Zimmerman verdict: Not Guilty.

[Tiberius]

He might not have given an "order", but Zimmerman definitely defied police instruction. You're really playing semantics here.

Again, read the actual evidence of the case. The police dispatcher testified that as a matter of policy, they do not give out orders. Someone also mentioned here that the person on the other end of the phone isn't actually a police officer, and so has no ability to issue orders or even demand someone follow instructions.

I'm not the one playing semantics at all. "We don't need you to do that." is in no way an order, nor it is even an instruction. At most, it is a suggestion, though a very passive one at that. Additionally, there is evidence to suggest Zimmerman did stop following Treyvon, as I've pointed out before. In the call to the police dispatcher, Zimmerman states that he lost sight of Treyvon, and he also states "Ok" to the police dispatcher after they say "We don't need you to do that." Go listen to the tapes again; I'm not making this up.

The only thing that proves is that Zimmerman was loosing the fight.

Agreed. Other evidence suggests he was getting beaten pretty badly, including the eye-witness testimony. If Zimmerman was in that position, it would have been perfectly reasonable for him to think his life was in danger, and therefore reaching for his gun and firing it at his attacker was an act of self-defense that happened out of fear.

That doesn't say anything about who started the fight.

Agreed, but the phone call transcript shows that Zimmerman had lost sight of Treyvon, and might have stopped following him (which given the distance between his car and the fight scene, is possible). The only evidence that the prosecution had to suggest that Zimmerman started the fight was the testimony of the girl Treyvon was on the phone to at the time. The girl's testimony was exposed by the defense as flimsy at best, since she changed her story from what she had put in her deposition without good reason.

The fact that Zimmerman seemed to have no injuries suggesting he was the attacker (i.e. no marks on his hands) adds to the evidence against Treyvon.

I'm not saying that we can conclusively say what happened either way, and that is the point here. The justice system is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, and guilty beyond reasonable doubt. There was enough reasonable doubt about the version of events as depicted by the media and Treyvon's friend to find Zimmerman not guilty of murder and manslaughter.

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...But regular vigilantism is fine? The evidence presented in the trial proved that Zimmerman pursued and killed Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman's self-defense was just a story that was not backed up by any evidence. Trayvon might have been winning the fight, but the evidence supports that Zimmerman attacked, and Trayvon was defending himself. Even if Trayvon attacked first, that doesn't give Zimmerman the right to murder him because Zimmerman was the one pursuing him with a gun!

Like I said before. Go look at the evidence again, and not evidence as presented by the media, but rather the cold hard facts of the case. There was absolutely no evidence to suggest that Zimmerman was "pursuing him with a gun", which makes it sound like Zimmerman had the gun out at the ready. Zimmerman had a license to carry, and as far as anyone knows, the gun was still safely in its holster when the fight broke out. The gun was out of the picture right up until the moment Zimmerman used it.

What Trayvon was (or might have been) before the incident is irrelevant. About 70% of America is on prescription drugs, and it's not like Trayvon was on crack and killed Zimmerman for crack money. Trayvon did not deserve to be killed for hypothetical burglary. What really counts is that Trayvon wasn't doing anything wrong when he was followed, and was not doing anything wrong when he was killed.

The point about Treyvon's past is that it paints an entirely different picture of him to the innocent boy that the media displayed him as. Nobody is arguing that Treyvon deserved to be killed for a hypothetical burglary, but given his less than innocent past, and the fact that there had been burglaries with reports of a person who matched Treyvon's description in the area, it isn't surprising Zimmerman reported him to the police and possibly followed him to see where he was going.

I agree, Treyvon wasn't doing anything wrong that evening, as far as evidence can tell. However, for whatever reason, he attacked Zimmerman and started to beat the guy up, which is very very wrong in my book, so I take major issues with your last statement.