Amid evidence cache in Martin case, questions nag

This photo from Feb­ru­ary of George Zim­mer­man, the neigh­bor­hood watch vol­un­teer who shot Trayvon Mar­tin, was among evi­dence released by pros­e­cu­tors that also includes calls to police, video and numer­ous other doc­u­ments. The pack­age was received by defense lawyers ear­lier this week and released to the media on Thurs­day. (Cour­tesy | State of Florida Attorney’s Office)

ALLEN G. BREED

KYLE HIGHTOWER

TAMARA LUSH

Asso­ci­ated Press

ORLANDO, Fla. — Pros­e­cu­tors in the Trayvon Mar­tin case dumped a moun­tain of evi­dence on the pub­lic this week. In many crim­i­nal cases, that would bring clar­ity, start answer­ing the basic questions.

But no one — not pun­dits, attor­neys or the pub­lic — can safely say we’re even close to know­ing exactly how and why neigh­bor­hood watch vol­un­teer George Zim­mer­man shot and killed the 17-year-old in the black hoodie.

So many aspects of the Feb. 26 alter­ca­tion and shoot­ing in San­ford remain muddy. Who threw the first punch? Why did Zim­mer­man leave his car?

This cache of record­ings, pho­tos and state­ments is far from all the evi­dence. But it sug­gests there are answers we may never truly get.

“I can’t com­ment on, you know, what George saw or what George was think­ing,” the suspect’s father, Robert, told inves­ti­ga­tors in a March 19 inter­view included in Thursday’s release. “Or what any­body saw or what they were thinking.”

In some states, “dis­cov­ery” like this isn’t released prior to trial — unless it’s by a defense team hop­ing to score points in the court of pub­lic opin­ion. That is what hap­pened dur­ing the infa­mous 2006 Duke Uni­ver­sity lacrosse rape case, in which North Car­olina offi­cials ulti­mately deter­mined that the local pros­e­cu­tor rushed to judg­ment in charg­ing three stu­dents with rap­ing a stripper.

In Florida, evi­dence is gen­er­ally con­sid­ered a pub­lic record once the pros­e­cu­tion turns it over to the defense. Among the things pros­e­cu­tors are pro­hib­ited from releas­ing pre­trial: Confessions.

Zim­mer­man gave sev­eral inter­views to police, includ­ing re-enacting at the scene what he says hap­pened that night. But there is no state­ment from the 28-year-old shooter among the mate­ri­als made pub­lic this week.

His only pub­lic com­ment so far came dur­ing his deten­tion hear­ing last month, when he apol­o­gized to Martin’s par­ents — but stopped short of admit­ting any crime.

Tamara Lave, a Uni­ver­sity of Miami law pro­fes­sor, says all this release does is to remind us how mal­leable “facts” can be.

“I think we always want evi­dence to be like we’re Moses climb­ing the tem­ple moun­tain: You read it and get all the ques­tions answered,” says Lave, who worked a decade as a pub­lic defender before enter­ing acad­e­mia. “I think peo­ple are really get­ting to find out how gray evi­dence really is.”

Per­haps the biggest rev­e­la­tion was the release of pho­tographs show­ing Zim­mer­man with two black eyes, a swollen nose and mul­ti­ple lac­er­a­tions on the back of his close-cropped head.

Zimmerman’s lawyers have main­tained their client was sim­ply doing his duty when he noticed a stranger in the neigh­bor­hood and began fol­low­ing him. They say Mar­tin was the aggres­sor, knock­ing Zim­mer­man to the ground, then pum­mel­ing him with his fists.

When Zim­mer­man pulled his 9 mm pis­tol and fired directly into the boy’s chest, the defense says, he was within his rights under Florida’s “stand your ground law.” Under that law, peo­ple are given wide lat­i­tude to use deadly force rather than retreat in a fight if they believe they are in dan­ger of being killed or seri­ously injured, if they weren’t com­mit­ting a crime them­selves and if they are in a place they have the legal right to be.

Randy McClean, an Orlando-area defense attor­ney, has sifted through most of the evi­dence released thus far. He says it cor­rob­o­rates Zimmerman’s story of a strug­gle that was “at least mod­er­ate in nature.”

“But we still have the issue out there: Who was the ini­tial aggres­sor?” McClean said. “The fact that there was a phys­i­cal alter­ca­tion, and it appears Mar­tin was get­ting the bet­ter of Zim­mer­man in the alter­ca­tion, it does not nec­es­sar­ily excuse Zimmerman’s act. Because if he was the ini­tial aggres­sor, he can’t avail him­self to the stand your ground law.”

To Martin’s fam­ily, none of that mat­ters. Zim­mer­man shouldn’t have been fol­low­ing their son in the first place, espe­cially after a dis­patcher told him to stand down.

But, as Lave notes, “You don’t lose the right to self-defense because you act idiotic.”

Some of the inter­views released illus­trate just how dif­fi­cult it may be to reach the truth.

On one of the 911 calls, some­one can be heard scream­ing for help just before the gun­shot. When Martin’s mother heard that audio, she declared defin­i­tively that it was his voice; the boy’s father told an inves­ti­ga­tor it wasn’t Trayvon.

Robert Zim­mer­man was adamant that the voice on the record­ing was HIS son’s.

The FBI says it per­formed voice recog­ni­tion analy­sis on the record­ing. Because of the poor audio qual­ity, it was deemed inconclusive.

Accord­ing to doc­u­ments released this week, Martin’s blood showed traces of THC, the psy­choac­tive ingre­di­ent in mar­i­juana. We knew from ear­lier reports that he’d been dis­ci­plined for smok­ing pot, and the amounts found in his blood sam­ple sug­gest he hadn’t indulged in the days lead­ing up to the inci­dent, experts told The Asso­ci­ated Press.

Despite all this new evi­dence, some aren’t sure the case will ever go to trial.

Before that can hap­pen, a judge must first sched­ule a hear­ing on whether the stand your ground law applies. Zimmerman’s attor­neys will have to prove his case by a “pre­pon­der­ance of the evi­dence” — a fairly low bar, jurisprudence-wise. It just means that more likely than not, Zim­mer­man acted within the law.

“If he pre­vails, the pros­e­cu­tor is barred from pro­ceed­ing crim­i­nally,” says Lave, “and the Mar­tin fam­ily from pur­su­ing him civilly.”

She thinks this case will go to trial. Then, she believes, like many, that the tes­ti­mony of Martin’s girl­friend will be pivotal.

The girl, whose name was redacted from the released audio files, spoke with assis­tant state attor­ney Bernie De la Rionda on April 2. Dur­ing the 22-minute inter­view, she said in a shak­ing voice that she had been talk­ing with Mar­tin since before he entered a 7-Eleven store to pur­chase his now famous iced tea and Skittles.

The cell con­nec­tion was bad, and the cou­ple were repeat­edly dis­con­nected. But at one point, Mar­tin told her he noticed a white man sit­ting in a car, watch­ing him.

“He was telling me, like, that man watch­ing him, he going to start walk­ing and then the phone hung up and I called him back again,” the girl said. “And I said, ‘What you doing? And he said he walk­ing and he said this man still fol­low­ing him.”

It was driz­zling, and the girl said Mar­tin told her he was putting up his hood.

“I told him go to his dad’s house,” she said.

Mar­tin told her that he was going to run. She could hear the wind blow­ing in the phone’s speaker.

“He was breath­ing hard,” she said. “(his) voice kinda changed. I know he was scared. (his) voice was get­ting kinda low.”

Sud­denly, she heard Mar­tin say, “Why you fol­low­ing me for?”

The girl said she could hear another voice, one she described as deep and belong­ing to an “old man.”

“The old man say, ‘What you doing around here?’”

She asked Mar­tin repeat­edly what was going on, but he didn’t respond. She said she heard some­one say, “Get off,” though she thought it was her boyfriend.

She heard rustling, then noth­ing. No scream­ing, no gunshot.

The evi­dence dump included another inter­view with the girl, but the audio qual­ity is so poor as to make it almost unin­tel­li­gi­ble. One thing that did come through: A detec­tive men­tioned that the girl­friend called Mar­tin at 7:12 p.m.

When police arrived at the scene at 7:17 p.m., Mar­tin was already shot and on the ground.

“She’s the only per­son, for sure, that is a wit­ness who knows what he (Mar­tin) felt and sounded like in those moments,” Lave says of the girl­friend. “All those things can play a role in the out­come of the case.”

But there are gaps in the file no one can fill.

Mar­tin can’t describe his feel­ings that evening — whether he was angry, afraid, both.

Zim­mer­man — who has pleaded not guilty to second-degree mur­der and is in hid­ing — could tes­tify to his own state of mind. But would peo­ple believe any­thing he says?

Martin’s par­ents say Zim­mer­man racially pro­filed the boy. Some of those who’ve spo­ken to police believe it.

“I don’t know what hap­pened,” one dis­traught woman, who is not iden­ti­fied, says in one the record­ings released this week. “I don’t at all know who this kid was or any­thing else, but I know George. And I know that he does not like black peo­ple. He would start some­thing just to start some­thing. He’s very con­fronta­tional. It’s in his blood, we’ll just say that.”

Zimmerman’s sup­port­ers say there’s not a racist bone in his body.

“I know that George Zim­mer­man, if sev­eral Asians had bro­ken in places there, and he saw an Asian walk­ing around, he’d prob­a­bly say, ‘Wait a minute. I rec­og­nize most of the peo­ple that live here, and I don’t rec­og­nize that per­son,’” his father told police in the March 19 interview.

If he con­sents, police could sub­ject the watch­man to a poly­graph test. But, even if it was admit­ted as evi­dence, you can’t depose someone’s heart.

For his part, Robert Zim­mer­man said he felt as if the case and the pub­lic storm sur­round­ing it were “an avalanche, and I’m stand­ing at the bot­tom of it …”

With luck, the truth in this chal­leng­ing case won’t be buried there, too.

Posted by AP News on May 18 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.