adam winklers' joining us he's professor of constitutional law at the u_c_l_a_
school of law he's also author of the book gun fight the battle over the right
to bear arms in america uh... adam has been article about the george zimmerman
case in huffington post which i recommend you take a look at
adam it's great to talk to you again um... i think the good place to start is
what is going to be the crux of
getting a second degree murder conviction arm george zimmerman is it
going to be the standard ground law is that actually going to become secondary
give us a sense of that
all you see any wrong was going to have the smallest is crazy influenced when
now joins a massive pretrial hearing to see whether the charges will sit you
know usually you can call you self-defense in any kind of homicide
case however that goes to the jury in the jury decides whether you had uh... a
reasonable belief that deadly force was necessary
the realization of the city here and what's not so much the extension of the
right of self-defense on the street will be willing to talk him out
but the addition of a new procedural
and opportunity for a defendant
to show for your guest we juries that he was uh... acting in self-defense and of
the charges should be dropped okay so the standard ground law itself will
actually come up not during the trial itself but before the trial
there could actually be be a decision made that and this is just based on a
preponderance of evidence right not beyond a reasonable doubt
that this was uh... this and this was self defense and then in that case the
standard ground law
could preclude this from even getting to a trial
that's right the senior growl or really is an innovation much less in extending
the right of self-defense on the street
and much more in creating procedural opportunities for dependents to avoid
having to go to trial whatsoever
let's say that this uh... goes to trial right the the standard ground law
doesn't prevent this from going to trial
is this going to be a difficult case to get a second degree murder conviction on
the boat what what's the best path that you see for prosecutors here
i think the prosecutor's going to have tough time with this case
in parker center uses that americans are debating on what happened this evening
it's going to be very difficult to recreate exactly what was on george
sermons mind when he shot straight on more there's apparently some conflicting
with his accounts about who was leading who who was on top of this
astrology will then have a
and here we go on our any reasonable doubt of course goes and raised in
stable
okay so if you were zimmerman you would not recommend if you were his his
attorney
that he simply throw himself on the mercy of the court and say
i did it evans a huge mistake
please have mercy on me you think he actually can fight this on very well
well i don't think any good lawyer is going to tell a client facing a murder
charge skyping ect
uh... you know just apologized saying cusick
uh... that you're going to get to the d_n_c_ background
enough they indicating hilton
uh... from everything we know it seems the joy silverman's version really
believes that he is innocent of the charges on that
he was recently acting in self-defense
i don't know if that's quite the truth in terms of the real facts on the ground
but will find out soon enough okay he talked about this issue of who was on
pop it there in this altercation
it would seem that with that with the claim of
such close range shooting and if it was indeed trade by martin who was on top
attacking george zimmerman
there that would lead to some pretty specific evidence when it comes to the
wounds and and blood et-cetera
that's is that going to be a big part of this trial do you believe
i would expect there to be a lot of attention in the day to the nature of
trade on mars wound where john was fired from
whether it's fire from some stamps com response from below him
uneasy forensics will be very detailed and will provide real inside i think
into what was happening that night
one shot was fired
by always think about in these cases there's so much of the discussion in the
media about can there be a
fair trial can you get in untainted jury pool and eventually invariably
prosecutors and defense attorneys do agree on a jury right
but by i always i'm left wondering
what is it really mean that they're untainted it this is a case where
let's expand beyond just stand for
florida all of this country has been following this case for the most part
already for for several months
how do you handle that and is that helped the defense there does that help
the prosecution
i think he's going to be a real challenge for the court
and also for both sides in this case
neither side wants to have a biased jury because you don't know which direction
they're going to be biased
just thinking how divided americans are about the straight on martin incident
there's a lot of people who are firmly convinced that he's guilty and a lot of
people that are firmly convinced he's acting reasonable self-defense
so any kind by transfer everyone
i think i'm going to happen is what usually happens is that we find a jury
not necessarily that hasn't heard anything about the case but just one
that has been seen reasonably capable uh... main unbiased untainted judgment
about the facts presented
in trial
give us a little bit of insight logistically if you're building a
defense here here towards the man's attorney
how do you start in other words there's so many options where you can you can
you can organize your narrative in so many ways right how do you
figure out how to start building the narrative you want to present to the
jury and he had to give us a sense of how that might actually work
why one of the key things that we really have to do is to explain why did you
examine
was chasing after trading on martin that night
hedonistic commitment turns out that actually ended and trade one more that's
absolutely a tax return
i think one of the key pieces of evidence will be or what was his
motivation george symonds motivation for chasing after trade on heartened that
night
that's going to help shape the jury's understanding
of what he was thinking when an altercation occur during many of the
defenders of drugs and they're saying hey he wasn't really falling when when
the when the nine-one-one operators say did we don't need to do that
he said okay and that was that the reality is that several minutes later
after trade on martin had been running george zimmerman could still see him how
do how can he still be
within a how-to with invisible distance of trade on the actually stopped falling
at that moment that though it's not really adding up for me but i'm sure it
will come out in the case
that's right and also how there's evidence this testimony that might come
out from trailing arms girlfriend or a friend who was on the phone at the time
and it sounds from purport
that ray lenoir was out followed by but to resume
actual examined confronted trail martin at some point before phone was dropped
so we've got a lot of open questions about what the facts were that night
and of course emerge from the facts are going to be so important figuring out
whether to recently convicted or not
adam winklers' a professor of constitutional law at the u_c_l_a_
school of law you can also find his latest article about the jurors
zimmerman case that huffington post dot com
adam always a pleasure to talk to you and we'll definitely have you back to as
the as the trial continues
thanks so much