July 17, 2013

Zimmerman defense preferred women jurors

Jury selection is a fascinating little field. It's a little bit like casting movies, another business in which some market research is done (lawyers in massive trials will occasionally recruit mock jurors to see how they vote in an upcoming case). But, mostly, it's done based on hunches by charismatic experts / blowhards. 
All-woman jury was a key strategy, Zimmerman defense consultant says 
Yamiche Alcindor 8:40 p.m. EDT July 17, 2013

SANFORD, Fla. -- One of the people instrumental in helping George Zimmerman's defense team pick an all-women jury says that he decided months in advance that a female panel brought the best chance for acquittal. 
Robert Hirschhorn, a jury consultant with more than 28 years experience, told USA TODAY that women are better listeners, less judgmental, and would more easily understand the fear Zimmerman felt when he shot Trayvon Martin. 
"I wanted to make sure we were going to get jurors that would follow what the court of law required not what the court of public opinion wanted," Hirschhorn said. "My number one goal was to get fair jurors that would really be able to listen to the evidence and decide the case on facts and law not emotion." 
Hirschhorn's instincts paid off Saturday when a jury of five white women and one Hispanic woman acquitted Zimmerman of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in the Feb. 2012 killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
Hirschhorn got involved in the Zimmerman case in April when Zimmerman defense attorney Don West brought him in. Hirschhorn, who is based in Lewisville, Texas, has worked on several high profile cases including the trial of Enron founder Kenneth Lay, who was convicted of fraud and conspiracy as well as New York millionaire Robert Durst, acquitted of killing and dismembering his elderly neighbor. ...
In doing so, he decided women would be more favorable in getting Zimmerman acquitted and that people with anti-gun stances would have to be eliminated.
... A beginning group of 211 people filled out juror questionnaires, which were then read by lawyers and Circuit Judge Debra Nelson. They chose who would make it to the next round for individual questioning about media exposure to news of the shooting in open court. Later, lawyers went down the list, striking jurors individually. At least six people were dismissed during this phase. 
... In Zimmerman's case, Hirschhorn did two rare things: Hirschhorn didn't recommend lawyers ask for a change of venue and he didn't have Zimmerman's lawyers use all their strikes against jurors. 
"Sanford was the epicenter for this event," Hirschhorn said, explaining what he told lawyers."If we want George to get a fair trial, we want people from his county to decide this case." 
Early on, Hirschhorn thought women would relate to Zimmerman's story better than men and would understand the position Zimmerman found himself in the night of the shooting. 
"I believed in my heart that an all-female jury was the right jury for George," Hirschhorn said. "My experience has been that women are better at listening than men." 
The thinking behind his theory was that women would be less judgmental in a self-defense case where lawyers would be asking them to put themselves in the position Zimmerman found himself when he killed Trayvon. 
Hirschhorn also knew he would need to eliminate potential jurors who held anti-gun views and who were not completely honest with their knowledge of the case and the opinions they had formed. 
"In the typical high profile case, jurors have typically formed an opinion against your client," he said, adding that Zimmerman's case was different. "There was a large segment of the community that was against George.There was a large segment of the community that hadn't formed an opinion that George was guilty. The challenge for me was to find those people that can be fair to George." 
It was also Hirschhorn's job to find out which potential jurors were not being completely honest. That thinking led to the elimination of at least three jurors. Zimmerman defense attorney, Mark O'Mara told Circuit Judge Debra Nelson one older black woman failed to tell the court about a leader of her church being a Trayvon supporter and a younger black woman failed to disclose that she was Facebook friends with a potential witness. The defense also eliminated at least one juror --a white man--who said he had issues with guns.

I did a little bit of work once for Houston trial legend Racehorse Haynes, writing up digests of his notes for a projected autobiography. During jury selection in the 1960s, he always noted if a juror had too many mechanical pencils in his his shirt pocket for his occupation: e.g., an auto mechanic with six different pencils in his pocket protector was trying to give the impression he was an engineer. Racehorse felt they were phonies and he didn't want them on his jury.

Was this scientific? Beats me, but Racehorse gave me a ride in his Turbo Porsche, 0 to 90 mph to 0 in about six blocks, one of the first Turbo Porsches in Houston in the 1970s, so he won a lot of trials.

By the way, has anybody seen any good analytical writing about casting movies and TV shows? Most of what I've seen focuses on pairings of leads like Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy. But I'm more interested in casting with large sample sizes of datapoints, such as witnesses on Law & Order, where they want actors who more or less look like what the public expects the character to look like. Anybody seen anything good on that?

100 comments:

  1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ug5LV2cWVBM

    Fox News finally talks about black on white murders

    http://topconservativenews.com/2013/07/fox-news-finally-talks-about-black-on-white-murders/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh my, judicial profiling.

    "Women are better and make better jurors." is acceptable.

    But suppose some lawyer "men make better jurors."

    Sexism.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Gee, women are more pliable than men? That's what's so funny about Whiskey's hare-brained insistence that women drive the media, when it's the other way around.

    Gosh, defense attorneys with great arguments and advertisers with great ads love Love LOVE women? Whodathunkit?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mr Sailer, sir. You're making a strong case for me to donate to your summer panhandling drive. You've been a real roll this month.

    And I'm changing my mind as I'm writing this now.

    Maybe this case IS similar to the OJ case in this one aspect. Women on the jury.

    In both cases women made the difference. Marcia Clark explicitly wanted as many women on the court believing they would side with Nicole and instead they sided with the defendant.

    Obviously this could be where the similarity ends, because, what if Zimmerman's lawyers had had 2-3 black women on the jury? Well, we just saw why they didn't.

    Again, Race trumps gender. It is somewhat possible here as well. The mostly white jury gave Zim a break by looking at the evidence presented by both sides and this clearly is proving out that that simply would not have occurred if the jury had had a couple of black women on the jury. Most likey they would've sided with the defendant

    Verrry tactful of the defense lawyers to omit that fact, that after they saw how black women were going to vote they decided not to have any black women on the jury. Smart: make sure to have a mostly white women jury since there's little evidence that black woman would've let George go free.

    Imaging Al Sharpton and "the community" if there'd have been black women on the jury and the result had been the same. Those women could never go back to their families and their addresses might have been disclosed on social media. Community rage would've been even more vs them, they'd have been singled out first among all jurors especially since they'd have friends and families who'd "turn them in" or "rat them out" to the community on their wherabouts.

    But the strategy worked. Pack the jury with white women. It more or less helped OJ and here it did the same for Zimmerman.

    ReplyDelete
  5. In other words, Zimmerman just wanted a fair trial based on the law and the facts. This happened, and he was acquitted. And a lot of people -- including powerful people, smart people -- are apoplectic that the law ruled the day, and lust for street violence in response. This from the people who should be our most responsible citizens. I really fear for our future.

    'Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold... The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity...'

    ReplyDelete
  6. The prosecutors eliminated one black woman who said she watched Fox news.

    ReplyDelete
  7. My theory FWIW:

    The defense didn't want any blacks because they would automatically vote guilty.

    The prosecution didn't want white males (Full disclosure- I am one.), because their case was so factually weak and emotion-laden, we would have found enough reasonable doubt to acquit Zimmerman, before Ms. Jeantel had fully settled in the witness chair.

    That left white women.....

    ReplyDelete
  8. "I wanted to make sure we were going to get jurors that would follow what the court of law required not what the court of public opinion wanted..."

    Right. Because everyone knows women are so much more impartial and willing to buck public opinion.

    What this guy is saying, without saying it, is that women would be more likely to understand, intuitively, why GZ not only profiled TM in the first place, but why, once the fight had started, GZ feared for his life, rather than just feared for a good old-fashion ass-whoopin.

    ReplyDelete
  9. quoted from the article:
    In Zimmerman's case, Hirschhorn did two rare things: Hirschhorn didn't recommend lawyers ask for a change of venue and he didn't have Zimmerman's lawyers use all their strikes against jurors.

    "Sanford was the epicenter for this event," Hirschhorn said, explaining what he told lawyers."If we want George to get a fair trial, we want people from his county to decide this case."
    =====================

    That is horse apples fed to the media. There was no venue change requested because the jury pool is taken from the entire county, not just Sanford. Although Sanford is about 30 pct black, the county is roughly 10 pct black. And black people show up for jury pool less than whites do. So, given the fact that far more whites think zimmie was innocent, they knew right from the start that they could get a jury which would not convict, and at the worst be a hung jury.

    Of course they won't tell the media that. So they fed the media a lot of horse apples.


    If zimmie gets sued, if he can keep it in that same county, no way he loses (FL civil law requires unanimity for liability). And given that the plaintiff who loses may well be required to pay legal fees of the defendant, litigation on this matter is concluded (also given that the feds will do nothing on their end, given the lack of evidence).

    Time for zimmie to make a million or two.....


    ReplyDelete
  10. http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2013-07-17.html

    ReplyDelete
  11. Men aren't good listeners, more judgmental, and less able to understand fear? I'm appalled. This is sexist!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Bloomberg 2.0: Jack Hidary

    http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/07/16/jack-hidary-yeshiva-educated-sephardic-jew-ipo-millionaire-and-spanish-speaker-to-run-for-nyc-mayor-could-make-for-three-way-jewish-race-interview/

    This guy literally comes out of nowhere overnight and the NYC media is going crazy over this guy.

    ReplyDelete
  13. There was a Black person on another discussion board called Lipstick Alley, who said that when George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, it was the equivalent of 9/11 for Black America.

    If that's true, than 9/11 happens several times per day in Black America.

    Because every single day men who look like Trayvon Martin are being gunned down in the streets of Oakland, Detroit, Atlanta, Chicago, New Orleans, Baltimore, etc.



    ReplyDelete
  14. Kind of shoots a hole in Whiskey's theories. Thankfully team Zimmerman did not take advice from him.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Gotta love the nonsense comments from liberals on other blogs like "of course Zimmerman is white! That's why most white people support him!"

    Even this depressing spectacle does occasionally have its funny moments.

    ReplyDelete
  16. So it looks like Whiskey was even more wrong than we thought.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Another point that needs to be made again and again and again. Because of the media's non-stop vilification of Zimmerman, because of how the judge tried the case, because of prosecution tactics, Zimmerman did NOT get a fair trial. I repeat, did NOT get a fair trial.

    Yet he was acquitted anyway. It was like a boxing match in which the right arm of the underdog was broken by his opponent prior to the match to guarantee the reigning champs(the government/media/liberals) victory. And yet, with his one arm, he managed to win anyway.

    ReplyDelete
  18. "women are better listeners, less judgmental, and would more easily understand the fear"

    Gender profiling!

    ReplyDelete
  19. The GZ lawyer wanted women AND, very importantly, did not want anyone with anti-gun views.

    If you have anti-gun sentiment, then you almost certainly blame GZ, in some way, for TV's death. Even if you believe GZ acted in self-defense, you will not excuse him for shooting TV. Becasue, if you are anti-gun, you pretty much believe that shooting is, in itself, wrong.

    Notice that this trial is now being pushed, like a chip into the pot, to raise the stakes in gun-law reform. The Dems are now trying to prosecute gun law, just like the NAACP tried to prosecute GZ. The two have become inseparable.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Working Class US, one point you're missing.

    Yeah, the county is 10 percent and Sanford is 30 percent. But come on. We all know the jury if they wanted to could've found at least one black woman to put on the jury.

    The lack of them on the jury is what literally saved Zim. Literally, literally.

    ONE. That's all it would've taken. Just one black woman on that jury and bam, a hung jury. Who knows? Perhaps she could've convinced some of the waverers that maybe he did use some excessive force. After all, one of the jurors post-trial mentioned that there were some who wanted to convict him of something. One black woman. That's all it would've taken. One. Perhaps Zim would've been found guilty of manslaughter.

    Cause no way in hell she would've voted to acquit. Blacks voted over 95% for Obama both times with black women in higher percentages than men. There is no way that they vote for Zimmerman.

    Plus the fear factor. Even if they were predisposed to consider the evidence they know in back of their minds that they can never return to their homes. They'd be turned in by their families to the thugs and community activists.

    One. That's all it would've taken. They saw the way it was going and thought "Mmmm ohhh no. Can't have any of that." A little surprised no men. Many men in southern states are hunters and gun owners so certainly they could've found a couple men to serve on the jury. And men generally understand the concept of self-defense.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Raw video of Zimmerman re-enacting what happened with police officers (without lawyers tagging along). In my view, this was extremely foolhardy of him. At the same time, this directness and lack of artifice makes it clear why the police declined to charge him. He seemed like a straight arrow through and through. Then the race baiters got involved.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Although Sanford is about 30 pct black, the county is roughly 10 pct black. And black people show up for jury pool less than whites do.

    But blacks in that county would've showed up for this jury. Ohh yes they would have. They'd have found out where the trial was and showed up to be part of the jury pool. At least enough of them would have to sit on that jury. Again, one black woman. That's all it would've taken. One. And possible manslaughter.

    You can see it too. She would've made hell for her fellow jurors "Oh, everyone here's acting like he automatically innocent, why? Cause he white like you are? Is that what this is? Is that what you talkin' bout? Am I in a room full of racists?!" And she'd have kept it up and kept it up til she'd have convinced all these nonjudgmental and non confrontational women to consider voting along with her for manslaughter.

    If that had happened she'd have then sold her script to Hollywood as the modern 6 Righteous Sisters who, with odds stacked against her 5-1 to acquit, she, a lone courageous soul, opened up their eyes to see the truth, praise Hallelujah!"

    Bet when ZIm was found innocent MGM Paramount etc shrugged their heads and said "Well, there's no story here. He walked. Maybe one day we'll find a story where prejudice is overcome in the courtroom."

    One black woman. That's all it would've taken. One.

    ReplyDelete

  23. If zimmie gets sued, if he can keep it in that same county, no way he loses (FL civil law requires unanimity for liability).


    You're missing it. FEDERAL civil law. Holder is federal. They can decide it where they say so, like in...DC or at least shop it around to a district favorable to them. Federal trial is whole different ballgame.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Men would probably be the best jurors for Zimmerman. I would think women would be less likely to understand the realities of male-on-male physical confrontations and aggression.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Men in general? Or......of a certain profile. Fooling ourselves if they'd have cut Zim a break anymore than black women would've.

    ReplyDelete
  26. It's interesting that Juror B37 had a concealed carry permit. You can draw a lot of inferences from that little factoid alone. A woman holding that permit is likely to be:
    a) pro-2nd amendment
    b) anti-crime
    c) independently minded.

    Given the facts as they were, I don't think it would have mattered if there were 5 black women on the jury as long as she was on there. She would not have been pressured into voting guilty.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Possible situation: It was a trade-off.

    Prosecution wanted some blacks, perhaps blacks on the jury.

    The Defense wanted White males.

    So they compromised.

    Split the difference: No blacks or men, just white women and one hispanic for diversity's sake.

    Amazed the jury went along with it.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Auntie Analogue7/17/13, 8:32 PM


    Were I Mr. Zimmerman I should write a very nice thank-you letter to Mr. Hirschhorn.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Given the facts as they were, I don't think it would have mattered if there were 5 black women on the jury as long as she was on there. She would not have been pressured into voting guilty.


    Whatever. That's not in the real world. The real world is that many sisters on the jury would've made trouble by any means necessary. If it meant going to the judge and claiming that one of their fellow jurors is racist, whatever. By any means.

    The defense was smart. They kept off the x factor. One is all it would've taken.

    ReplyDelete
  30. And in our pot calls kettle black series, Alex Pareene goes hormonal on Richard Cohen:

    http://www.salon.com/2013/07/17/richard_cohen_is_terrified_of_black_people/

    ReplyDelete
  31. Frank, I understand the blues7/17/13, 8:43 PM

    "Zimmerman defense preferred women jurors"

    Who doesn't

    ReplyDelete
  32. This is gender profiling and ought to be made illegal. Expect DOJ action any time now.

    ReplyDelete
  33. There was a Black person on another discussion board called Lipstick Alley, who said that when George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, it was the equivalent of 9/11 for Black America.

    That's telling in itself. Although its a discussion board, enough blacks represented at that discussion board still view 9/11 as "White America's tragedy" whereas Hurricane Katrina was "our tragedy".

    In a sense that's somewhat accurate in that blacks have never publicly seemed as broken up as whites over Sep. 11th. Hurricane Katrina, absolutely. But not 9/11. That's always "what happened to white folks".

    ReplyDelete
  34. [QUOTE]Bet when ZIm was found innocent MGM Paramount etc shrugged their heads and said "Well, there's no story here. He walked. Maybe one day we'll find a story where prejudice is overcome in the courtroom."[/QUOTE]

    I still think Hollywood will make a cheesy film about it.

    I hope they cast Carlos Mencia as George Zimmerman, Gabourey Sidibe as Rachel Jeantel, Liam Neeson as Mark O'Mara, either Rosie O'Donnell or Roseanne Barr as Angela Corey, Will Smith's son as Trayvon No Limit Martin, and Whoopi Goldberg as Tray Tray's mama.

    ReplyDelete
  35. If y'all haven't already, you must check out White Girl Bleed A Lot.

    whitegirlbleedalot.com

    Colin Flaherty is tracking black mob violence, of which there has been an uptick lately.

    On a related note, last night in Austin, Texas, a Marine, his wife, and baby were gunned down in a drive-by with no apparent motive. The wife was hit in the wrist. The bullet missed the babie's head by a few centimeters as it went through the car seat.

    Again: no apparent motive. They were enjoying a night downtown on "Dirty 6th Street" (uh oh. . . I would not have gone anywhere near 6th street this soon after the verdict) and the husband is a Marine (presumably white or Latino. . .hell he might even be "White Hispanic). And 6th Street usually has it's share of gangsta types.

    ReplyDelete
  36. [QUOTE]Inapposite. White men don't gun down young blacks every single day on the streets of Oakland, Detroit, Atlanta, Chicago, NO, Baltimore, etc.[/QUOTE]

    Yeah I know. In the hood it is just No Limit Negros murdering other No Limit Negros.

    ReplyDelete
  37. I would think process of elimination would be the most profitable profiling technique. I would ask, "Who do I not want on this jury," rather than, "Who do I want?" The first question is often easier to answer - at least as a first step to getting a few 'categories off the board.

    For example, it wouln't have taken genius counsel for the defense to recognize, "I don't want black people on the jury, female or not."

    Once you have shrunk the pool a bit, you can start asking, "Well, from what is left, who gives me the best odds?"

    ReplyDelete
  38. Quote:

    I still think Hollywood will make a cheesy film about it.

    I hope they cast Carlos Mencia as George Zimmerman, Gabourey Sidibe as Rachel Jeantel, Liam Neeson as Mark O'Mara, either Rosie O'Donnell or Roseanne Barr as Angela Corey, Will Smith's son as Trayvon No Limit Martin, and Whoopi Goldberg as Tray Tray's mama.

    -----------------------------------

    ...and Al Sharpton as himself. The man is a brilliant actor and nobody else could do the part "justice."

    ReplyDelete
  39. So it turns out that women don't always HATE HATE HATE beta males.

    Sometimes they sympathize with them or at least pity them.

    Because they realize they'd have a lot of trouble defending themselves against Trayvon too.

    ReplyDelete
  40. Whatever. That's not in the real world. The real world is that many sisters on the jury would've made trouble by any means necessary. If it meant going to the judge and claiming that one of their fellow jurors is racist, whatever. By any means.

    Maybe so. But I still find the concealed carry permit bit to be very interesting. Only 1 in 20 people in Florida have a concealed carry permit. And of those, 1 in 5 are female. So that's quite an unusual woman, as only 1 in 100 women are carrying concealed. I think you can draw some inferences from that knowledge that are likely to be true, and all of those inferences help Zimmerman's side. Again, maybe you are right. But if someone on that jury is going to refuse to be bullied, my money would be on Juror B37.

    Very likely, she carried a gun for a reason. She was trained in how to use it. She was prepared ethically and mentally to take a life in a violent self-defense situation. Getting your head smacked into the pavement repeatedly absolutely qualifies for self-defense. And she had no qualms about being an oddball woman doing what other women would not do.

    ReplyDelete
  41. Sorry for the double post, but men can be stupid sometimes.

    My dad who is in his 60s and is very arthritic made comments about how he'd have headbutted Trayvon in the face and made him run away like the bully he was.

    He has been shown the world star hip hop videos and he still believes that he can stand up to a guy like Trayvon at his age. He sided with Zimmerman and would have voted not guilty, but he also said that Zimmerman should have been able to fight off Trayvon without resorting to the gun.

    It probably was better to get women on the jury, you don't want a man who thinks that Zimmerman just should have magically been better at fighting.

    ReplyDelete
  42. ""I wanted to make sure we were going to get jurors that would follow what the court of law required not what the court of public opinion wanted," Hirschhorn said."

    Hirschhorn is being disingenuous here. What the defense wants are jurors who are receptive to the defense's case, whether they are arguing the facts, the law, or just total BS. What they want are jurors who will vote to aquit.

    ReplyDelete
  43. I would dispute that women are better listeners. I have not noticed such a thing. When it comes to personal stories, perhaps. When it comes to noticing facts, inconsistencies, or weasel words, I think men are at least the equal of women.

    I agree with the poster who said that a single black woman on the jury could have been disastrous for Zimmerman. Going with all white women poses a danger too - all those NWLs who (seemingly) instinctively want to believe in young black men. I wonder how Zimmerman would have fared if he was white; perhaps they cut him some slack because he's hispanic, and therefore an "other". Or perhaps the defense attorneys are just good at figuring out which white women wouldn't fall for a poor-little-Trayvon song-and-dance.

    ReplyDelete
  44. It was a close run thing Steve. The juror B37 has said she wanted to find Zimmerman guilty of something, and wants the laws changed so that she could, because under the law she could not. Makes sense, women are more dutiful and conscientious than men and this has been known for decades (on average of course, not binary on/off).

    Point being, she almost came out and said self defense laws have to be changed to prevent self defense against Black teens from being legal. She sure cried a lot over that Alpha male, Trayvon.

    We know that three jurors wanted to convict, one of them on murder. So yeah, without a charismatic, forceful woman wanting acquittal, Zimmerman would have seen a hung jury at BEST. At worst, they would have swung the other way.

    FWIW, the one class I had on jury selection emphasized that women can be more judgmental than men on female victims of rape, something I did not expect but I suppose makes sense.

    Svigor the media is so women driven because Women make or influence 85% of consumer purchases. Watch a random hour of prime time TV and look at the ads and tell me if they are women-oriented. They are. Every marketer wants women first, then maybe men, save male-only consumer products, some types of booze, and viagra.

    It is pretty clear from Juror B37 that the female jury mostly liked Trayvon Martin, rather than George Zimmerman, but was dutiful in following the law. Again if you paid attention, Juror B37 wants the self-defense law changed so (basically it is illegal against young Black men).

    ReplyDelete
  45. Remember: ONE black woman. That's all it would take.

    Remember when you watch the news this month and see all those "peaceful" protesters looting rioting er...protesting for Trayvon's memory. And you see the women, which side are they on? Whose side are they taking? Answer is clear.

    Not happening. In a sane world with rule of law this shouldn't have even made it to trial but it did.

    The defense attorney's did their job well. They knew.

    Beware and stay away from the x factor. In a sense, they profiled the potential jurors and made their decision based on what various facts told them. 'Put one of 'em on the jury and Zimmerman gets 5-10 for manslaughter'. 'Put one of 'em on and she'll make a big issue behind the scenes and keep at it and keep after all the others until he's at least convicted of manslaughter.'

    Maybe the 6 women who live in the county understand their county's crime stats and have an idea how tough it is out there.

    But remember: When watching the news regarding this case. Which side, are they choosing? Which side...are these women on? Who do they support, the watchman or the hoodie?

    One. Just one.

    And its fact cause they didnt take the chance and run the risk of letting it happen.

    Yup. Profiling.....does work in the real world.

    ReplyDelete
  46. I don't think I was that far off. The jury was at least 50% split on the verdicts at first, and the jurors seemed at least half of them more broadly sympathetic to Trayvon Martin, thug Alpha male, who was also Black, than Zimmerman.

    Juror B37 flat out said she wants a law making Zimmerman guilty of something for Trayvon Martin's death. "For not using common sense." So much for sympathy.

    Rather it was dutifulness, and likely Zimmerman being non-White that saved him. Zimmerman looks like that guy on Jimmy Kimmel's show.

    As for a male jury, it depends. DWL's? They'd convict in a heartbeat. Larry the Cable Guy jurors? Not guilty in five minutes. Where's lunch?

    ReplyDelete
  47. It is pretty clear from Juror B37 that the female jury mostly liked Trayvon Martin, rather than George Zimmerman, but was dutiful in following the law. Again if you paid attention, Juror B37 wants the self-defense law changed so (basically it is illegal against young Black men).

    Whiskey, come on! A little more accuracy if not honesty here.

    Juror B37, the concealed gun owner ALSO has stated that she totally AGREED that Zimmerman had an absolute right to defend himself, that he had a right to self-defense. She was totally on board that he had a right to defend himself. Also, that his "heart" was in the right place, if not a little misguided.

    She was also gonna make some cash with a book deal herself but clammed up and took that off the table mighty quick. Probably cause she realized folks might find out where she lives or something.

    But, it was close. Oohhh it was closer than we think. One. All it would've taken. One, forceful sista.
    Just one.

    ReplyDelete
  48. I did a little bit of work once for Houston trial legend Racehorse Haynes, writing up digests of his notes for a projected autobiography. During jury selection in the 1960s, he always noted if a juror had too many mechanical pencils in his his shirt pocket for his occupation: e.g., an auto mechanic with six different pencils in his pocket protector was trying to give the impression he was an engineer. Racehorse felt they were phonies and he didn't want them on his jury.


    Steve, some of your stories over the years, no wonder you side so strongly with Judge Posner vs Blink. On a basic level, profiling is to a certain extent merely observance of things going on around you. Why Malcolm Gladwell can't seem to understand that is beyond comprehension. No doubt he'd have an issue with the trial lawyer for noticing such little things like the numerous pencils.

    Btw, Profiling has a time honored and lengthy history going back at least as far as Arthur Conan Doyle's "deductive reasoning" when Sherlock Holmes the master detective would spout off various things he had observed about various characters. That is profiling except with Holmes his were always at lightning breakneck speed.

    ReplyDelete
  49. I don't think I was that far off.

    You're so full of shit it's not even funny anymore.

    ReplyDelete
  50. I thought modern jury selection is designed to prevent blacks from being excluded from juries?

    goatweed

    ReplyDelete
  51. women jurors

    Perhaps female jurors would've been better; I don't really see where women can be used as an adjective, whereas woman can.

    I'm surprised to learn that, since you'd normally think women would be more empathetic in the case of losing a child. I seem to recall that, after the fact, several of the jurors expressed such sentiments, saying more or less that they would've liked to have found Zimmerman guilty of something, but couldn't per the law since the prosecution didn't really prove he was.

    ReplyDelete
  52. I'm surprised to learn that, since you'd normally think women would be more empathetic in the case of losing a child. I seem to recall that, after the fact, several of the jurors expressed such sentiments, saying more or less that they would've liked to have found Zimmerman guilty of something, but couldn't per the law since the prosecution didn't really prove he was.


    Yes, but time to face the facts. In say the OJ case, the prosecution deemed that it presented its case sufficiently enough that OJ should've been convicted of at least something but the jurors determined that, among other things, there was insufficient evidence.

    "per the law since the prosecution didn't prove their case" yada yada. If juror(s) serving on a jury never lose a preconceived bias, then the facts are damned. Either way. What matters to the juror is voting how they feel or believe what they to be the actual truth of the matter of the case.

    What it may also suggest: A FL jury is somewhat different on these rulings than say a CA jury. Different regional culture. The fact that they feel he should've been found guilty yet dutifully stuck to the law as is demonstrates that all the theatrics and histrionics from the prosecution didn't sway them from voting according to the law whereas in the OJ trial the defenses' histrionics, theatrics, and perhaps some other factors did appear to sway the jury from voting according to the basic facts of the case.

    ReplyDelete
  53. Frankly, when has dutifully following the law superseded how a jury will vote. In the ideal world, voting according to the facts and evidence presented takes a person of great conscience as well as a willingness to look at the facts of the case, otherwise you get radically different rulings when even a cursory reading of the case should suggest a different one.

    ReplyDelete
  54. "Because of the media's non-stop vilification of Zimmerman... Zimmerman did NOT get a fair trial."

    Quite.

    The media did everything they possibly could to force a conviction and they nearly succeeded.

    I hope he can sue them all.

    ReplyDelete
  55. Mr. Sailer mentioned something about how blacks were more law-abiding back in the 50's. If this MLK comment is any indicator, even before the Great Society welfare programs, blacks were serious players in the crime stats:

    "Do you know that Negroes are 10 percent of the population of St. Louis and are responsible for 58% of its crimes? We've got to face that. And we've got to do something about our moral standards," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told a congregation in 1961. "We know that there are many things wrong in the white world, but there are many things wrong in the black world, too. We can't keep on blaming the white man. There are things we must do for ourselves."

    ReplyDelete
  56. "And in our pot calls kettle black series, Alex Pareene goes hormonal on Richard Cohen:"

    The hypocrisy of anti-white liberals in the media is staggering.

    “Richard Cohen explains why black men should be treated as second-class citizens for the safety of us all..."

    The majority of anti-white liberals in the media live in New York, DC and LA, all three of which are in the process of being made schwarzerein through the same process of profiling the anti-white liberals profess to disapprove of elsewhere but which they silently approve of in what they consider their towns.

    Given this obvious hypocrisy it seems to me that anti-white liberals pointing and spluttering at other localities - especially in the south - is simply a way of deflecting attention away from the anti-white liberals turning New York, DC and LA into sundowner cities.

    ReplyDelete
  57. Why Malcolm Gladwell can't seem to understand that is beyond comprehension.

    Thats very generous of you. I think he can understand very well.

    ReplyDelete
  58. Whiskey, how is Trayvon Martin considered an alpha male? Because it looks like he probably lifted weights and did a lot of street fighting? If that's the case, then every meat-head juicer is an alpha male.

    Trayvon was apparently spending his days chatting up Rachel Jenteal. If that isn't evidence that maybe the concept of alpha male is a little more complicated than hitting the gym a couple hours a day and walking around with a surly expression, I don't know what is.

    Back in the 80's, Jack Nicholson was probably the #1 alpha male going and he was a pudgy, balding dude.

    ReplyDelete
  59. The more confounding question about the jury would seem to be: why didn't the prosecution arrange it so there was at least one black on the jury? Maybe they had no choice but I think it's supposed to be illegal to strike jurors because of race. It would seem they would be able to get one from the pool if they were insistent about having that rule enforced.

    Perhaps, did the prosecution intentionally go with an all-white jury because they knew their case was so sucky that it would result in a non-stop hung jury loop with the one black holding out for guilty and the non-blacks always getting close to appeasing the passionate, charismatic black arguing for guilty but not quite getting over the hump because of all that annoying "evidence stuff" that pointed to not guilty?

    The prosecution could then say they tried the case, save the expense of more trials, and still give the left the rallying cry they wanted.

    ReplyDelete
  60. Going with all white women poses a danger too - all those NWLs who (seemingly) instinctively want to believe in young black men.

    True, but I wonder how many of them were married. Married white women went for Romney. Not by a large margin, but they didn't swoon for Obama nearly as much as single white women did. Married white women with kids are the ones driving de facto segregation in schools, gated communities, and other ways of trying to keep their families away from the Trayvons of the world. There was a danger that they'd make an exception once a name and face was put to this particular "child," but it worked out. I would think white (or Hispanic) men would have been a better bet in general, though.

    By the way, the OJ Simpson prosecutors hired a well-known jury consultant, but then ignored their advice, which (among other huge mistakes) probably cost them the trial. The consultant told them black women were a bad choice, partly because they hated blond Nicole for "stealing" a black man, and partly because they just hated Marcia Clark for some reason. But the prosecution ignored that, packed the jury with black women thinking they would sympathize over the domestic abuse evidence, and left Clark as the lead attorney.

    If you pay for jury consultation, use it.

    ReplyDelete
  61. Juror B37 flat out said she wants a law making Zimmerman guilty of something for Trayvon Martin's death.

    People want to appear fair-minded, especially when they've served on a jury. I suspect that makes it common for jurors to claim the decision was close and that they were tempted to go the other way. It looks better to say, "The other side had some valid points, than, "Yeah, it was so obvious he was guilty/innocent that I daydreamed through the second half of the trial."

    ReplyDelete
  62. Anonymous wrote:

    "Sorry for the double post, but men can be stupid sometimes.

    My dad who is in his 60s and is very arthritic made comments about how he'd have headbutted Trayvon in the face and made him run away like the bully he was.

    He has been shown the world star hip hop videos and he still believes that he can stand up to a guy like Trayvon at his age. He sided with Zimmerman and would have voted not guilty, but he also said that Zimmerman should have been able to fight off Trayvon without resorting to the gun.

    It probably was better to get women on the jury, you don't want a man who thinks that Zimmerman just should have magically been better at fighting."

    I'm not so sure your father is full of hot air.

    Look, like changing tires and knowing how to get from point A to point B, fighting is kind of a lost art. Kids today don't seem to know how to do it.

    Boxing isn't really big anymore. A fistfight used to be a very common experience for kids, male ones at least. How common is it now?

    I have no point exactly to make with this, other than what I have stated. Head to head physical violence just is something kids today are no good at compared to previous generations.

    I saw a video on the Escapist once entitled "Battle of the Weak." My take is this is probably what it was.

    ReplyDelete
  63. My dad who is in his 60s and is very arthritic made comments about how he'd have headbutted Trayvon in the face and made him run away like the bully he was.

    He has been shown the world star hip hop videos and he still believes that he can stand up to a guy like Trayvon at his age. He sided with Zimmerman and would have voted not guilty, but he also said that Zimmerman should have been able to fight off Trayvon without resorting to the gun.


    Call da Amber Lamps! Is your dad Epic Beard Man?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4OnhnvczTk

    ReplyDelete
  64. It is pretty clear from Juror B37 that the female jury mostly liked Trayvon Martin, rather than George Zimmerman, but was dutiful in following the law.

    Because women are well-known for putting duty, logic, and facts ahead of emotion and personal connections. C'mon, Whiskey, you know better than that.

    This is what I was getting at in my other comment. This juror had just told little Trayvon's mommy and daddy with her verdict, essentially, that he was a thug who deserved -- at that moment, at least -- to be shot dead. It's only natural that she would feel bad about that and want to soften the blow with some seemingly even-handed statements.

    Another thing: in my one experience on a jury, the most frustrating thing was the feeling that we weren't getting all the facts. I found myself wondering things like, "Why didn't the prosecution ask obvious questions X and Y? Why didn't either side call to the stand the fourth person that both sides say was in the room when the crime did or didn't take place? Why was that one defense witness so obviously angry about being made to testify?" And so on. We found the defendant not-guilty because the evidence just wasn't there, but I couldn't help wondering if I'd open the newspaper the next day and learn a bunch of incriminating stuff that was kept from us by the judge's decisions or deals between the attorneys.

    You don't get the whole picture, so while you might be confident that you made the right decision based on the evidence, you still have to wonder whether you made the right decision based on the facts. So if someone sticks a camera in your face when you're coming out of the courtroom, you're bound to equivocate a little.

    ReplyDelete
  65. This is the black equivalent of 9/11 if:

    US businessmen repeatedly flew commercial jetliners into their own buildings several times a day,every day;

    AND

    On 9/11, in a freak incident, Al Qaeda accidentally flew into a building while trying to avoid anti-aircraft fire from the roof of it.

    Then, I guess you could say this would be the black 9/11.

    ReplyDelete
  66. I think there is some truth to what the consultant is stating. In discussing this case with a friend the subject of federal charges came up. Full disclosure I am Black as is my friend. My friend being the typical black in regards to this case was enraged at the verdict. Talked my ear off for 40 minutes. Anyway he made the statement that federal charges are in line because the Feds went after Medgar Evans killers who according to him were acquitted by White juries.

    While I didn't recall the particulars about the case something didn't seem right so I pulled up the Wiki for Medgar. I was stunned it appears two successive juries of all White men juries deadlocked but never acquitted. It appears that some White men in 1960s Mississippi had no issue sending a White man to prison for killing a Black person this flies in the face of what the media tells us.

    I suspect the prosecution erred being suspicious of White male jurors. Being confident and secure in their place in society they have nothing to fear by sending a White Hispanic to prison for killing a Black if warranted whereas a White woman may look to such a guy as her defender.

    Notice Juror 37 near infatuation with Zimmerman. Calling the white woman crime victim witness was genius on O'Mara's part. She was devoted to Zimmerman and the female jurors received validation of his chivalrous nature. Zimmerman pretty much won his acquittal with that witness.

    ReplyDelete
  67. Whiskey et al.,
    The juror who came out initially, speaking to Anderson Cooper and putting out there that she was writing a book, did all that BEFORE she had a grasp on the reality of the other side.
    Shortly afterward, she stepped back from her book and amended her comments.
    The other four released their statement even later after the book was shelved so I don't put much stock in the idea that they were anti-defense/pro-Trayvon when deliberating.

    It all looks like mob appeasement.

    On men and women, I saw even here in the Rightist Steveosphere a wider range of opinions from the men than the women with Peter who comments at Lion's representing the extreme view that George seemed to deserve prison for not being a fighter.

    The gym owner testified that some men have that inner fight and others don't and that George just didn't have it.

    ReplyDelete
  68. Can a jury law system work in a multiracial society? It seems not.

    ReplyDelete
  69. New York has definitely made an effort to push non-working/hang about blacks out of the valuable areas. Where do they go?

    The lesson of the Zimmerman case is that blacks should have no political or other power because they will abuse it. When it was contained to cities taken over by blacks the rest of us didn't have to think about it but the PResident and the Attorney General being black is a scary proposition for non blacks.

    ReplyDelete
  70. It sounds like the hold-out juror was the black/Hispanic with 8 children.

    The rest of the jury, the 5 white women, fear crime more than anything and Trayvon Martin and the blacks seated in the courtroom are the face of the crime they fear. They have all had an experience with the unpleasant minor hostility of blacks - which we are seeing in the black TV commentators all the time.

    That unpleasant black hostility even when dressed up and affluent is not at some great removal from black thuggery; its part of a whole.

    ReplyDelete
  71. Going along with the Norwegian/Nesbitt interview on Northerners vs. Southerners vis a vis aggression *and* Steve's points on riots and protests: nearly all the protests, violence, and destruction has occurred OUTSIDE the South.

    The South is very Black, to put it lightly, and the only thing I've found is that a jogger, a SWPL, was beaten in Mississippi. I may have missed others, but the pattern is quite clear that the vast majority of activity is occurring *far away* from the epicenter.

    They are clearly having trouble getting in touch with their inner fight here in Florida as well as the Deep South where they are so numerous. Ditto for white liberals, but there are far fewer of them here. Also, it doesn't help that here in Florida there are so many Hispanics. Why take that chance with all those wild cards on top of rednecks?

    ReplyDelete
  72. I don't think there has been much real science in legal proceedings to date.

    There isn't much of substance in all of Psychology except for IQ testing. There's less in Sociology yet.

    One of the few useful ideas in Psychology is Inner versus Other directed. This phenomenon shows a strong reproducible gender bias. Women perceive much of the world including the sense of the upright from external cues whereas men rely more on inter cues. Men pay attention to themselves and women tend to value more the evidence that they receive from others.

    So you would think that this solid sex difference would argue for a male jury because they would tend to be less influenced by all the surrounding social factors. But of course you could argue the opposite way too.

    There isn't much that's valid in academic Psychology and what there is isn't of much use.

    I was once peripherally involved in the Patty Hearst case. As you may remember Patty Hearst was defended by the brilliant celebrity lawyer F. Lee Baily who booted what everyone assumed had been an easy defense case. She had been kidnapped and terrorized by black militants. Yet Bailey couldn't elicit any jury sympathy for her. I knew her second lawyer George M. who got her off on her second trial. It didn't seem to hard. George didn't make all the stupid mistakes that Bailey had made.

    But George was something of a fool. He was very successful but not very bright. So if a dull minded lawyer is clearly smarter than a world famous lawyer, what does that tell you about the validity of legal reputations?

    The OJ 'Dream Team' of lawyers fumbled and stumbled while O'Mara - the randomly chosen and obscure local lawyer who went to second tier law schools - put on a clinic in his defense of Zimmerman.

    So if you can't even predict a lawyer's effectiveness I'm very skeptical of a jury selector's expertise.

    Albertosasurus

    ReplyDelete
  73. Very likely, she carried a gun for a reason. She was trained in how to use it. She was prepared ethically and mentally to take a life in a violent self-defense situation. Getting your head smacked into the pavement repeatedly absolutely qualifies for self-defense. And she had no qualms about being an oddball woman doing what other women would not do.

    Haha, you remind me of what I heard from firearms instructors: they prefer women students. They say women are more teachable (pliable) and go in knowing they don't know anything, and without the mindset common to males, who often think they know more than they do, and don't listen as closely or follow through as conscientiously. Basically, men think guns are a guy thing and feel pressure to have such masculine knowledge already in their DNA, while women have nothing to prove.

    I would dispute that women are better listeners.

    Weasel words for "pliable."

    Svigor the media is so women driven because Women make or influence 85% of consumer purchases. Watch a random hour of prime time TV and look at the ads and tell me if they are women-oriented. They are. Every marketer wants women first, then maybe men, save male-only consumer products, some types of booze, and viagra.

    It's not women-driven. It's men-driven, for female consumption. Big difference.

    It wasn't a close thing. It was a unanimous vote to acquit.

    I thought modern jury selection is designed to prevent blacks from being excluded from juries?

    Excluding blacks qua blacks, yes. Excluding blacks on the merits, no. From what I read, pretty much the whole black share of the jury pool excluded themselves by supporting Martin on social media before selection.

    The media did everything they possibly could to force a conviction and they nearly succeeded.

    I don't see that. A hung jury indicates a near thing much more than a unanimous one does. If it had really been a very near thing, they'd have deliberated longer, I think.

    ReplyDelete
  74. "Yeah, the county is 10 percent and Sanford is 30 percent. But come on. We all know the jury if they wanted to could've found at least one black woman to put on the jury."

    The problem is that the black rabblerousers made such a big deal about this, there probably aren't many black women in the county who hadn't already been agitated about the case. Look at the woman who got kicked off because her church was involved in rallies.

    ReplyDelete
  75. LOL, anytime someone has a good word to say about women Steve and his band of losers do a chimpout.

    "Blowhard" - you should blow so hard,Steve.

    Those ladies were very fact-oriented, and very brave.

    ReplyDelete
  76. Do attys ever give wonderlich questionnaires to their pool?

    ReplyDelete
  77. Look, like changing tires and knowing how to get from point A to point B, fighting is kind of a lost art. Kids today don't seem to know how to do it.

    Boxing isn't really big anymore. A fistfight used to be a very common experience for kids, male ones at least. How common is it now?


    You know why? Cause kids want to win at all costs, when fighting. You bring your fists, another one brings a gun---who wins?

    It's about winning. Fists are nice, the gun wins. Who's gonna win? And they don't shoot to wound, shoot to win. Winning. By any means necessary. Game over for the loser and keep on goin' for the winner.

    ReplyDelete
  78. This is the black equivalent of 9/11 if:

    US businessmen repeatedly flew commercial jetliners into their own buildings several times a day,every day;

    AND

    On 9/11, in a freak incident, Al Qaeda accidentally flew into a building while trying to avoid anti-aircraft fire from the roof of it.

    Then, I guess you could say this would be the black 9/11.




    NO NO and NO. Nowhere close.

    Want the black equivalent to 9/11? Somewhere along these lines.

    A power outage affects the nations' welfare offices, foodstamps, pregnancy benefits for FIVE full months. Nothing that can be done about it, computer error.

    "What? Where my stuff at? Where my stuff, where my stuff at?"

    Of course, they can fall back on the ol' reliable "it's whitey's fault!"

    In actuality Katrina was a black equivalent to 9/11 and they STILL blame Bush for it as though he magically turned the water on and flooded the place and ruined their stuff! All cause as Kanye said "Bush don't like black people".

    ReplyDelete

  79. I suspect the prosecution erred being suspicious of White male jurors. Being confident and secure in their place in society they have nothing to fear by sending a White Hispanic to prison for killing a Black if warranted whereas a White woman may look to such a guy as her defender.

    Notice Juror 37 near infatuation with Zimmerman. Calling the white woman crime victim witness was genius on O'Mara's part. She was devoted to Zimmerman and the female jurors received validation of his chivalrous nature. Zimmerman pretty much won his acquittal with that witness.



    So you, being a black person, would more or less concede the argument that if the jury had a couple of black women on the jury, Zimmerman would be in jail.

    I mean, we have to face the facts. If Spike Lee tweeted out Zimmerman's home address for all the world to see, what do you think he or other prominent blacks in their community would do if they discovered that 1 or 2 black women would serve on the jury?

    We have to be honest with the facts. Somehow, somewhere someone would "know someone who knows someone" and via social media would reveal the black persons' identities. After that, the community would via the backdoor, make it clear in no uncertain way, that if Zimmerman was found innocent "We comin' for you first". Or at least after their families.

    In fact, a black woman was turned down because she had a Trayvon supporter in her church and another one was turned down for the jury because they had friends on Facebook connected to the case.

    There's no way that if a black woman or women were on that jury that Zimmerman goes free. Just isn't. They'd have made sure of that not only out of concern for themselves post-trial but also because they would in their heart of hearts fully believe that Zimmerman is racist and ultimately had it coming. Manslaughter at the very least.

    When you get power, you gots to use it.

    ReplyDelete
  80. Dahlia said...
    Whiskey et al.,
    The juror who came out initially, speaking to Anderson Cooper and putting out there that she was writing a book, did all that BEFORE she had a grasp on the reality of the other side.
    Shortly afterward, she stepped back from her book and amended her comments.
    The other four released their statement even later after the book was shelved so I don't put much stock in the idea that they were anti-defense/pro-Trayvon when deliberating.

    It all looks like mob appeasement.




    No, she amended her viewpoint when she saw that public opinion would literally come after her. A book? That might cast doubt on Trayvon the innocent child? Not happening. Leads one to think she came from a fairly safe middle class environment where little bad happens in way of crime.

    Mob appeasement that would come directly at her if she thought of writing a book.

    Now, if she was that scared and she's white, how much more so would black women feel if they actually voted to acquit?

    "Innocent? He walkin' out the court room with that smile on his face? Look at that. Smilin' and Trayvon dead!
    And you? You sold out your own community You played house slave to the honky cracker-man. You actually didnt use the power you were given to set a brother free? You gots to save his name, what'd he die for? He died for you to set him free! May the sweet good lord help you cause you know the community's comin' after y'all."
    And with social media, they'd have found out where they are.

    ReplyDelete
  81. If I had any money to spare I'd be donating to Steve. (I really can't -- a young dad, with barely enough scrape by from one month to the next.) This site is a tiny oasis of sanity. The commenters are generally excellent, even those who don't agree with each other. (Maybe they should lay off on the venom a bit, from time to time. We're _all_ thought criminals whatever minor differences there may be between us.) Thanks to Steve for all his good work, insights and common sense.

    ReplyDelete
  82. Jay said...
    If I had any money to spare I'd be donating to Steve. (I really can't -- a young dad, with barely enough scrape by from one month to the next.) This site is a tiny oasis of sanity. The commenters are generally excellent, even those who don't agree with each other. (Maybe they should lay off on the venom a bit, from time to time. We're _all_ thought criminals whatever minor differences there may be between us.) Thanks to Steve for all his good work, insights and common sense.




    Amen and God bless. I second it. I'm truly thankful we as Americans can still read, think, consider things that unfortunately the MSM would otherwise not show on a daily basis. Thank you Mr Sailer. In your own way, you've truly been a help to those in need in this information-lacking society.

    ReplyDelete
  83. alonzo portfolio7/18/13, 1:55 PM

    Cause kids want to win at all costs, when fighting

    I'll never forget a local T.V. special on black violence in Oakland around '93. One guy says, "they used to come at you from the shoulders. Now, they come at you from they pocket."

    ReplyDelete
  84. The prosecution's main mistake in the OJ trial was allowing the defence to pack the jury with women, just like Steve said at the time.

    You can bet in that if Zimmerman had been acquitted by a mainly white male jury, then those jurors' personal and professional profiles, if not identities, would have become publicly known and extensively discussed.

    If there had been a white male dominated jury, those white men on the jury might well have been concerned about personal costs to them of finding Zimmerman not guilty.

    Women are almost always more likely to give the benefit of the doubt. I can't recall the names, but a few years back there was a Kansas case of a mother and 12 year old daughter who were found strangled in their home. The daughter was half-naked and draped over the bath. A handyman who had been working in the house that day went on the run and then attempted suicide. He said he had lost his memory of what happened that day. At trial he pleaded not guilty and mainly female jury acquitted him of the murders!

    It's not rocket surgery. Set up as a consultant and cultivate a mystique. The successes are actually just due to applying one rule of thumb: go for the women jurors to get an acquittal.

    In the same way way, cops mislead about their 'thinking'. In reality they usually succeed without doing much conscious analysis, they can't testify to why they thought someone was up to no good. Quite often they don't know themselves as it's just a hunch rather than logic, but they have to come up with logical explanations for a court, so they construct ex post facto rationalisations of their educated guesses.

    The depictions in 'Law and order' ect probably influence the expectations and way real witnesses (and lawyers, law enforcement personnel) act in the real world.

    Casting is probably feeding back from the real world, and retroactively influenced by real world people influenced by casting of tv drama.

    Rachel Jeantel was seen as something out of fiction but she was just a slice of rude reality.

    ReplyDelete
  85. Not at all surprised that the defense did not want any blacks -- male or female -- and that the prosecution absolutely ruled out any white males.

    Surprised neither side really seems to have thought about Latinas/Latinos.

    Did they really buy that "white Hispanic" BS?

    There was only one on the jury and we still don't know her position...

    ReplyDelete

  86. It's not rocket surgery. Set up as a consultant and cultivate a mystique. The successes are actually just due to applying one rule of thumb: go for the women jurors to get an acquittal.


    NO, the thumb rule is go for White women and get an acquittal. If ZImmerman faced an all women jury and 2-3 black women, forget it. Manslaughter.

    OJ case established it firmly: Race trumps gender. There were mostly black women on that jury.

    There is no way, in this society polarized as we are by race, especially jury trials with black on white crime, there is no way on this earth that the black women would have voted to acquit. The community would not have allowed it and they in their hearts would not have been predisposed to view Zimmerman as anything other than Trayvon's killer. Pure and simple. Wasn't gonna happen.

    And you can tell I'm right because the defense wasnt taking any chances. Amazed we haven't heard any pundit publicly complain about this. "Notice there weren't any brothers and sisters on that jury, not surprised he walked out of that court house, grinning away as he did."

    Again and again and again. All it would've taken is one. One black woman. Just one. And he's in the big house 5-10 on manslaughter cause there is no way to kingdom come that she lets this man walk free and she'd have done all in her power to make sure it didn't happen.


    ReplyDelete
  87. Did they really buy that "white Hispanic" BS?

    There was only one on the jury and we still don't know her position...


    We know how she voted in the end. Most likely she wasn't making noise about it. Simply voted the way of the majority.

    ReplyDelete
  88. "
    I suspect the prosecution erred being suspicious of White male jurors. Being confident and secure in their place in society they have nothing to fear by sending a White Hispanic to prison for killing a Black if warranted whereas a White woman may look to such a guy as her defender.

    Notice Juror 37 near infatuation with Zimmerman. Calling the white woman crime victim witness was genius on O'Mara's part. She was devoted to Zimmerman and the female jurors received validation of his chivalrous nature. Zimmerman pretty much won his acquittal with that witness"

    Zimmerman won me over when I read he was a neighborhood watchman and actually checked up on a woman whose apt. had been burglered. I understand he has had some problems in social adjustment, but he seems to have good intentions, regardless of where the paving leads.
    I have know for a very long time the media is controlled and totally corrupt. I do tune in for certain facts but if you poke around enough on the net you can find sites that provide alternative coverage and primary sources. TV and major newspapers and magazines have finally crowned their image of total fraud.

    ReplyDelete
  89. I hope Zimmerman sues the hell out of NBC for deliberately editing that phone call to make him look bad. As I recall, their "defense" seems to be that other news outlets were portraying Zimmerman negatively too! Unreal.

    ReplyDelete
  90. alternative 37/18/13, 6:58 PM

    "LOL, anytime someone has a good word to say about women Steve and his band of losers do a chimpout."

    Yes, that's true. Even when women do something they approve of, like acquit George Zimmerman (yay!) To be fair, some here did praise the jury for that.

    Really I wish they wouldn't bother with such general compliments in the first place. They are too imprecise and unnuanced to make any sense, and they are always trailed by predictable snark to cancel them out.

    In the early 60s book "Black Like Me" there a scene where the blackened author (a white man who makes himself black and spends time in the segregated South) encounters a white lady coming out of a doorway. Immediately she gets a hostile look on her face. He claimed that white women were more prejudiced and hostile everywhere he went in the South. I thought, huh? The hostile expressions I saw at interracial encounters were from blacks.

    Now in the 21st century, it seems that white women are the most guilty in undermining the white race with their hostility to their own kind. It seems they can't put a cap on their love & affection for blacks of all kinds.

    I don't really know which view is more absurd.

    Quite a roller-coaster ride.

    ReplyDelete
  91. Only 1 in 20 people in Florida have a concealed carry permit. And of those, 1 in 5 are female. So that's quite an unusual woman, as only 1 in 100 women are carrying concealed.

    That would be 1 in 50 women. Five out of 100 people (roughly 50 men and 50 women) have permits; 4 are men; one is a woman. That's 4 men out of 50, and one woman out of 50.

    ReplyDelete

  92. Juror B37 flat out said she wants a law making Zimmerman guilty of something for Trayvon Martin's death. "For not using common sense." So much for sympathy.


    It's a tough spot for her now that it seems her identity may have been revealed.

    ReplyDelete
  93. ben tillman said...

    Juror B37 flat out said she wants a law making Zimmerman guilty of something for Trayvon Martin's death. "For not using common sense." So much for sympathy.

    It's a tough spot for her now that it seems her identity may have been revealed.



    Ah, the advance of social media making it all the more easier.

    ReplyDelete
  94. " One black woman. Just one. And he's in the big house 5-10..."

    "the big house"? Hey Steve, Edward G. Robinson's a fan also.

    ReplyDelete
  95. Truth said...
    " One black woman. Just one. And he's in the big house 5-10..."

    "the big house"? Hey Steve, Edward G. Robinson's a fan also.


    You like that, Truthie? Wrote it just for you!

    ReplyDelete
  96. In the same way way, cops mislead about their 'thinking'. In reality they usually succeed without doing much conscious analysis, they can't testify to why they thought someone was up to no good. Quite often they don't know themselves as it's just a hunch rather than logic, but they have to come up with logical explanations for a court, so they construct ex post facto rationalisations of their educated guesses.

    Police departments are actually known for hiring psychics quite often for help.

    ReplyDelete
  97. "Juror B37 flat out said she wants a law making Zimmerman guilty of something for Trayvon Martin's death. "For not using common sense." So much for sympathy." - She passed up her chance to do just that. At the very least the jury could have been hung by her.

    ReplyDelete
  98. Anon, IMO jury selection consultants use simple rules of thumb not involved analysis.

    Race trumps gender for blacks, going by OJ. I don't know of any recent case where there was an acquittal of a white on black murder by a white jury against the evidence. Juries want a cast iron case in a murder trial. Zimmerman was merely given the benefit of the doubt

    By hunch I meant intuition based on experience. Courts don't accept a cop's educated guess as sufficient cause to stop a person so the cops give reasons that are acceptable to a judge (in cases where the hunch paid off) the case could get thrown out if cops said they stopped on a hunch.

    Zimmerman is a good example of the danger of an idiot's hunch because although Trayvon may have looked like the type who might commit crimes, he was was not actually out on the rob, as an experienced cop would probably have known at a glance. It wasn't just the skittles and drink, the body language and how alert he was (cops are looking for someone who is watching for them).

    Trayvon knew at a glance that Zimmerman wasn't any kind of cop, and (predictably) he wasn't going to take being hassled by a non-cop. Zimmerman may have realized that Trayvon would react, and Zimmerman knew he had a gun.

    Zimmerman's injuries are not consistent with what he said happened; his story is what he needed to get him acquitted. I don't think he was having his head bashed against concrete when he shot Trayvon.

    ReplyDelete

  99. Zimmerman's injuries are not consistent with what he said happened; his story is what he needed to get him acquitted. I don't think he was having his head bashed against concrete when he shot Trayvon.

    Now that's a lie.

    It's one thing if you personally were there and eye witnessed it (which you weren't)


    On one hand you concede ZImmerman is not guilty since the prosecution did not have evidence of murder. If they had they would have presented it. No, the jury ruled based on the evidence and in this case, it favored Zimmerman and his version of events.





    Zimmerman is a good example of the danger of an idiot's hunch because although Trayvon may have looked like the type who might commit crimes, he was was not actually out on the rob, as an experienced cop would probably have known at a glance.


    You and I don't actually 100% know that. Since St Tray the goodheart is dead, we won't know his side. We do know that he was in a neighborhood not his own at night. What was he doing there?
    Actually an experienced cop may just as well come to the same conclusion as Zimmerman. This guy was up to no good, better keep an eye and step on him to see where he's going.

    ALSO, the place had been burglarized several times in the preceding months. The point is: You don't know that. Maybe he was an accomplice or lookout. What...was he doing there? Why didnt he simply go home?

    Easy to 2nd guess monday morning QBing. If you had some evidence to present in the court, why didn't you at the time?





    It wasn't just the skittles and drink, the body language and how alert he was (cops are looking for someone who is watching for them).


    Total BS. Many hardened criminals who are used to being locked up always have an eye out for the cops.




    But again, how do you know he wasn't being bashed in the ground when he shout Trayvon (pictures taken after the night concluded that Zimmerman had suffered head injuries as well as a broken nose) We assume he didnt give himself the injuries.

    Zimmerman claimed he was in the process of being physically assaulted thus mitigating self defense. The prosecution could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this wasn't the case. It takes about a second to pull out a gun and another to pull the trigger so it is more than possible it happened as ZImmerman stated.

    He is alive, he was found innocent in a court of law. we have his version of events as well as the seasoned policemen who also back up his version of events.

    If you wait until the possible civil rights trial (whether federal or by the Martin family) perhaps you can volunteer your legal services to either of them and become an expert witness. They will need some help in their case so any expert on their side would be a definite plus.






    ReplyDelete
  100. A cop might have suspected Trayvon I'll grant you. The thing is if you are not a cop you should not try and act like one, because the Trayvons of this world know to back off a confrontation with a cop, but they are not going to do that with anyone who is not a cop.

    Trayvon walked around Zimmermann's car while giving him a hard look, which should have told Zimmerman he was dealing with someone who was at the end of his tether.

    What did Zimmerman do after this menacing display? He got out the car and went after him, and managed to get caught by surprise by (was Trayvon invisible?) and knocked down. Zimmerman did the opposite of avoid confrontation; under Florida law before 2005 he could not have claimed self defence even if Trayvon had then been shot while trying to kill him.

    His lawyer's argument was that Zimmerman was being beaten when he shot Trayvon dead. A single injury to his knuckle means we can be confident Trayvon punched Zimmerman once. Zimmerman's nose and the back of his head are consistent with him being punched once on the nose, falling back, and his head striking the concrete slab.

    Zimmerman said he had his head smashed against that slab several times. The injuries on the back of his head don't disprove that there were several impacts of Zimmerman's head with the concrete, but they aren't really consistent with it either.

    I know enough about law to know that a so called 'not guilty' verdict simply means the jury gave the defendant the benefit of the doubt.

    ReplyDelete

Comments are moderated, at whim.