Monday, July 15, 2013
When the bully is bullied
Non-sports post.
Some bullies are pretty devious, be it teenagers in school, or the spouse in domestic abuse cases, or anything else related like your typical street brawl. They do enough to push your buttons, even crossing the line, enough to instigate the victim into crossing the line back. And once the victim crosses that line back (that means going beyond just defending themselves), the original bully can claim being a victim, and thus fight back under the guise of a victim.
And the American Legal (not Justice) System seems to operate under the premise that the original victim is afforded victim protection as long as they don't cross the line back.
***
This is the Zimmerman-Martin incident in a nutshell. Zimmerman stalked Martin, or otherwise pursued him, a standard bully tactic. You can even argue that it didn't rise to the level of crossing that line. (That is, had Martin been carrying a weapon, and he killed Zimmerman because Martin felt threatened, Martin would likely have been convicted. Crazy right?) So, the bully did enough to make the victim feel threatened, but not rise to that level of grave danger where Martin can pull out his gun (had he had one). Martin though could justify punching Zimmerman, enough to stop the pursuit.
Now, what if Martin is aware of the gun in the holster? Now Martin himself may have felt grave danger. He's being pursued, he might have seen the holster. Now Martin is the one in self-defense, and he has the right to do anything he can to stop Zimmerman, meaning knocking him unconscious or worse, until the grave danger he perceived is gone.
But what rights does Zimmerman have? Can he claim self-defense, if Martin can be proven to claim it first? That is, when does Zimmerman have a right to back down, and how does he have to show it? Or is it simply that from the perception of each of the men, it can be reasonable shown that each could independently claim self-defense, and so, if either killed the other, it's self-defense?
That I think is what the prosecutor's had to show: that Martin acted in self-defense, and throughout the exchange, whatever Martin did was justified for self-defense, because Martin perceived that grave danger. And if Martin did not get Justice, it's because the prosecutor wasn't able to prove that Martin was the victim throughout the exchange. The prosecutor allowed the jury enough doubt to think that Zimmerman became the victim at some point.
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