Over at Legal Insurrection, Andrew Branca has an extremely comprehensive review of the State's closing argument against George Zimmerman, one that is punctuated repeatedly with "the State's got nothing."
I read some of BDLR's speech and it was, well, desperate...culminating in his weird invocation of MLK to recount the testimony of Rachel "that's retarded, sir" Jeantel. Over and over and over again, he raised doubt as to what exactly happened that night in February. Here's the rub: the prosecutor is supposed to arrange the evidence to build a wall against reasonable doubt. It's the job of the defense to raise doubt. Instead (tomorrow), Zimmerman's defense team is going to spend half the day reviewing facts and the testimony of the State's own witnesses, much of it favorable to the defense. This was never so true when the State asked the judge to strike the testimony of Detective Chris Serino who said he found Zimmerman to be credible and honest in his account.
This thing could be wrapped up by the end of tomorrow. The jury will wrap for the weekend.
1 comment:
Actually, if I understand the law correctly (and I may not) the burden of proof is currently on the defense, not the prosecution.
A claim of self-defense is an 'affirmative defense' against the criminal charges which normally follow shooting somebody. Legally, an 'affirmative defense' is something that the _defendant_ has to prove, in order to escape the charges leveled against him. We all agree on who shot who, it's up to the defense to prove they are entitled to this exemption.
Just for the record, I think that Zimmerman is flat-out innocent, and that his experience was very close to a textbook example of a good, justifiable self-defensive shooting.
Post a Comment