While this will not make the charges go away, this new information certainly appears to erode the narrative that Trayvon Martin was a purely innocent victim, and the state of Florida likely knew this after their investigation. Jerelyn Merritt writes:
So why did the state of Florida charge Zimmerman at all? It has to be political appeasement of the African-American community in Florida and the U.S. in general. And what happens if, and as seems increasingly likely, when George Zimmerman us exonerated? There will be a new "betrayal" of the blacks by the whites, and the race pimps will have won another round.The state waited to charge Zimmerman until its investigation was complete. They had to know (or at least believe) Trayvon was the one who turned the encounter from a verbal one into a physical one. The language of the affidavit and the testimony at the bond hearing strongly suggest it did know this. As I've said before, one of the first rules of trial practice is that a lawyer, in creating a theme and a theory for a case, must accept the "facts beyond change." You build your story from that.The state may have done its best in coming up with a theory of criminal responsibility that accepts the "facts beyond change," including that Zimmerman had a broken nose and head lacerations, caused by Trayvon punching him and slamming his head against the ground or on concrete. It may sound reasonable to some, but I doubt it is legally supportable.