Trayvon's Knuckles Were Injured
05/16/2012
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From the Los Angeles Times:

An autopsy of Trayvon Martin, the black unarmed teenager who was fatally shot by a Florida neighborhood watch volunteer, shows that his body had injuries to the knuckles, while a medical report on the shooter, George Zimmerman, shows that he suffered a broken nose, two black eyes, and cuts on the back of his head, according to a Florida TV news channel and ABC News

What these details, like many others leaked in recent days, will ultimately mean for Zimmerman's high-profile second-degree murder case is unclear, though they could presumably be used by his defense team to bolster his argument that Martin attacked him and beat him up before he was forced to shoot the teenager in self-defense. 

What they do not seem to clarify is how the altercation between the two men started on the night of Feb. 26 at the gated subdivision in Sanford, Fla., where Zimmerman had been watching the teenager and reporting him to police as suspicious. 

Zimmerman, according to the Orlando Sentinel, has told police that Martin approached him from behind that night, punched him in the nose, and began beating him up. Martin's attorneys have played audio of a phone call to ABC News in which Martin, talking to his girlfriend, reportedly told her he was worried about a man following him, and asked the man why he was doing so.

 

No, no, no. Nobody has played audio of Martin talking to his girlfriend, unless they are at some secure National Security Administration site. As Gucci Little Piggy explained many weeks ago, when the when the March 20th ABC story refers to the "existence" of that phone call, "existence" is meant in roughly the sense of "the existence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire:" it formerly existed. The phone call that ABC listened to was between the girl, coached by attorney Crump, talking to the parents about what was supposedly discussed on that last phone call. The girl had not gone to the police and all her contacts with the press have been filtered by Crump. 

This might seem like a minor point, but it's evidence of how reluctant the national press is to get the facts straight in the local police blotter item that they chose to make a national whoop-tee-doo over.

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