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Monday, July 15, 2013

Patrick Sullivan Revels in George Zimmerman Getting Off Scot Free

     In the past Patrick and I had gotten into it over at the Money Illusion over the Zimmerman case. Today, he came to gloat. 

    "Am I too big a guy to say I told you so (almost exactly a year ago);"

     http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=15460

     "Everything I said back then has been vindicated in that Florida courtroom. Everything you said, shown to be not only wrong, but ridiculously wrong."

     "The Sanford police were right; it was self-defense. Angela Corey and Bernie de la Rionda are politicized idiots, and Alan Dershowitz (not a Republican to be hated, iirc) gets it exactly right;"

     -------quote--------

     "Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz says the prosecutors in the George Zimmerman murder trial should be charged with "prosecutorial misconduct" for suggesting the defendant planned the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin."

     ""That is something no prosecutor should be allowed to get away with … to make up a story from whole cloth," Dershowitz told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV."

      "These prosecutors should be disbarred. They have acted absolutely irresponsibly in an utterly un-American fashion."
  
     -------endquote------

     "This is Chambers v Florida (1940), Leo Frank (1915), and the Scottsboro Boys. Southern fried justice...for yahoos like Mike Sax."


    At the least, he answers his own question if he's too big a guy to say he told me so: no, he's not too big a guy. For what it's worth, he always comes out of such disputes believing he was totally vindicated. 


     So in his own mind he's always vindicated. In this case there's really nothing in this comment of his that vindicates any of our actual dispute over at Money Illusion. I never made a bet about who would prevail in this case. While I believe the verdict was very wrong I can't say I'm shocked particularly in dealing with the Florida justice system. If Patrick can show me where I guaranteed a victory in this case I'm happy to read it. 

    What our debate really was about was whether George Zimmerman acted wrongly or inappropriately  that fateful night of March 2012. I believed the answer to this question was yes then and I continue to think it's yes now. 

    It's possible for justice to not prevail in a particular case-there's no way a system of Law could ever be created that this weren't the case. I feel that in this case justice wasn't done. I'll say this for Patrick-he seems to have a very good memory-he's very good with dates of history. He was able to easily find our discussion. 

    However, he doesn't really help himself by appealing to these great verdicts of 'southern fried justice that happened in 1915 and 1940. After all, this was in the day of the Jim Crow South. Does he really want to appeal to anything from this era as vindicating his own argument? If these other verdicts are like the one we heard Saturday night then it really is the gross miscarriage of justice it seems. 

    In any case, this is not the last we'll hear about this case. There are still more opportunities to achieve justice. There is a civil trial, and the Department of Justice is now going to consider whether there is a 'prosecutable violation."


    Patrick may not want to celebrate too much yet. Either way though he hasn't been vindicated as it's simply a case of justice not being done. Sometimes that happens. 

    

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