Zimmerman lawyer says ‘creepy a** cracker’ 7 times to claim Trayvon ‘put race in this’

[applegrove]

Zimmerman lawyer says ‘creepy a** cracker’ 7 times to claim Trayvon ‘put race in this’

By David Edwards at the Raw Story

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/27/zimmerman-lawyer-says-creepy-a-cracker-7-times-to-claim-trayvon-put-race-in-this/

"SNIP...................................


Jeantel said that Martin thought it was “strange” that he was being “stalked” by Zimmerman.

“That’s because he described him as a ‘creepy ass cracker’?” West wondered. “So, it was racial, but it was because Trayvon Martin put race in this.”

West went on to use the term “creepy ass cracker” six more times, while Jeantel insisted that it was not a racial comment.

“Can we move on to another topic?” Judge Debra Nelson finally suggested.


.................................SNIP"

[freshwest]

1. I wouldn't have been as well mannered as Trayvon. *Creepy* is the operative word for a stalker.

[DearAbby]

2. !

[Mariana]

12. "Creepy" is the word that jumps out at me, too

in that phrase.

And yes, when you're walking and someone in a car is slowly following you, watching you, staring at you, that person is being "creepy".

[freshwest]

18. All the signs of an impending rape, mugging or murder, is what that behaviour says to me.

I'm unsure how anyone doesn't get that.

Any injuries Z got from Trayvon, are from Z's own actions. And Trayvon's death is from Z's action and his responsibility from beginning to end.

It doesn't matter what kind of fancy language one wraps their arguments in when they try to find Z free of guilt in any degree, or Trayvon to have been violent. Because that ignores what anyone with half a brain knows. That Z was acting in the standard manner of a determined criminal menacing his victim.

There is only one reason for him to do what he did, a sense of entitlement and out of control aggression. He picked the suitable target in his mind for that. There should have been no target picked, and no movie playing in his mind to excuse it.

The only person with legal entitlement to follow and confront, is a police officer. They are easily identified, trained to see what a person has such a gun, knife or a bag of Skittles and Arizona Ice Tea. They are not perfect, some have acted as badly and worse than Z, but I doubt even the Sanford police, which had a shake up previously due to civil rights would have done this to Trayvon. Because they have to explain their actions as public employees.

Z acted as a stranger, even a child knows better than to take orders from a stranger, especially a patently creepy one like Z.

I hope the jury sees beyond the fan fare and sleazy reasoning and convict him on second degree murder. And that the prosecution asks them in closing, just how would they react to being followed by a stranger in a car at night, who then got out to follow further. IOW, putting themselves in his shoes.

They don't have to stretch imagination to pretend they are black or male. Since they are women, they have lived it, heard the news or known women who have been accosted, kidnapped to be raped or murdered. Or raped and murdered on the sidewalk, which is how I see this. There is pattern to how these events play out.

Just because Trayvon was male doesn't mean he couldn't be sexually assaulted in some manner, or he was not being stalked by a killer planning on a hate crime. And it was night time which makes Z's actions very suspicious indeed. Trayvon had to have been terrified, but a survival instinct in all of us is strong.

Admittedly, I would not have been walking about at night to get a snack, but Trayvon felt confident to do so and likely did not own a vehicle. Which does not make him a criminal, unless one gives into the lazy thinking that poverty is a crime.

Like Z, I would have traveled at night in a vehicle for my own protection. A vehicle that Z abandoned to act out on his aggressive impulses.

If Trayvon had been a woman on her way home, how would the world and media and jury see this?

[appleannie1]

3. The term cracker is from the days of slavery when the owners cracked a whip quite literally. It is

still used today because racial inequality is alive and well in the south and blacks are still considered beneath the white folk. The main focus should be on the creepy. It signifies that Zimmerman's actions were making Trayvon nervous and afraid.

[applegrove]

7. My dad used to go to cocktail parties in Florida in the 1990s. The white Republicans he met

there constantly called Clinton "a cracker".

[coeur_de_lion]

9. cracker is not used that way in Florida

In Florida "cracker" is used to describe the first white Floridians who made their living driving cattle, cracking the whip. My Great-Grandfather was a cracker.

[RebelOne]

11. Modern usage as per Wikipedia

The term is used as a proud or jocular self-description. Since the huge influx of new residents into Florida from the northern parts of the United States and from Mexico and Latin America in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the term "Florida Cracker" is used informally by some Floridians to indicate that their families have lived in the state for many generations. It is considered a source of pride to be descended from "frontier people who did not just live but flourished in a time before air conditioning, mosquito repellent, and screens.

[coeur_de_lion]

13. Right!

My grandmother lived in a place where they raised their own cattle and pigs and grew their own vegetables and fruit. If they didn't grow it they didn't eat.

No A/C or mosquito repellent. There were no fences then either. They had to mark the animals to prove who they belonged to.

So I often joke that I have a lot of cracker blood in me, as do many of my friends. It isn't racist. It isn't even derogatory. It just identifies us as white people with ties going back really far in early, primitive Florida.

There were no slaves where my grandmother lived. Not ever.

[RZM]

10. No it isn't

Just like 'rule of thumb' isn't about beating your wife (it probably comes from a carpentry term).

'Cracker' comes from a description of settlers who were always 'cracking' their mouths off.

[loli phabay]

14. yup it predates the US, a cracker is a corruption of the scots irish for a loudmouth

Still used in eire and heard when people say stuff like ive heard enough of your crack. Still in this context its definetly a derogatory term about race.

[coeur_de_lion]

15. not really

it does describe cracking the whip, but on cattle, not slaves.

Doesn't have much to do with cracking your mouth.

[Wait Wut]

4. Prosecution needs to turn that around.

If Trayvon did indeed say 'creepy ass cracker', the word 'creepy' indicates that Trayvon felt threatened.

[freshwest]

6. If he said it, that was still not what provoked Z to get out of his vehicle and follow him.

The attorney is attempting to twist the jury perception with ruse, ignoring the undisputed fact Z stalked another person.

Trayvon did not approach Z first or, as some would say, he didn't start a fight. The jury in Texas found a retired volunteer fireman who went down the street onto his neigbhor's property waving a gun was not acting in self-defense.

The sidewalk was public property and Trayvon had a right to use it. He was essentially on his property, doing what he had a right to do, when harrassed by a man who had no right to harrass him and also bad intentions.

Trayvon did not make him get out of his vehicle with word or deed. This scumbag attorney is trying to put the dead man on trial here. I only hope that the jury can see the logic of this case, the sequence of events, and find this maniac guilty.

And I hope he has not been over charged so that the jury will not want to find him guilty of a higher offense. He needs to be removed from society for a long time for the safety of the public. This was not his first violent act.

[Wait Wut]

8. Agreed.

But, if the defense is going to try to make this about Trayvon's 'racism' the prosecution needs to turn it around so it bites them on the ass. It shows the Trayvon was not the 'big, bad' teenager that they're claiming. He felt threatened by some creepy white guy. If they try to prove that Trayvon kicked Zimmy's ass, that is Trayvon's 'stand your ground' defense.

[all american girl]

5. I have been saying "a creepy ass man following a kid in a car

and that creepy ass man gets out of his car and follows a kid on foot." Ever since I first heard about this. Funny thing is when I was talking to my son about it last year and describing what happen, I asked him what he would do...."turn around and ask him what the fuck is your problem." It doesn't seem to matter the color of your skin or where you live, all teen-agers are the same, they don't like being followed and will actually ask.

[MrScorpio]

16. That was obviously the lawyer's attempt to elicit the sympathy of other Saltine-Americans...

Remind us all of how disparaged SA's are as a group in this country.

[freshwest]

19. Yes, I'm so oppressed! But if they keep this up, in time whites will be, and the winning

strategy for the long-term will be to earnestly value the rights of minorities as they value themselves. Equality for all protects all, what's so hard to understand?

If nothing else, be practical, racists!

Since whites will be a minority one day, it behooves us all to enforce just and equal social behavior. Racists condemning POC, are condeming themselves. I have tried to warn racist whites about this.

Because it's true that 'what goes around comes around.' Any group that doesn't want to be abused, should not abuse others or they lose their moral standing.

In my opinion, as a human being first, and white second, they endanger me and mine with their arrogance, hatred and spite.

JMHO. YMMV.

[DeschutesRiver]

17. I dont think that this or much else of what this atty is doing is working

A stalker scared a kid enough that the kid fought back in his own self defense, whereupon the stalker promptly shot him to death.

That is what is black and white to me, so to speak. I think this atty is an ass whose race card talk and badgering of a kid who was just a witness is not diverting any attention from the fact that even if you included race, anger, the victim hitting back, etc, the undeniable facts remain that his client started this, stalked this kid, and chose of his own free will to end this kids life.

In any other situation, we don't seem to spend so much time attacking a victim whose only "crime" was to defend himself/herself, only to die at the hands of their stalker/attacker.

If I were a juror, the defense atty would be failing in his attempts to assume I was stupid and capable of being diverted by this utter nonsense.

[freshwest]

20. You nailed it.