As time goes on, the hastily constructed second-degree murder case against George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin is continuing to collapse as more evidence formerly known only by the prosecution is released to the public.
The first is that Martin seems to have been less interested in running away from Zimmerman and more in bashing him, according to a witness interviewed by police within minutes of the shooting. But that's not all:
Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit relates the discovery of video from Trayvon Martin’s YouTube account, removed at some point during the last month, that shows he was actually involved in some sort of underground “fight club.”
Also fatal to the prosecution’s case is the discovery that Martin had THC in his system [...]
Despite the prosecution’s awareness of the autopsy reports and eyewitness testimony, they included none of it in their affidavit against Zimmerman. Criminal lawyer and Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, who has been beside himself ever since the Zimmerman charges were filed, writes in the New York Daily News that it’s time to drop the charges, but doubts State Attorney Angela Corey “will do the right thing,” because “until now, her actions have been anything but ethical, lawful, and professional.”
As Dershowitz points out, the evidence released in this case means Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law isn’t even a factor in Zimmerman’s defense. Much political hay has been made out of this law, but if Zimmerman was on the ground getting beaten to a pulp, withdrawal from the encounter was physically impossible for him. “A defendant, under Florida law, loses his ‘stand your ground’ defense if he provoked the encounter,” observes Dershowitz, “but he retains traditional self-defense if he reasonably believed his life was in danger and his only recourse was to employ deadly force.”
Does this mean Zimmerman won't be convicted of some lesser offense? Not at all. But it does indicate the media's earlier reporting which effectively smeared him as a racist murderer is starting to look more and more ridiculous.
