Martin's father originally stated that the voice was not his sons. There is a witness who claims that it was Zimmerman calling for help.chasfm11 wrote:That appears to be the crux of the problem with the fact pattern. Martin's mother is said to identified the voice as her son's. Another report was said to have had the voice print analyzed electronically and that it wasn't Zimmerman's. IMHO, if it was not Zimmerman yelling for help, his version of the the account becomes suspect. Martin yelling for help before the gunshot on the tape is the problem. There has been not statement that it was a 3rd party yelling for help so it pretty much has to be one of the two involved. Which one could be pivotal.mamabearCali wrote:Conjecture has to based in fact though and supported by evidence...especially when admitted by the prosecution. A prosecutor can't just say "we think Zimmerman attacked Martin"--the question right back at him is do you have any evidence of this? The answer can't be "well just cause I have a gut feeling."
IANAL but I hve seen commentary on this by people who are. Several times I have been told that really it does not matter who engaged who first. Martin had Zimmerman on the ground (evidenced by injuries and wittness testimony). Zimmerman even if he did start Martin by say pushing him (no evidence of that, but lets say he did) had obviously wanted to disengage (screaming for help), and so with Martin's head bashing was then in the clear to use deadly force to stop from being killed.
The voice analysis was inconclusive. It showed a 48% match to Zimmerman. The problem with the voice analysis is the lack of a proper control for comparison. If you are trying to match an unknown conversational voice recorded on a phone you need a known conversational voice recorded on a similar phone to compare it with (the control). In this case you would need a control of Zimmerman being recorded over a phone from a distance in a panicked voice yelling one word, "help". Without that control the voice analysis is worthless. It is also almost impossible to match a single word. You need a string of words with multiple matches in order to obtain a high match probability.