Tag: George Zimmerman (page 17)

Special Prosecutor Angela Corey has decided against using the grand jury to investigate the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

Corey says the grand jury isn't needed and the case is still being investigated. She says ""The decision should not be considered a factor in the final determination of the case." She previously said she's never used one before in investigating whether a case involved justifiable homicide and she has previously said she may or may not use the grand jury in this case. The initial decision to use the grand jury was made by State's Attorney Norm Wolfinger, before he recused himself from the case. /p>

Here is her actual statement, courtesy of NBC 6 Miami.

I have no clue which way she is leaning.

Update 10:00 pm: NBC 6 Miami corrected all three online articles discussed below around 6:00 - 7:00 pm ET. Since they don't note the corrections, I have added in screengrabs I took last night as verification. On all versions of the articles, scroll to the bottom to see the original date and time of publication.

Also, I don't know if NBC or NBC 6 Miami has seen this post, but if they have, it's probably because it was linked to by law professors Ann Althouse and Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, who get far more traffic.

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Original Post

Saturday and Sunday, Reuters reported it had interviewed MSNBC News President Steve Capus and others at NBC and got "the fullest explanation yet" of the network's racially-charged, misleading edit of George Zimmerman's 911 call that appeared on the Today Show on March 27. It was just a matter of time pressures inherent in morning news production, that was simply missed by the network's editorial controls, which include senior broadcast producer oversight, script editors, and sometimes legal standards review.

[More...]

For weeks, the City of Sanford has maintained a page on their website dedicated to the Trayvon Martin shooting. It included the 911 calls of George Zimmerman and the neighbors who called 911 to report the shooting. It also included the video of Zimmerman arriving at police station from several camera angles, a written description of his earlier 911 calls and police reports of earlier burglaries in the neighborhood.

No more. Those are gone from the city's page, with this statement:

The office of the State Attorney, 4th Judicial Circuit, State Attorney Angela Corey has requested that the City of Sanford remove all reports, videos and audio pertaining to the Martin/Zimmerman case from the website. Their office has provided legal justification for the action and they believe further access to the information will have an adverse effect on their efforts to come to a resolution to this investigation.

The calls are all over You Tube and other media websites. [More...]

NBC not only acknowledged its misleading portrayal (composite graphic here) of George Zimmerman's statements on his 911 call concerning Trayvon Martin, it has now fired the producer responsible for the error.

Now it's time for CNN and CNN NewsWire to explain an apparent similar gaffe -- one about what Zimmerman purportedly told his lawyers he said on the 911 call, in partiuclar, a word that some have claimed is a racial slur. It's been more than 24 hours since I began writing this very long post, and I still haven't seen an explanation or acknowledgement by CNN on the change in its articles. If I missed it, please let me know in comments so I can correct it. Since online versions of the articles keep changing, in many instances, I am using the versions of the articles as they appeared on LexisNexis.

The unexplained edit is contained in articles that appeared Thursday, April 5, under the headline "Expert: Zimmerman whispered 'punks' before shooting Trayvon Martin," later changed to "Lawyers: Zimmerman whispered 'punks' before shooting Trayvon Martin." [More...]

An official mea culpa and apology from NBC News for editing and distorting the meaning of George Zimmerman's 911 call in the Trayvon Martin case in a Today show segment that was repeated on MSNBC.

During our investigation it became evident that there was an error made in the production process that we deeply regret. We will be taking the necessary steps to prevent this from happening in the future and apologize to our viewers.

I wrote yesterday NBC was investigating the edit error. Good that they followed up swiftly. [More..]

ABC News acknowledged today that the police video of George Zimmerman being taken into custody following the shooting death of Trayvon Martin shows injuries to the back of his head. It says a forensic enhancement it commissioned allows the injuries to be seen.

Forensic enhancement wasn't needed. As I showed here, the injuries were noticeable from ABC's original footage. You just had to look. Here's the screengrab I got back on March 29. [More...]

The Sanford Police have released the full, six minute camera surveillance video of George Zimmerman's arrival at the police department.

MSNBC reports the video was taken four hours after the shooting. Also:

In the video, there are no readily visible signs of injuries to Zimmerman's head or blood on his clothes. However, he is wearing a red jacket, which could obscure blood stains. Also, at one point, an officer pauses to look at the back of Zimmerman's head, which he claims was injured by Martin.

Appearing on NBC's TODAY on Thursday, Zimmerman's attorney Craig Sonner described the video as "very grainy." He also pointed out that Zimmerman had been "cleaned-up" and received first aid in the four hours between the incident and Zimmerman's videotaped arrival at the police station.

Update: USA Today says the video shows it was taken at 7:52 pm, 35 minutes after the shooting. [More...]

This WOFL FOX 35 extensive interview last night of George Zimmerman's father, Robert Zimmerman, a former judge and Vietnam Veteran, deserves equal time with the video released yesterday of Zimmerman arriving at the jail from which so many people are deducing Zimmerman wasn't injured.

There's no resolution in the interview, we're still left with George's version vs. the Martin family's version. While he discusses what he's learned from George and others about the fatal encounter with Trayvon Martin, the interview is as much about the effect of the incident on George and the family, and the hate that the case has generated, as it is about the facts. It's long and painful to listen to because there is so much grief in his voice. My synopsis is below:

There are new details of George Zimmerman's account of the fatal encounter with Trayvon Martin.

In an account given to Sanford police that was passed on to the state attorney’s office, George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26, said that Trayvon had punched him and then repeatedly slammed his head into the sidewalk in the moments leading up to the shooting.

....In Mr. Zimmerman’s sequence of events to the police, he returned to his S.U.V. after he was unable to find him, Trayvon then approached Mr. Zimmerman from behind and they exchanged words. Then. Mr. Zimmerman said, Trayvon hit him hard enough that he fell to the ground — which, if true, would explain what Mr. Zimmerman’s lawyer, Craig Sonner, has said was a broken nose—and began slamming his head into the sidewalk.

More details of the leaked police report revealed by the Orlando Sentinel are here. The Sun Sentinel also describes a witness' account: [More]

DOJ and the FBI will investigate the killing of Trayvon Martin.

I hope this results in a restriction on members of neighborhood watch groups playing cop. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writes:

Mr. Zimmerman is not a cop. He had no legal right to question a law-abiding citizen based on his suspicions. Unless the legal standard now is that black youth have to show fearful deference to random strangers who stop them on streets they have a legal right to be, then Mr. Zimmerman's actions weren't justified.

I don't think that statement should be restricted to youth or persons of a specific race. It should be apply to everyone. Vigilante justice is no justice at all. Leave policing to police. [More...]