Friday, December 6, 2019

The Zimmerman lawsuit: watch this case very carefully


It's been widely reported that George Zimmerman is suing the family of the late Trayvon Martin, and others, for what most news media are calling "engineering false testimony", or words to that effect.  However, I've seen no mainstream news articles that actually spell out what that "false testimony" is claimed to be.

If true, Zimmerman's allegations are explosive.  From the text of his filing in court (courtesy of a link at Gun Free Zone - text in bold, underlined print is my emphasis):

Plaintiff George Zimmerman (“Zimmerman”) brings this action against Sybrina Fulton ("Fulton"), Rachel Jeantel ("Jeantel"), Brittany Diamond Eugene ("Eugene"), Tracy Martin ("Tracy Martin"), Benjamin Crump ("Crump"), Bernie de la Rionda ("de la Rionda"), John Guy ("Guy"), Angela Corey ("Corey"), the Florida Department of Law Enforcement ("FDLE"), and the State of Florida ("Florida") in their individual and official capacities where applicable for violations of Zimmerman's constitutional rights under the Florida Constitution, as well as the United States Constitution, as well as the common law, for conspiring to switch and/or cover up the identity of Defendant Eugene who was the real phone witness to the events prior to Trayvon Martin's ("Trayvon Martin") death, by substituting an imposter and fake witness, Defendant Jeantel, and to assist Defendant Jeantel in committing perjury in sworn testimony to cause the arrest, prosecution, and sentencing to life in prison of George Zimmerman, as well as causing a federal investigation and prosecution of Zimmerman for civil rights violations.

Ye gods and little fishes!  If Zimmerman can prove those allegations, we're talking about a state-sponsored, state-tolerated and state-condoned attempt to distort the entire Florida justice system for partisan political purposes.  Explosive indeed!  You can read George Zimmerman's own words about the lawsuit in this article.  They're worth your time.

To make matters more interesting, Zimmerman's lawyer is "Larry Klayman, a high-profile legal crusader tied to conservative causes and the founder of Judicial Watch".  Mr. Klayman is not your average lawyer.  He's a very controversial figure in legal circles.  He's been heavily criticized and sanctioned in the past, but he's also won some important legal battles.  I presume he wouldn't take on a case with such a high profile unless he was pretty sure of his facts, and of his ability to prove them in court.  If both are true, pass the popcorn.  This will be a spectacle to behold.

As Gun Free Zone puts it (again, bold, underlined text is my emphasis):

What Zimmerman and his lawyer are saying is that not only Miss “I Can’t Read Cursive” was lying on the stand, she was not even the real person who was on the phone with Trayvon but an imposter and that everybody in the prosecution side of the trial knew it and abetted the… I have no idea what to call this other than major legal fraud.  Maybe an almost successful legal lynching.

Again, if they have the evidence supporting this, there is a caca storm coming to Florida’s Justice system and Zimmerman deserves every penny of that lawsuit.

Quite so!  This will bear watching.

Peter

17 comments:

Scott M. said...

I saw this story over on the Ace of Spades website. It sounds like some kind of cheesy, unbelievable courtroom drama starring Adam Sandler.

If they do present evidence of this, I'll find it a terrifying omen. I can't believe that prosecutors would go *that* far to railroad someone.

NITZAKHON said...

From what I understand from the author of the Trayvon Martin Hoax, he has evidence aplenty. (I suspect the impetus to file the suit comes from that work.)

The problem is that even if Zimmerman wins, it's probable jobs will not be lost, and whatever monies he receives will not be paid by the people who did this, but by the taxpayer.

MrGarabaldi said...

Hey Peter;

If he can prove it, then people need to pay the piper. The legal system is supposed to prove your innocence or guilt and the burden is on the state to prove your guilt. but to have a case tried for purely partisan political reasons, not evidence of a crime. This is dangerous, because an impartial judicial system is our check on the government sending us to jail just on "sayso" because of politics. Its is like in Stalinist Russia where one is denounced by a political commissioner and sent to the gulag. If we are politically "inconvenient" to the "powers that be", and we can lose our freedom or life on "hearsay", this is a really bad precedent.

Angus McThag said...

Damn, if he wins that seems that would open Florida state officials to 18 USC 241!

Fredrick said...

So the "Color Revolution" team, having perfected regime change tactics abroad, brought the skills to the US to ensure the election of the correct people. I wonder who was running for office in 2012 and needed lots of voter turnout?

tkdkerry said...

I can believe it. Truly, what's the difference between this and suppressing exculpatory evidence? Or planting a bag of weed from the evidence locker on someone who ran a stop sign? Or cops dropping a throw-away piece by the man they just shot?

Beans said...

Well, the State Attorneys down in South Florida have been a bag of Yankee male-reproductive-members for a long time. It is pretty much an assured thing that any self-defense shoot in South Florida or the Orlando area that is ruled a clean self-defense shoot by the cops, based on evidence at the scene (witness testimony, video, etc.) will result in an initial clearing of the shooter and then 6-8 weeks later an indictment by some State Attorney wanting to get their name in the lights, thus forcing the good guy or gal to go through hell and either accept a plea or be tried, in either case ruining them financially and legally for the rest of their lives.

Happens every time. Every Single Time. If you defend yourself, in South Florida or Orlando, you will save your life just to have it ruined by the elected court officials, be they locally elected judges, state attorneys (the head of each branch is elected) and by bureaucrats within the judicial system.

Zimmerman was railroaded. It was obvious from the get-go. Only a blind, stupid, whacked out democrat couldn't see it. Unfortunately, South Florida is full of blind, stupid, whacked out democrats.

I hope he wins.

And our new governor, DeSantis, has been doing a good job of cleaning house where he finds the need to. Such as sh-tuff canning Sheriff Israel. Can't wait for him to focus on FDLE and the South Florida elected officials, yet again.

C. S. P. Schofield said...

The core lesson here is that this tendency ALWAYS exists in any justice system. Always. The Progressives have been loud in their condemnation of the trial of the Haymarket Bombing suspects, but as we can see here (and with the Duke Lacrosse case) the Left is just as prone to this kind of thing as the Right...if not more so.

Hell, Kamala Harris's Presidential hopes just foundered on the rocks of a prosecutorial career rife with this kind of railroading. And she's SUPPOSED to be a 'Liberal"!

Will Brown said...

Anybody willing to take the Over on George Zimmerman's life expectancy?

Angus McThag said...

Will Brown: He doesn't claim to know anything about the Clintons, he should be OK.

Thomas W said...

All government officials will probably end up declared to have qualified immunity and dropped off the suit. After one or more rounds up the appeals court chain.

Antibubba said...

Those are some mighty big *IFS*.

Aesop said...

Misprision of perjury is a felony.

Courts and judges seldom look kindly on that sort of thing.

Your Correspondent said...

I purchased "The Trayvon Hoax" by Joel Gilbert. This book is doubtless the foundation of Zimmerman's beginning the lawsuit.
The research and footnoting of the book is exacting and comprehensive. The amount of research Mr. Gilbert put into this work is staggering.
As someone who'd followed the case from the very beginning and recognized it as an anti-gun-rights campaign right from the start- the constant harping on the then-new Florida "stand your ground" self-defense law despite the fact it had no relevance to the case and was never invoked was a glaring warning light- I thought I had a good grasp of the horrendous injustice that was perpetrated there. I was wrong. It was far worse, and Mr. Gilbert lays it out in horrifying detail.
As two examples of the wrongness of it all:
The morning the story broke, the CBS "all news" radio station here in Chicago ran it with the lead anchor including the "fact" that the "shoot first, ask questions" later law (her exact words delivered with 50,000 watts) was in play. This was an obvious signal that the hoax was underway.
The law was never involved in the case whatsoever for a number of reasons.
Witness also how Zimmerman was described as "white" when in fact he is predominantly Hispanic, and only one-quarter "white". Caught in this lie, many major media outlets changed the descriptor to "white Hispanic", an entirely new race category.
Later, I was instructing a large concealed-carry license class, in our state which had just become the last to "allow" carry, and one of my students argued mightily with me that Zimmerman has chased down and attacked Martin, among other canards. These were media-driven falsehoods, far from reality, and damning evidence that the media campaign had been successful.
I still am having trouble finishing the last of the Gilbert book, the truths behind the campaign being so infuriating and depressing.
There have been some enormous frauds committed by major media in the last decade or two, but the Martin hoax is very near the top of the list.
God help us.

NITZAKHON said...

@Your correspondent

When I first heard about it I wondered why this was a national story, and ongoing with every new twist and turn breathlessly reported. Then it became clear to me: Zimmerman's name.

Had he been named an ethnically-appropriate name like, say, "Jorge Sanchez" this would have been a local blip for a few days. But with a "white" name (leave aside the Jewish-sounding name) the enemedia could use this to hammer home "Watch out, whitey's coming for you"!) And they did, conveniently right before the 2012 election.

I don't know, but I'd make a bet that after Barackus was re-elected that the coverage fell off a cliff.

Roy said...

I don't know why everyone here has their panties in a twist about this.

George Zimmerman was "credibly accused" of a crime he didn't commit. Everything else follows from that. What if the accusation had been pederasty? Most of you folks would be calling for him to be hung (or worse), before any due process. Both sides do it, but that doesn't make it better.

Some things to keep in mind about cases like this:

One, prosecutors are not judged on "finding truth". They are judged on number of convictions. Please don't misunderstand me. Even after being subjected to a malicious prosecution myself, I still believe that the majority of prosecuting attorneys will not maliciously railroad someone just to get the extra notch on their record.

Two, the more public a case becomes, the less likely a states attorneys office is to admit a mistake - even in the face of overwhelming evidence of a defendants innocence. Just look at the number of times the states attorney's office and the police resist freeing someone exonerated by DNA evidence.

Three, the media lies. They lie all the time. They lie even when they don't have to lie. If a reporter, er excuse me, a "journalist", claimed the sun was rising in the east, I would have to go outside and look for myself.

All of that said, I believe that if the facts of this lawsuit can be proven to be true, then the Florida states attorneys office is probably guilty of a criminal act and should themselves be prosecuted.

Your Correspondent said...

Roy, it's important to understand that the first three layers of investigation of the incident were conclusive, that Zimmerman committed no crime and that the shooting was justified self-defense.
That would be the police on the scene, the detectives who more comprehensively investigated later, and the county states attorney, all of whom reached that very same conclusion.
It was only when the political activists got into the story that it was pushed out of the hands of the local professionals who'd done they due diligence and into the Florida Attorney General's hands. She then converted it into a cause celebre and the travesty began.
It was this entirely separate, second layer that brought the otherwise local tragedy into the national limelight, and all for political purposes: to disable the burgeoning gun-rights movement in the Sunshine State by starting on the stand your ground statute as the first step.