5/24/2012

Witnesses in Zimmerman case are changing their stories




While these former prosecutors are saying that these changing stories will help Zimmerman, I am not so sure.  The reason that I am not sure is that there initial statements were so supportive of Zimmerman.  Now because of huge political and public pressure these witnesses either want to say that they didn't see what they originally said that they saw or in one case they are even changing who they saw on top of whom.  The main point is that the changing stories have gone in one direction towards being less helpful to Zimmerman: either the memories have become vaguer or the stories have flipped.  From the Orlando Sentinel:
Witness 6This witness lived a few feet from where Trayvon and Zimmerman had their fight. On the night of the shooting, he told Serino he saw a black man on top of a lighter-skinned man "just throwing down blows on the guy, MMA-style," a reference to mixed martial arts.
He also said the one calling for help was "the one being beat up," a reference to Zimmerman.
But three weeks later . . . the man said he was no longer sure which one called for help.
"I truly can't tell who, after thinking about it, was yelling for help just because it was so dark out on that sidewalk," he said.
He also said he was no longer sure Trayvon was throwing punches. The teenager may have simply been keeping Zimmerman pinned to the ground, he said.
He did not equivocate, though, about who was on top.
"The black guy was on top," he said.
Witness 13He is important because he talked with Zimmerman and watched the way he behaved immediately after the shooting, before police arrived.
After this neighbor heard gunfire, he went outside and spotted Zimmerman standing there with"blood on the back of his head," he told Sanford police the night of the shooting.
Zimmerman told him that Trayvon "was beating up on me, so I had to shoot him," the witness told Serino. The Neighborhood Watch captain then asked the witness to call his wife, Shellie Zimmerman, and tell her what happened.
In two subsequent interviews about a month later . . . the witness described Zimmerman's demeanor in greater detail, adding that he spoke as if the shooting were no big deal.
Zimmerman's tone, the witness said, was "not like 'I can't believe I just shot someone!' — it was more like, 'Just tell my wife I shot somebody …,' like it was nothing." . . . 
 You have a lot of pressure from the black community on this.  Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have certainly put things up a few notches. From Zimmerman's attorney:
"Before February 26 we had a peaceful town where people went to church and sat together in multiracial congregations. We didn’t have a seething town of civil unrest because of race relations. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton brought that to town and turned this into a racial event when it never was one."
Of course, President Obama also made this a lot more political.

 


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1 Comments:

Blogger Raven Lunatic said...

It makes me wonder whether a defendant/petitioner in a high profile case such as this might not be able to sue the media if they could show that witness statements changed from original testimony & reports in cases where their story changed from being in accordance with physical evidence to being in agreement with the media narrative.

Alternately, in such cases, the trial needs be sooner than is normally afforded by the court system. At the very least, someone ought point out that witness testimony is among the least reliable forms of evidence.

5/26/2012 10:04 AM  

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