Posted on 07/10/2013 8:37:43 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
SANFORD, Fla. — A Seminole County Circuit Court judge dealt a blow to George Zimmerman’s defense Wednesday, blocking jurors from seeing text messages from Trayvon Martin’s cellphone about fighting and guns. Zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of Martin.
Zimmerman’s attorneys had waged an intense battle to get the text messages admitted as evidence, arguing late into the night Tuesday during a tense and emotional evidence hearing. The debate grew so heated that Judge Debra Nelson walked off the bench and ended the hearing shortly before 10 p.m., while Don West, one of Zimmerman’s defense attorneys, was still pleading with her.
The texts might have been used to portray Martin, the unarmed teenager shot to death in February 2012 by Zimmerman, as a skilled and aggressive fighter. The defense has attempted to convince jurors that Martin was the attacker and that Zimmerman fired in self-defense. Prosecutors have emphasized that Zimmerman, then a 27-year-old neighborhood watch volunteer, was heavier than Martin, a slender 17-year-old. But defense attorneys called a local gym owner to testify that Zimmerman was unathletic and “soft.”
In one of the text messages on Martin’s phone, a friend writes, “Babe, why you always fighting?” according to Richard Connor, a computer forensics expert who testified for the defense during the evidence hearing.
Connor testified that Martin wrote about fight opponents. “I lost the first round,” a message that he punctuated with a smiley face. “I won the second and third.”
“You need to stop fighting, for real,” the friend texted back, Connor said.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
You can tell by how pissed off the judge is.
She’s being paid to deliver, and she is failing.
No, her reward comes later with the promotion to a federal bench.
I think his text messages would pretty much seal it up for the defense, if they are anything like Janteal’s text messages.
Last night the judge cited court cases dealing with authenticity that stated that messages on email servers and social media servers were not self-authenticating. She actually read portions of these decisions which suggested that they would be authenticated if other corroborating evidence, such as IP addresses, could be established.
Her line of “reasoning” was technically incorrect since the messages were contained on Martin’s phone demonstrating that they had originated from that phone. Thus, something much better than an IP address would substantiate the origin of the message.
She altered her personal assessment by stating that there was no proof that someone else had not sent the messages. This specious reasoning bypasses the obvious observation that if an “IP” address was adequate for authentication, then the physical phone is even better! Thus the legal cases she cited were not applicable to a “someone else could have typed on the phone” argument.
The biggest shame about this trial is that because Zimmerman will be acquitted in spite of the efforts of the judge, we won’t get to see the judge utterly humiliated by the court of appeal for all her crazy rulings. If I were O’Mara, and I am not, he is way too milquetoast for my taste, I would bring her up on ethics charges and begin a campaign to get her off the bench for incompetence. There are pro-prosecution judges and then there are judges whose presiding over a case constitutes a violation of due process. She is the latter.
The judge said any 7 year old could get in and hack a phone. However, Trayvon’s phone was double encrypted, and the texts were hidden in folders. West told the judge that the state of Florida couldn’t get into them, how could a 7 year old? She stormed off the bench.
Another black-robed witch with her own agenda—thwarting justice is this tyrants goal. We saw it with the Simpson trial, when everybody from the judge, to the jury, to those that gathered the evidence knew OJ was the killer of two defenseless people. In this case, Martin was the aggressor and the guilty one that attacked Zimmerman. Zimmerman has the means to defend himself and used it wisely. Too bad Goldman didn’t have a gun. OJ may have been the one buried.
(Jeb appointment).
The fat, ugly, liberal hack Judge is a joke! The only reason she let in the
pot evidence into trial is because the State medical examiner opened
the door by mentioning it in his testimony. She had no choice.
Yes! And then just have the store owners stand outside their establishments, handing out their goods to inner city people to help stave off violence and looting.
LMAO!!!!!
You are most welcome. Compelling isn't it.
Nice, I’m thinking about putting up a sign in our neighborhood that says:
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”,
but somehow I don’t think they read Dante’s Inferno...
This type reasoning has come up in trials before:
From the Alameda County DA's office:In a murder trial, the defense attorney was cross-examining a pathologist.
Attorney: Before you signed the death certificate, had you taken the pulse?
Coroner: No.
Atty: Did you listen to the heart?
Cor: No.
Atty: Did you check for breathing?
Cor: No.
Atty: So, when you signed the death certificate, you weren't sure the man was dead, were you?
Cor: Well, let me put it this way. The man's brain was sitting in a jar on my desk. But I guess it's possible he could be out there practicing law somewhere.
This is obumbler’s aMeriKa. They make rules as they want too.
The cellphone and Zimmerman’s Kel-Tech were both at the scene. The State looked inside Kel-Tech and reported what it found yet, the State refuses to report what it found inside the cellphone.
Ultimately no effect.
What you don’t know is often more frightening than what you do, we’ve found lately.
Reversible error if there is.
I haven’t been watching; I get all my news from FR. I live in LA, so I’ve seen juries do some crazy things. But at least Zimmerman appears to have competent defense counsel - which makes him luckier than most defendants!
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