Zimmerman trial joke

Zimmerman trial joke, The case of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman has always combined tragedy and oddity. Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that on Monday, when both the prosecution and defense offered their opening statements in the first real day of Zimmerman’s trial, the courtroom seemed to be teetering between the two, always in danger of falling into outright absurdity. The day was defined by a cluster of f-bombs, a contention that Martin used a sidewalk as a weapon, a heavy-lidded defendant, and a knock-knock joke.

It began with the prosecutor John Guy, whose first words to the jury were “Good morning. ‘Fucking punks. These assholes always get away.’ Those were the words in that grown man’s mouth as he followed a seventeen-year-old boy.” To illustrate Zimmerman’s mentality as he exited his car in pursuit of Martin, Guy repeated those words: “fucking punks.” Twice. Three times. (This may or may not have driven home his point to the jury, but it did insure that, for those watching on television, the sixteen-month wait for opening arguments would be delayed by five more seconds.) Guy augmented cuss words with adjectives, describing a “rainy, Sunday, Sanford night” when Zimmerman left Martin “face down, laboring with his last breaths.”

By contrast, Don West, Zimmerman’s defense counsel, started with a tale about his own upbringing that drew an objection from the prosecution, which the presiding judge, Debra Nelson, sustained. Thus rerouted, West tried a novel opening approach. After telling the jury not to hold his own humor against his client, he offered them this:

Knock-knock.

Who’s there?

George Zimmerman.

George Zimmerman who?

Ah, good. You’re on the jury.

West apologized for the gag later, but told the courtroom he suspected the problem was in the delivery—not in the fact that he’d just told a knock-knock joke about a murder trial. (If you have to preface a joke by asking a jury not to hold it against your client, perhaps it’s a joke that ought not be told.) By the end of his comments, he’d advanced the intriguing legal theory that a man walking down the street is not unarmed if that street is paved. Though Martin was not actually holding a weapon, West argued, he might as well have had a brick in his hand, given his alleged slamming of Zimmerman’s head on the sidewalk.

It would be wrong to cite the defense alone for its indelicacy. HLN (formerly known as CNN Headline News), which broadcast the arguments in their entirety, promoted its coverage with a macabre commercial including a 911 call made by a neighbor in which haunting screams are punctuated by a gunshot; the image in the ad is a single figure clad in a hooded sweatshirt. Another promo featured something of a reënactment for anyone (perhaps the members of the jury in West’s joke?) unaware of what happened in Sanford, Florida, in February of last year. Add in the network’s frequent pauses for color commentary, and its coverage amounted to something of juris interruptus.

But there was more to the first day of the trial than its strangeness. On Monday, we learned that the now-famous Skittles that Martin had purchased in the 7-Eleven shortly before his encounter with Zimmerman were not for himself but for a twelve-year-old friend with whom he’d been playing video games; that the medical examiner was struck by the thinness of his frame—five feet eleven, a hundred and fifty-eight pounds—leaving the jurors to ponder the kind of wreckage a bullet fired at close range does to a frame that insubstantial; that Zimmerman’s impassive demeanor after the incident was consistent with a man who, in his attorney’s phrasing, had “just had his butt beat.”

While the prosecution was economical in laying out its arguments, Zimmerman’s defense meandered through a more than two-hour statement that included narrative detours, tangents, and at least one instance of diagramming a crude sketch of two men fighting with the words “red-shirt, bottom, black-shirt top.” (The idea, presumably, was to illustrate the subordinate position of Zimmerman, but it was less than clear.) As the opening statement ran into its third hour, Judge Nelson finally stopped the defense to offer pointers about what belongs in an opening argument and what should be saved for closing.

That exhaustive approach, on a day in which any defendant could reasonably be expected to be suffering the effects of a sleepless night, took its toll: at times, Zimmerman appeared on the verge of dozing off. But his attorneys did at least get their key points in, disputing the claim that Zimmerman pursued Martin against the advice of the police, arguing that Martin confronted him by asking “What are you following me for?” instead of just going home, and painting for the jury a portrait of a man who was being beaten to semi-consciousness and who fired in desperate self-defense.

But the proceedings never entirely managed to escape the sideshow atmosphere that they have engendered. Toward the end of the day, there was a dispute over whether Tracy Martin, Trayvon’s father, should be banned from the courtroom for allegedly calling a Zimmerman supporter a “motherfucker” outside a court restroom. The exchange insured that the proceedings were profane and absurd in equal measure, which, in this case, is probably a more apt combination than anyone would like to admit.

Zimmerman trial joke 2013-06-26T11:21:00-07:00 Rating: 4.5 Diposkan Oleh: My Videos Tube