Thoughts on Week One of Trial

[TalkLeft]

This thread is to discuss your thoughts on how Week One of Trial went.
Who helped the defense the most? Did anyone hurt the defense?
Who helped the state?
What do you think of Judge Nelson's rulings and demeanor?
How do you think the lawyers did?
Did either side make any major gaffes?
Were there any areas you expected to be covered during a witness' testimony that weren't?
Did any witnesses contradict other witnesses or their own prior statements?
Was it a mistake to call Rachel Jeantel?
Do you have any questions about this week's proceedings?  Post them here and hopefully another commenter will answer.

(For thoughts on what will be next, see the Trial Expecations thread. If you want to talk about media/talking head coverage, please start a thread under Media)

 

[DebFrmHell]

IMO ONLY...The State had to call W8.  Her attitude in the court was amazing and I have no idea why a judge would let her talk like that.  And I never got the feeling she was being entirely honest despite her bravado.

The other closest thing to her testimony was that of W18 and the way she kept repeating "pop, pop, pop" towards the end of her stint, did little to help her credibility since we all know (including the jury) that only one shot was fired.

The police/EMTs seem to be more Defense witnesses than the State and I could NOT help but to laugh whenever BDLR would raise his voice at his own witnesses.  Who yells at their own?



That is just how I read it.

[ding7777]

Rachel Jeantel's manufactured/coerced/tainted testimony is similar to cops "planting evidence". Why didn't Judge Nelson exclude RJ's testimony at at point?

And why didn't Don West find out more about the phone-sharing-friend?

[cboldt]

Rachel Jeantel's manufactured/coerced/tainted testimony is similar to cops "planting evidence". Why didn't Judge Nelson exclude RJ's testimony at at point?

And why didn't Don West find out more about the phone-sharing-friend?

Judges do little without being asked.  Nobody sought to exclude Rachael's testimony from the case, and doing so would be "insane" from a legal point of view.  She's held out as a fact witness.  What she has to say about what she heard on 2/26/12 is relevant.  In a jury trial, jury, not the judge, decides issues of credibility.  Even when a witness is an obvious liar (and I'm not saying Rachael was), their testimony is allowed.

We don't yet know what all the defense knows about Rachael.  The defense may call her as a witness - I think to present evidence of Martin's reputation as to fighting, and perhaps as to his state of mind that day seeing as how the two of them were arguing, and Martin may have been angry.

The defense knows who wrote the March 20 statement for Rachael, and has probably asked her questions too.  Those questions might reveal more about Rachael, or might lead the defense in a different direction.

[RickyJim]

Rachel was never interviewed by a competent truth seeking investigator.  Once the special prosecutor came into the case, it was guaranteed that the truth would only come out accidentally.  If any witness exhibits how the adversary system: letting lawyers for the defense and prosecution be the main interviewers and preparers of witnesses for trial and questioners at trial, gets in the way of finding the truth, it is her.  Was any effort made to get an interpreter of Creole, Spanish or her English dialect to act as intermediary?  I suppose we will also never find out why the police never called the last number on the phone, which is what Rachel said on the stand she was waiting for.  If you haven't seen them before, here are the questions I put up, while listening to her testimony, a real investigator would have asked and to my frustration weren't.


1.   During Feb. 26 and April 2 of 2012, when did you commit your recollections of Trayvon's last minutes to writing, for example, texts or tweets?  In that time period, whom have you orally discussed your recollections of Feb 26 with?  Have any asked you to say you remember certain things happening?
2.    At the beginning of the final call with Trayvon, he was at his father's house and he kept moving.  Why didn't he go right in?
3.    How do you know George Zimmerman moved towards Trayvon rather than Trayvon going towards George Zimmerman?
4.    How do you know Trayvon, just as Zimmerman caught up to him, turned around to ask Zimmerman why he was following him?
 5.   Since you think the headset with microphone was out of place when you think you heard faintly, "Get off, get off", and you were busy doing your hair, how can you be sure it was TM rather than GZ speaking?  How well do you know Mr. Zimmerman's voice?

[annoyedbeyond]

Rachel was never interviewed by a competent truth seeking investigator.  Once the special prosecutor came into the case, it was guaranteed that the truth would only come out accidentally.  If any witness exhibits how the adversary system: letting lawyers for the defense and prosecution be the main interviewers and preparers of witnesses for trial and questioners at trial, gets in the way of finding the truth, it is her.  Was any effort made to get an interpreter of Creole, Spanish or her English dialect to act as intermediary?  I suppose we will also never find out why the police never called the last number on the phone, which is what Rachel said on the stand she was waiting for.  If you haven't seen them before, here are the questions I put up, while listening to her testimony, a real investigator would have asked and to my frustration weren't.


1.   During Feb. 26 and April 2 of 2012, when did you commit your recollections of Trayvon's last minutes to writing, for example, texts or tweets?  In that time period, whom have you orally discussed your recollections of Feb 26 with?  Have any asked you to say you remember certain things happening?
2.    At the beginning of the final call with Trayvon, he was at his father's house and he kept moving.  Why didn't he go right in?
3.    How do you know George Zimmerman moved towards Trayvon rather than Trayvon going towards George Zimmerman?
4.    How do you know Trayvon, just as Zimmerman caught up to him, turned around to ask Zimmerman why he was following him?
 5.   Since you think the headset with microphone was out of place when you think you heard faintly, "Get off, get off", and you were busy doing your hair, how can you be sure it was TM rather than GZ speaking?  How well do you know Mr. Zimmerman's voice?

She testified she understood English real well. She did basically all her social media in English.

[RickyJim]

OK, so maybe only the translator would only need to translate one way.  Whatever, it would have wasted less time than what was done during her testimony.  This could have been intentional; both sides  didn't want the jury to really understand her.  More important was their spin on what she said. 

[annoyedbeyond]

OK, so maybe only the translator would only need to translate one way.  Whatever, it would have wasted less time than what was done during her testimony.  This could have been intentional; both sides  didn't want the jury to really understand her.  More important was their spin on what she said.

which way? She speaks English. She's been speaking/dealing in English her entire life. She went to school and dealt in English from K on. Her inability to be heard and understood has less to do with any sort of Creole bias and more to do with basic inability to speak basic English because of a reliance on whatever the term for what kids in her neighborhood speak these days.

Plus--IMO only--it appeared she had a speech impediment, her tongue was too large or something similar to that. I don't know if it was because her tongue was pierced, I've met girls that talked kind of that way who had oversized tongue piercings.

Sorry Ricky. I really don't see why you want a Creole translator, I really don't.

[RickyJim]

AB, have you listened to McWhorter on the difficulties in understanding Rachel?  When she says she understands English, it doesn't mean the same thing as what we understand as English.  The DEA has been hiring Ebonics to English translators so one could have been used for Rachel's testimony.

[annoyedbeyond]

I did not listen to McWhorter, at least not yet.

I don't think I knew Ebonics was still something that could be said in polite company. I thought it was one of those mean words everyone gets so worked up about.

But I don't know how much help a translator would've been. Maybe a little, but a large part of the trouble with Rachel seems to be that she told so many different stories and she wasn't particularly smart.

[RickyJim]

I don't think it would have been that hard to get the truth out of Rachel.  First you need to find out the best means of communication and use a translator if necessary.  If she is fluent in say Dominican style Spanish, then there is no problem.  Then you let her do as much talking about what happened during and after Feb. 26 as possible.  Just interrupt once in a while to ask for more detail.  Act like you are really interested and appreciate her story.  Even let her go into irrelevancies like what curling iron she uses. I am sure much more than what Crump, BDLR and West got was available from her.

[Lousy1]

What makes you think she wants to tell the truth? At this point I would like to see some evidence that she doesn't create her on realities with every retelling. Are there any vignettes about facets of her life beyond this case?

Her lack of concern with self contradiction is telling.

Her ability to ignore her own statements might  be rooted  in a form of  egotism that assigns exclusive credibility to her feelings at the moment.  It is not all that rare.

[annoyedbeyond]

Nice to see you, Lousy1.

Ricky, she doesn't care about telling the truth. I almost question whether she knows what the truth is. She has different stories for different people at different times. She told several versions just on the stand. Including a couple of times when she did it within a half hour or so.

[nomatter_nevermind]

I suppose we will also never find out why the police never called the last number on the phone

I think we have a partial answer to that. SPD was still waiting for a court order when they handed the case to Wolfinger. That still leaves the question of why the court took so long, and when the order was first applied for. I've never seen an exact date for the latter event.

[RickyJim]

They need a court order to do that in a homicide investigation?    That sounds bizarre.  I doubt they do things that way on the TV cop show Rachel mentioned.