, usually when people want to stop hearing truth and facts they turn to religion.

Good to hear you found god, ya racist. Shame that I have the dream, whereas you want to continue to judge people by the color of their skin. But fine, w/e, can't win em all.

 

[Chris_Crime]

LIKE A KICK TO THE BALLS, I SAY

 

[Lien]

I think... this is the first time i actually see Eyebrows be butthurt, the poe's law version of butthurt. He usually gives up with his head high before he calls urban a religious fanatic... not after.

 

[Eyebrowsbv31]

I think... this is the first time i actually see Eyebrows be butthurt, the poe's law version of butthurt. He usually gives up with his head high before he calls urban a religious fanatic... not after.

More of a bewildered withdraw.

For the record, this is the first time I've called him a religious fanatic.

 

[Lien]

Yeah we know. We still love you eyebrows, no matter what's on the news <3

 

[madster111]

Wow, never figured urban for being an asshole. Always thought you were cool, man.

How about this for some fucking truth:

If martin was a white kid, nobody would give a shit. Because it's impossible to be racist against white people, so the most attention the case would've got would be a little article in the local paper.

It's only once it was a 'white' dude who shot a black 'kid' did anybody pay any fucking attention and suddenly everything because a matter of goddamn race. It's at the point where anybody who supports z-man is labeled a bigot who only wants to put the black man down.


According to florida law, the case was fairly open and shut before it even went to trial. Being an idiot isn't against the law yet, so nothing z-man did was particuarly illegal. He followed somebody in a public place, got beat up, had reasonable fear for his life and shot the other person.
The prosecution were a bunch of fucking retards who pushed for murder from the start instead of manslaughter and the jury knew about the florida bullshit where z-man still would've got murder time if he was found guilty of the lesser charge, thus he was found not guilty.

You want to blame anything in this case, blame the prosecution who pushed for a charge where the jury had to be aware a guilty verdict could potentially mean 30 years in a supermax.

 

[C_nate]

On the opposite side of the coin, had zimmerman been black and martin white, zimmerman probably would have been convicted of 2nd degree murder.

The US justice system has a long history of giving backs harsher prison sentences than whites. Probably the most infamous example of this is the penalties handed down in arrests made on people with crack cocaine vs. people with powdered cocaine.

Crack vs. Powder Cocaine: a Gulf in Penalties

While pure cocaine was introduced for medicinal purposes in the 1880s, crack cocaine emerged in the mid-1980s in part because of its almost immediate high and the fact that it is inexpensive to produce and buy. Highly addictive, the two varieties are classified as Schedule II substances.

As a result of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, Congress set forth different mandatory penalties for cocaine and crack cocaine, with significantly higher punishments for crack cocaine offenses. There is a 5-year minimum prison penalty for a first-time trafficking offense involving 5 grams or more of crack cocaine or 500 grams or more of powder cocaine and a 10-year mandatory minimum penalty for a first-time trafficking offense involving 50 grams or more of crack cocaine or 5,000 grams or more of powder cocaine.

There were 12,166 federal drug arrests for cocaine in 2004; the Drug Enforcement Administration made nearly twice as many arrests for powder cocaine as for crack cocaine.

During 2006, 5,623 federal defendants were sentenced for crack cocaine-related charges in U.S. courts; approximately 96 percent of the cases involved trafficking.

Historically, the majority of crack cocaine offenders are black; powder cocaine offenders are now predominantly Hispanic. In 2006, African-Americans accounted for 82 percent of crack cocaine-related arrests, while white and Hispanic offenders accounted for 72 percent of powder cocaine-related arrests.

In 2005, street-level dealers made up the majority of crack cocaine offenders (55.4 percent), while couriers accounted for the largest fraction for powder cocaine offenders (33.1 percent).

In 2006, crack cocaine sentences were 43.5 percent longer than powder cocaine sentences; the average length of imprisonment for powder cocaine offenders was 84.7 months, while crack cocaine-related imprisonments averaged 121.5 months.

Pure cocaine was first used in the 1880s in eye, nose, and throat surgeries as an anesthetic and for its ability to constrict blood vessels and limit bleeding. However, the development of safer drugs has made its therapeutic applications obsolete.

Cocaine (all forms) was first federally regulated in December 1912 with the passage of the Harrison Act. The act banned the nonmedical use of cocaine; prohibited its importation; imposed the same criminal penalties for cocaine users as for opium, morphine, and heroin users; and required a strict accounting of medical prescriptions for cocaine. Following the passage of the Harrison Act and the emergence of cheaper, legal substances such as amphetamines, cocaine use declined; however, use increased in the 1960s, prompting Congress to classify it as a Schedule II substance in 1970.

While cocaine can currently be administered by a doctor for legitimate medical uses, like serving as a local anesthetic for some eye, ear, and throat surgeries, there are currently no medical uses for crack cocaine.

Sources:
U.S. Sentencing Commission, 2006 Datafile
Compendium of Federal Justice Statistics, 2004
National Institute on Drug Abuse, "Cocaine: Abuse and Addiction, 2004"
U.S. Sentencing Commission, "Report to the Congress: Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy, 2007"

So, Blacks were far more likely to be busted with crack cocaine, while whites were far more likely to be busted with powder cocaine.

The average prison sentence for crack cocaine is 121.5 months
whereas the average prison sentence for powder cocaine is 84.7 months

A difference of 43.5 percent. For the same drug. In different forms. Must be pure coincidence, right?

 

[Sourdeez]

Must be pure coincidence, right?

Nope. The drug war was started by predicating a racists narrative.
There are more black men in the prison system today than slaves in 1850!

There is actually a documentary called "American Drug War: The Last White Hope"

If you want to watch it.
http://youtu.be/6CyuBuT_7I4


One of my favorite quotes comes from a guy fucked up on pcp in that documentary.
"Titties got to squezz themselves."

 

[Chris_Crime]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxNvkmTWCLc

 

[C_nate]

Going back to what Sour said earlier, video evidence would have played such a crucial role in this case.

A similar incident just played out in Wisconsin where a 76 yr old white guy gunned down a 13 yr old black kid that lived next door to him cause he thought the kid was stealing from him.

The biggest difference between that case and this one was the paranoid old guy had set up a surveillance camera outside his house and the entire thing was caught on video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBKogMxbRAU&feature=player_embedded

MILWAUKEE — A Milwaukee man who suspected his 13-year-old neighbor of breaking into his home and stealing weapons was convicted Wednesday of fatally shooting the boy as the teen's mother looked on. Now, jurors will decide whether the 76-year-old defendant was mentally ill at the time.

A jury deliberated for about an hour before finding John Henry Spooner guilty of first-degree intentional homicide. Surveillance video from his own security cameras showed him confronting Darius Simmons in May 2012, pointing a gun at him from about 6 feet away and shooting him in the chest.

Spooner had entered two pleas to the homicide charge: not guilty and not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. That set up the trial to be conducted in two phases: the first to determine whether he was guilty of the homicide, and if so, a second to determine whether he was mentally competent at the time.

With the first phase complete, the second began with testimony from a psychiatrist hired by the defense. Dr. Basil Jackson said his examination of Spooner revealed a man with anger issues who periodically dissociated from reality.

Spooner's daughter once brought home a kitten that he didn't want so he took it into the basement and killed it, Jackson said. Spooner also used to choke and beat his late wife, the doctor testified.

The violence shows Spooner occasionally loses the ability to control his anger – as during the moments that he shot Darius, Jackson said.

"There was an eruption, a loss of control. And at that moment he was not able – at that moment – to make a judgment," Jackson said. "It's like he was on autopilot."

Spooner's defense attorney, Franklyn Gimbel, never denied that his client shot Darius. Instead, he argued that Spooner did not mean for the gunshot to be fatal.

"This is not a case of whodunit," Gimbel said. "It's not a question of whether the behaviors of John Spooner caused the death of the young man – but what motivated it and what went on in his mind at the time is the crucial question."

During the second phase of the trial, the burden of proof shifts to the defense, which only has to prove "clear and convincing evidence," instead of the stricter standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt." In addition, a verdict requires agreement from only 10 jurors, not unanimity from all 12.

Spooner's surveillance video provides a clear view of what happened. Spooner emerges from his house and confronts the teen, who is retrieving his family's garbage cart from the street. Spooner points a gun at Darius, who moves back a few steps. Spooner then exchanges words with Darius' mother, who's standing on her porch out of view of the camera, and Spooner briefly points the gun in her direction. Moments later, Spooner points the gun back at the boy standing a couple of feet in front of him. He fires, hitting Darius in the chest.

The teen stumbles and runs away, and Spooner fires a second shot that misses. He appears to attempt a third shot, but the gun jams.

Darius' mother, Patricia Larry, testified that she chased her son to where he collapsed in the street. She cradled him in her arms as he died.

"I pulled his shirt up and I (saw) he had a bullet hole in his chest," she said tearfully. "He took one more breath and that's it."

Spooner paced along the sidewalk until police arrived a few minutes later. Police officer Richard Martinez testified that he was handcuffing Spooner when Spooner acknowledged, "Yeah, I shot him."

During closing arguments, Gimbel seized upon that statement as an indication that his client didn't mean to fire a fatal shot.

"He didn't say, `I killed the kid.' He didn't try to explain anything about the circumstances," Gimbel said.

But prosecutor Mark Williams said it's impossible to watch the video without realizing that Spooner knew exactly what he was doing. He pointed out that Spooner confronted Darius, aimed deliberately and pulled the trigger.

"How is that not intent to kill?" he asked. "You can see the intent. Look at him (Darius) holding his chest. Look how close they are together. It's point-blank range. Darius runs away and he shoots again."

Larry's attorney, Jonathan Safran, said the family was pleased with the verdict. "She's cautiously optimistic as we move into this second phase of the trial," he said.

 

[Sourdeez]

He also is not claiming this was in self defense.


Amazing what video evidence produces. I sure don't want to end up like the UK with a cctv camera on every corner and the government paying citizens who watch them and report crimes.

Having a cameras around the outside of your house or camera on your clothes like google glasses could make very good evidence though incase.

 

[C_nate]

Depending on where you live, it is already like that with cameras on every corner. As I've mentioned in a previous post, I live in Chicago and we have more surveillance cameras than almost any other city anywhere.

http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/2013...r-of-security-cameras-frightening-number-aclu

The city has added 500 security cameras under Emanuel and now has a "federated system" of 22,000 cameras citywide, said Gary Schenkel, executive director of the Office of Emergency Management and Communications.

"I don't think there is another city in the U.S. that has as an extensive and integrated camera network as Chicago has," said Michael Chertoff, former secretary of Homeland Security.

When I head into the city, I resign myself to the fact I'm going to be recorded pretty much anywhere I go.

 

[Sourdeez]

Boston is talking about cameraing up the whole city as well.


Great article C-Nate

 

[UrbanMasque]

ustream.tv/bigbrother

check it out. a pet project of mine.

 

[Sourdeez]

Very neat. Thank you.