Tag: Trayvon Martin (page 15)

George Zimmerman had his first court appearance today. His arraignment was set for May 29. Unless he's granted bail before then, he'll remain jailed. At a news conference I just watched that took place after the brief court hearing, the prosecutor who will be in charge of the case refused to answer questions about the facts that led to the second degree murder charged. By the end of his conference, he displayed a short fuse and testy demeanor.

George Zimmerman's new lawyer, Mark O'Mara, addressed the media, and said he and Zimmerman decided a few hours before the hearing to delay their request for bail. He said they will be requesting bail sometime within the next few weeks. He also said Zimmerman is in protective custody at the jail, and that he supported the placement for safety reasons. [More..]

Update: Is this Florida's modified version of the perp walk? There was a throng of media outside the jail awaiting George Zimmerman's arrival. When the garage doors opened, two black cars pulled in, one of which had George Zimmerman inside. Orlando TV aired his arrival live, pointing their cameras through the window to get the shot of him exiting the vehicle and being taken inside.

At a press conference today, Florida state's attorney Angela Corey, the chief prosecutor assigned to the investigation into the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, announced George Zimmerman has been charged with second degree murder. You can read the charges here. [More...]

CBS and other media organizations say they have confirmed through law enforcement officials that state's attorney Angela Corey has decided to charge George Zimmerman with a crime in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. She is expected to make the announcement later this afternoon.

The announcement, which Corey's office describes as a release of new information (rather than a decision on charging) will be made at 6:00 pm at her office in Jacksonville, FL. Here is her press release. [More...]

Update: The state's attorney handling the George Zimmerman investigation said today she will make a statement within 72 hours. She said she is "preparing to release new information regarding the Trayvon Martin shooting death investigation.". It doesn't explicitly say the announcement will be her decision on whether to file charges.

In another bizarre turn in the Trayvon Martin shooting. George Zimmerman's lawyers have withdrawn from representing him, saying he hasn't returned calls since Sunday and called the prosecutor and Sean Hannity to talk to them. The prosecutor refused to talk to him without counsel.

The website he set up was done on his own. His lawyers, at his request, had been in the process of setting one up, when he decided to do his own. [More..]

Special Prosecutor Angela Corey has decided against using the grand jury to investigate the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

Corey says the grand jury isn't needed and the case is still being investigated. She says ""The decision should not be considered a factor in the final determination of the case." She previously said she's never used one before in investigating whether a case involved justifiable homicide and she has previously said she may or may not use the grand jury in this case. The initial decision to use the grand jury was made by State's Attorney Norm Wolfinger, before he recused himself from the case. /p>

Here is her actual statement, courtesy of NBC 6 Miami.

I have no clue which way she is leaning.

Update 10:00 pm: NBC 6 Miami corrected all three online articles discussed below around 6:00 - 7:00 pm ET. Since they don't note the corrections, I have added in screengrabs I took last night as verification. On all versions of the articles, scroll to the bottom to see the original date and time of publication.

Also, I don't know if NBC or NBC 6 Miami has seen this post, but if they have, it's probably because it was linked to by law professors Ann Althouse and Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, who get far more traffic.

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Original Post

Saturday and Sunday, Reuters reported it had interviewed MSNBC News President Steve Capus and others at NBC and got "the fullest explanation yet" of the network's racially-charged, misleading edit of George Zimmerman's 911 call that appeared on the Today Show on March 27. It was just a matter of time pressures inherent in morning news production, that was simply missed by the network's editorial controls, which include senior broadcast producer oversight, script editors, and sometimes legal standards review.

[More...]

For weeks, the City of Sanford has maintained a page on their website dedicated to the Trayvon Martin shooting. It included the 911 calls of George Zimmerman and the neighbors who called 911 to report the shooting. It also included the video of Zimmerman arriving at police station from several camera angles, a written description of his earlier 911 calls and police reports of earlier burglaries in the neighborhood.

No more. Those are gone from the city's page, with this statement:

The office of the State Attorney, 4th Judicial Circuit, State Attorney Angela Corey has requested that the City of Sanford remove all reports, videos and audio pertaining to the Martin/Zimmerman case from the website. Their office has provided legal justification for the action and they believe further access to the information will have an adverse effect on their efforts to come to a resolution to this investigation.

The calls are all over You Tube and other media websites. [More...]

NBC not only acknowledged its misleading portrayal (composite graphic here) of George Zimmerman's statements on his 911 call concerning Trayvon Martin, it has now fired the producer responsible for the error.

Now it's time for CNN and CNN NewsWire to explain an apparent similar gaffe -- one about what Zimmerman purportedly told his lawyers he said on the 911 call, in partiuclar, a word that some have claimed is a racial slur. It's been more than 24 hours since I began writing this very long post, and I still haven't seen an explanation or acknowledgement by CNN on the change in its articles. If I missed it, please let me know in comments so I can correct it. Since online versions of the articles keep changing, in many instances, I am using the versions of the articles as they appeared on LexisNexis.

The unexplained edit is contained in articles that appeared Thursday, April 5, under the headline "Expert: Zimmerman whispered 'punks' before shooting Trayvon Martin," later changed to "Lawyers: Zimmerman whispered 'punks' before shooting Trayvon Martin." [More...]

An official mea culpa and apology from NBC News for editing and distorting the meaning of George Zimmerman's 911 call in the Trayvon Martin case in a Today show segment that was repeated on MSNBC.

During our investigation it became evident that there was an error made in the production process that we deeply regret. We will be taking the necessary steps to prevent this from happening in the future and apologize to our viewers.

I wrote yesterday NBC was investigating the edit error. Good that they followed up swiftly. [More..]

ABC News acknowledged today that the police video of George Zimmerman being taken into custody following the shooting death of Trayvon Martin shows injuries to the back of his head. It says a forensic enhancement it commissioned allows the injuries to be seen.

Forensic enhancement wasn't needed. As I showed here, the injuries were noticeable from ABC's original footage. You just had to look. Here's the screengrab I got back on March 29. [More...]

The Sanford Police have released the full, six minute camera surveillance video of George Zimmerman's arrival at the police department.

MSNBC reports the video was taken four hours after the shooting. Also:

In the video, there are no readily visible signs of injuries to Zimmerman's head or blood on his clothes. However, he is wearing a red jacket, which could obscure blood stains. Also, at one point, an officer pauses to look at the back of Zimmerman's head, which he claims was injured by Martin.

Appearing on NBC's TODAY on Thursday, Zimmerman's attorney Craig Sonner described the video as "very grainy." He also pointed out that Zimmerman had been "cleaned-up" and received first aid in the four hours between the incident and Zimmerman's videotaped arrival at the police station.

Update: USA Today says the video shows it was taken at 7:52 pm, 35 minutes after the shooting. [More...]

This WOFL FOX 35 extensive interview last night of George Zimmerman's father, Robert Zimmerman, a former judge and Vietnam Veteran, deserves equal time with the video released yesterday of Zimmerman arriving at the jail from which so many people are deducing Zimmerman wasn't injured.

There's no resolution in the interview, we're still left with George's version vs. the Martin family's version. While he discusses what he's learned from George and others about the fatal encounter with Trayvon Martin, the interview is as much about the effect of the incident on George and the family, and the hate that the case has generated, as it is about the facts. It's long and painful to listen to because there is so much grief in his voice. My synopsis is below: