Not at all a smart move by Zimmerman or his wife. I’m sure his attorney is none too happy. You don’t want to ever do anything that’s going to raise doubts about your credibility in a case like this. This will not help Zimmerman’s case.
26 thoughts on “Zimmerman Breaking News: Credibility Destruction”
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Big deal about the 2nd Passport. It’s not like he’s a flight risk or anything.
That doesn’t matter. It’s his credibility that matters. The prosecution will be all over this, and it will do nothing but complicate his self-defense case.
It sounds like the judge didn’t think the passport was anything worth mentioning, either. The money issue, on the other hand, seems to be the issue he revoked bond over.
I saw this on the restaurant tv while I was eating lunch. I really wish they had turned on the closed captioning so I could “hear” what actually happened – the media’s credibility on this whole thing right now is much less than zero.
Meh. Honest mistake on the part of the guy. All the defense has to say is that up until now, Zimmerman has met the Court’s demands with no incident. He was never a flight risk, reported to jail on time, and hasn’t left the state since his bond hearing. So what’s the problem? A 2nd passport that he forgot about?? HOLD THE PHONES! THIS GUY IS JAMES BOND, PLOTTING HIS ESCAPE AFTER MURDERING POOR BABY TRAYVON! …pleassssse.
How come none of the R2KBA bloggers have even mentioned the recent Seattle shootings?
(see: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2018328014_gunpolitics01m.html)
Of particular concern was that Wednesday’s mentally ill shooter was in fact a CPL (CCW) holder in WA state. Seattle’s mayor is talking about working around state preemption.
It’s not good at all. Perhaps worse, since we’ve so long enjoyed fairly free gun laws, we don’t have a vigilant 2A community as you may find in oppressed locations.
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks
-Sean
I generally don’t jump on mass shootings. I let our opponents do that. But I’ll start commenting once they turn the tragedy political. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
Ry, mentioned it yesterday. I heard about it as it happened. I’m going to write up a post either this weekend or early next week tying some other stuff in with it.
Seattle has a history of trying to go around preemption and this is nothing new. As horrible as it all is, seriously this is just another day in Seattle.
Washington Ceasefire has issued a statement and the Seattle PI unsurprisingly screams that we need more gun control. Ignoring the fact the majority of the issues center around gang violence. Of note about Wednesdays shooter is the following:
I have not seen anything stated he had a CPL, just that there was nothing preventing him from obtaining one. I’ve read and searched both articles as well as the Examiner article and searched google with his name and CPL, link please to the cite that he in fact has a Washington CPL?
Thanks.
It appears the LA Times is stating he had a Washington CPL.
Big effin deal. He misplaced his passport. And the article doesn’t go into any detail about his financial misrepresentation, so I will assume that’s bullshit as well, at least until more information comes in.
Sounds like the prosecution is contending that he was speaking to his wife about it in code. I’m reading that his bond has indeed been revoked, and he has 48 hours to report back into custody. So that means whatever the contention, it was enough to convince a judge.
This is pretty indefensible. He was speaking to his wife on the telephone from jail, and this is the conversation:
Zimmerman: “Do you know what? I think my passport is in that bag.”
Shelly (sic) Zimmerman: “I have one for you in safety deposit box …”
Zimmerman: “OK, you hold onto that.”
Here is the motion: (see paragraph 10)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/95589216/Prosecutors-motion-to-revoke-George-Zimmerman-s-bond
Pretty bad for GZ’s credibility.
Yeah, looks like prosecutor is playin games.
There’s a little more information here. It looks like the issue was the money from his earlier website that didn’t get reported originally. I thought that had been dealt with already, but I guess I was wrong.
As well-intentioned and well-behaved as I might be, if I was facing a 2D murder charge; had posted $150K bond but subsequently raised $200K; had a valid passport (“forgot about?” Puhleeeze. . .) and nothing much of material value to leave behind, I would be very tempted to become a flight risk. It hardly takes a conspiracy by the prosecution for a judge to act prudently in this case, given the evidence that Zimmerman was less than forthcoming about some things.
While we might wish for Zimmerman to be a choir boy, because of the extent that our interests depend on his character, the fact is that he isn’t, and hasn’t been. That does not affect his guilt or innocence in the Martin shooting, except as Sebastian said, the verdict will strongly depend on the jury’s perception of his credibility. That our interests depend on the outcome of his trial doesn’t make everything he says or does innocent, or his word credible.
The question here, is what this does to his credibility in front of a jury. Are these statements and proceedings admissible in the jury’s presence? If so, it will hurt him, and if not, then it doesn’t matter.
I love how the state has been impugning his character for months but now his less than straightforward answers mean he is a liar who will spend the next 12 months in jail because of it. There is something wrong with a system where the cops can lie with impunity and the rest of us are held to the very word under threat of jail.
About the money, is the complaint that it was not mentioned by him as “his” money, which it was not? Should he have mentioned “Oh, and some people are raising money to pay for my defense?” Maybe – or is it like me being required to say “Oh, and Marriot Corp. is trying to make enough money to give me a stock dividend?” Not enough info.
The ‘coded’ conversations with his wife make him look like a liar and a douchebag. It pisses me off to spend the time and effort to defend this guy against the media falsehoods and then find out he was acting like this.
The media still lied, faked evidence, and generally tried to lynch this guy.
But if this kills his credibility and he goes to prison because of it? No sympathy.
I don’t think I like this guy very much.
I have admitted all along that I haven’t liked Zimmerman, because of my own biases. Those are, that I didn’t trust a wannabe cop; that the whole situation arose from him violating the key principle of a humane society, MYOB; and there was testimony that he had behaved like a bully in other venues. None of that means that I wouldn’t have acquitted him based on such evidence as has been presented to us, but I have regretted all along that so much of our defense of Castle Doctine/SYG depended on his credibility. Even if he is innocent, I never thought he had a lot of credibility.
Meanwhile, being in a position of not trusting him but wanting him to be innocent for the sake of the greater good, it seemed to me that both sides were always too quick to embrace whatever information was presented about either him or Martin, as it supported their respective positions, or rejecting out of hand any information that didn’t. I opined awhile ago that it had been a case of two critical masses coming together, with neither “mass” being any too “clean, that had led to the shooting.
Well I think you need to reanalyze why you don’t like him.
A) he is not a wannabe cop
B) in a humane society you do exactly what he did- you investigate suspicious activity.
C) bullies don’t defend homeless blacks from being beaten by cops.
I see nothing to not like this guy, and this new evidence doesnt change that. We already knew about the money months ago. The passport is a nonissue.
I’ll apologize for rehashing old evidence. I try to avoid being argumentative beyond a useful point, but I guess I’m sort of in the mood Sebastian was when he wrote those wonderful rants about Bloomberg’s Soda Prohibition, the other day.
Regarding your assertions:
a) “In December 2008, Zimmerman applied for a citizens’ police academy with the Seminole Sheriff’s Office. In his application, Zimmerman stressed his background with the law.”
b) You “investigate” suspicious activity to the extent necessary to be prepared to take the proper next steps if it escalates to criminal activity. You do not intervene until it does. In the 38 years I’ve lived in my house, I’ve watched scores of suspicious activities from behind my curtains. In my younger days I’d even go unwisely outside with a gun and watch from behind the bushes. Not a single one of the suspicious activities was ever followed by a crime in the neighborhood. Had I intervened, anything that would have resulted from the escalated incident would have been my fault, not the fault of the person acting “suspiciously.” Zimmerman had called 911, and at that point his legitimate job was finished, unless, say, Martin had started climbing in a window or attacking someone.
c) But bullies do relentlessly harass Muslim coworkers in their workplaces, as testified to by a coworker at one of Zimmerman’s former places of employment, where Zimmerman had been terminated for being a troublemaker.
On your final points, I think we need a timeline of quantity-of-money vs. who-knew-about-it when. It is not clear to me. And I hardly think “forgetting” that he had applied for (and received) a renewed passport, after contending his old one had expired, is a non-issue. He was in fact in possession of a passport that he was not supposed to have. I always remember very clearly the status of my passport, since these days we can’t leave home without it.
To perhaps make something useful out of this, beyond the issue at hand, please recognize that both you and I are doing the same thing I alluded to above; choosing to embrace what information supports our position while totally rejecting or ignoring what does not. FWIW, everybody’s been doing it, and neither side has been less guilty of it than the other. The other side doing it just looks more egregious.
And last, I still don’t like Zimmerman. But knowing what I know so far, I’d first grant him a new bail hearing to consider higher bail, and at the trial I’d probably acquit him.
Just out of curiosity, what country do you live in? Because here in America, I have gotten along just fine for 35 years without ever having a passport. Needing one to the house has never even crossed my mind. I can easily see requesting a replacement for one that has been lost (which is what I read was his reason, not that it had expired), finding it, and just tossing the replacement in a drawer and forgetting about it.
OTOH, if the bit Divemedic quoted from the prosecution’s motion is accurate, then it does look pretty bad.
If his story is true (IF), then his only reason for following was to be able to tell the cops which way to go, and he stopped when the dispatcher suggested that he stop. Considering the history of recent robberies in the neighborhood, doing that much is not really too unreasonable.
While it is troubling, I have always found the timing of this story very suspicious. It came out – along with the vague accusations of racism from the unnamed woman who couldn’t actually give any details – right as the media created image of Zimmerman as a horrible racist murderer was falling apart. I also find it telling that these are the only such stories that have surfaced throughout this entire ordeal, despite the heavy and nationwide coverage.
There’s always been something kind of off all along in this. I’m still pretty convinced he has a solid self-defense case if he can avoid blowing his own credibility. But it looks like he hasn’t. I can remember when this all started, wondering if he spoke a lick of Spanish, given his ethnic background, that it wouldn’t be better off for him to escape to a jurisdiction that had no extradition treaty.
It would seem Zimmerman might not be entirely sure he can find justice here. I can’t say I really blame him for thinking that, given the lynch mob that was released on him. But it seems he was indeed thinking that, and planning for it. And now he’s a flight risk and will cool his heels behind bars until trial.
This is, in my opinion, going to make it more likely his lawyer will go for the immunity hearing. This is going to get a lot more interesting.
Perhaps what looked like resources and a plan to flee pre-trial was in fact a plan to flee post-trial/not-guilty verdict?
Just a guess with no basis in any facts I know of.
The sad news for this guy is that even if found not guilty, he will still have to run for his life.
Considering that the NBPP already put a price on his head once with zero reaction from the authorities despite the blatant illegality of it, I had wondered the same thing. If he gets free from the murder charge, it would be in his best interests to disappear, fast. He’s not likely to live for very long if he doesn’t.
I agree I have a hard time blaming him for trying to have an exit-stage-right backup plan. But I also see how it goes to his credibility, and like it or not courtroom trials are a particular form of kabuki where stuff like that matters.