tv Hardball Weekend MSNBC March 31, 2012 5:00am-5:30am EDT
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let's get to the truth and let's play "hardball." s good evening, i'm chris matthews. in washington, lead iing off tonight, what really happened? we are hearing two versions of what happened the night that trayvon martin was killed. george szimmerman's brother sai he was nearly unconscious and may have suffered brain damage since that night. he said he has not spoken to his brother in years, and so we don't know the source of the information. and then a source came out to describe a fight on top of 50e67 other, two men. and another man who walked up to the scene. we will try to untangle that
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story at the top of the the program tonight. and also those stand your ground laws like the ones in florida, george zimmerman's attorney said may be applicable in this case. they are applicable in more than two dozen states, and we have compelling audio of someone who left his house to shoot to death two unarmed men who broke into his house. and also, there is a saying in baseball, don't believe what you see in march, in other words, don't believe how someone plays in spring training. well, it is march, but we have another poll, and this time, it is showing president obama pulling away from mitt romney in double digits. and we know that in politics the most important month is october, the eve of the election, itself. and the dnc is bashing mitt romney to paul ryan's budget plan which they say favors the rich.
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♪ when old mitt claps his hand ♪ for the ryan plan ♪ that's amore >> that is amore and that is the side show and let me start with the unpredictable election coming our way this summer and fall. we begin with the trayvon martin shooting. our correspondent joining us from sanford, florida, tonight, and also david wilson from thegrio.com, managing editor. michael, what can you tell us that you have been able to uncover? >> well, chris, a lot murky of what happened that night between trayvon martin and george zimmerman, but one new piece of evidence that we did find today that is -- that could raise some further questions is that the original 2005 police report on the arrest of george zimmerman. zimmerman was arrested at a bar near the university of central florida by a state law enforcement officer, and charged
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with battery and use of violence and obstructing justice. when you look at the underlying police report, what we find is that zimmerman was disobey ed te orders of a state law enforcement officer to back off. he was in the process of arresting some employees at the bar. they got into a scuffle, and m zimmerman -- when the officer showed the badge zimmerman shot back, i don't care who you are and then f-you which is in the police report, zimmerman talking to the state police officer, and then it says that they got into a short scuffle. so here we have a history of a physical altercation between zimmerman and a law enforcement officer. zimmerman disobeying what the law enforcement officer told him to do, and he could have been charged with aonfelony. we spoke to the prosecutor who said this could have been a battery felony, but the junior
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prosecutor reduced the charges to a misdemeanor. >> well, he was 21 years old by myalculation, and now he is 28. and he was charged with giving drinks to someone below age -- is that what it began with? >> no, with him interfering with the state liquor control agent. >> is what the case? >> the case that the liquor control officer was investigating was the sale of liquor to underaged drinker, and zimmerman's friend is the one who is being arrested, and then zimmerman is told to back off, and then they get into the scuffle. look, this does not resolve any of the questions of what happened that night between trayvon martin and george s zimmerman, but in the larger evident to try to understand the two principles in this case,
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this prior police report does shed some light. >> i want to show you something, gentlemen. the brother of george zimmerman came to his defense on cnn last night, and although he did not say he had spoken to his brother george since the shooting, he did describe the moments leading up to trayvon martin's death, and we don't know the source, but watch this. >> george was out of breath. he was barely conscious, and the last thing that he remembers doing was removing his head from the concrete to the grass so that if he was banged one more time, he would not be wearing diapers for the rest of his life and being spoon fed by his brother, and there would have been george dead. >> well, according to zimmerman's lawyer told nbc that the brothers, robert and george have not spoken for years and that the comments by the brother robert are totally irrelevant according to the defense attorney or the the attorney for george zimmerman and let me bring in david here. how do you put this together?
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people coming out of the woodwork on both sides and this guy for zimmerman. we don't know the source of the information and assume that he talked to the father ther or the brother? >> well, it appears that the father and the brother have a similar story, and what is interesting about the story is that it is sort of like painting a life and death situation for george zimmerman, and he had to act and do something. what was also interesting about both of their statements was the fact that they say that trayvon martin was reaching for the gun. this is new information that we did not hear last week. it is creating this story that, look, he had to act. but when you look at the police tape, that video that came out, again, it creates some diffic t difficulty for the zimmerman camp, because again, he looks like someone who just walked off of the street. he does not look like he is in distress or physical distress, and there is not any physical
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bruising that you can see clearly. >> what about the close-up by another network who looked at the back of the head and you can see cuts in the back of the head as he describe ed d in the testimony? >> well, the brother said he was beaten inches from unconscious, and here is this guy getting out of the police vehicle easily, and walking on his own volition, so this creates a problem for the zimmerman camp. >> and then there was s zimmerman's father describing the fight on the sidewalk as he put it. >> within a minute of nearly beaten, george was trying to get his head off of the concrete, trying to move with trayvon on him into the grass. in doing so, his firearm was shown.
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trayvon martin said something to the effect of you're going to die now or you're going to die tonight or something to that effect. >> michael, back to you, sir, this is the battle of sourcing some of it secondhand and some of it perhaps derived from hearing someone else on television or radio or listening to this, and this case, what can you figure out down there about the progress of the case, itself? everything is on the hands of the state attorney in brevard koun ti and not anywhere but a state case? >> yes, they are overseeing it and taking a look at it, but the investigation is being done with the state investigators with a state prosecutor in charge. look, the evidence is as murky as it can get. clearly, one witness, crucial witness trayvon martin is dead. you have george zimmerman and
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may or may not have been good eyewitnesss who can back up or dispute some of what he saw, but it is worth pointing out that there are two sort of known faces that people on both sides could point to here. one is that we know that george zimmerman did disobey the instruck huns from -- instructions from the operator of the 911 call, and that might be relevant. and we know from the police report from february that the police officer on scene did report that zimmerman had a broken or was bleeding from the nose and had blood on the body. that is a contemporaneous account from a police officer that strongly suggests that there was a physical struggle
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between martin and zimmerman and how it happened we may never know. >> well, this stand your ground law in florida is going to be an issue, so we are stuck of finding out what the law says. the moral issues are complicated as well, but it seems that we have a challenge on our hand, and what constitutes self-defense under this new statue? >> -- statute? >> well, it is one man going against the word of a dead man. >> well, that is true in many cases. >> well, if someone came up to me, and decided to shoot me and you don't have to take anything else into account, that is a problem. >> thank you, both of you gentlemen. that fight is coming up here. and the marttrayvon martin case brought to light the stand your
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ground law. and we will talk about the case of a man who shot and killed two burglars trying to rob his house and used this as his defense. this is "hardball." twenty-five thousand mornings, give or take, is all we humans get. we spend them on treadmills. we spend them in traffic. and if we get lucky, really lucky, it dawns on us to go spend them in a world where a simple sunrise can still be magic. twenty-five thousand mornings. make sure some of them are pure michigan. your trip begins at michigan.org.
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that these right to defend yourselves laws were sweeping the country and it is no coincidence as john nickels reports that the american legislation exchange counsel or alec for short used this to push passage. we are joined by ben nelson from the naacp, and they released a report in february that said that alec is behind any anti-state voter laws. and we are also joined by the editor of the "nation" magazine who has written extensively about this alec law. gentlemen, i want you to listen to something right now, a variation of the stand your ground law in texas after the florida law paved the way. it was a linchpin for the man joe horn and listen to a portion of a scary 911 call from september 2007 in which he, mr. horn, describes two men breaking into a neighbor's home.
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>> i want you to listen to me carefully. >> yes. >> i have officers coming out there. i don't want you to go outside of that house. i don't want you to have that gun in your hand when those officers are poking around over there. >> i understand that, okay, but i have a right to protect myself, sir. you understand that. >> yes, sir. >> and there are laws that have been changed since september 1st and i know it and you know it, and i have a right to protect myself. he is coming out of the window right now. i have to go, buddy. >> don't go out of the door. mr. horn -- >> [ bleep ], they just stole something out of the house. >> i don't want you to going outside of the house. >> here it goes buddy, you hear the shotgun clicking, and i'm going out. >> don't go outside.
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>> hello. you're dead. >> well, john nickels, that was pr pretty graphic. that the live account of a 911 tape on two men who were caught burglarized and gunned down and killed dead by a civilian who decided to use this law and he was defended in court on the basis off this law. john? >> absolutely. you will find -- yes. you will find cases like this in places across the country. there is a case in wisconsin and where -- >> how can he say he was defending himself. just a moment, back to the law and how it is used. stand your ground means if you are in danger of somebody is coming at you and you are in danger of your life and threatening you or with a gun outside of your home, and how does that relate to how he went after them? >> well, the issue here is that there are several variations on the stand your ground laws. there is a castle doctrine law which suggests that you can
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protect your property and the environs right out to the sidewalk. stand your ground is more something that takes it out to the streets. the bottom line on this, chris, is that the interpretation kind of goes to the gunman. the person with the gunman can say, i felt threatened. i felt that i was endangered. prosecutors and police officers an judges who have been able to interpret statements like that are robbed of the ability to do that by the laws which essentially say that there is a blanket immunity. >> mr. nichols, how do you justify self-defense in the broadest if you are a lawman escaping a felon, and he was acting like a police officer. and maybe a police officer does have a right to shoot a fleeing felon, but tell me how he used that as a self-defense motive? >> i don't believe it is credible to be used as a
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self-defense motive. i think it is an almost obscene extension of the traditional protection for self-defense. unfortunately, this is what has happened in states across the country. we have had instances where people have shot in circumstances whereby any reasonable measure you would say it is not necessary to use lethal force, and the person who did the shooting has been let off of the hook on the argument that they felt threatened. >> let me go to my friend ben nelson, and thank you for coming from the naacp, and you have so many pans on the fire that you are concerned about in the country. you are concerned about this group of to american parent exchange council who pushes these laws and tell me about them? >> well, this is a group that when we took a look at them, we thought it was like the chamber of commerce and started out mom and apple pie and then used steadily to the further and further to the right.
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but actually, what we found is that, no, they were found ed fo ill intent. this is a group whose founder said that our best interest is when the voting populous is constrained, when the number of people who can vote in this country goes down. in case after case, they are on the wrong side and super extreme, and this wild, wild westlaw that they have passed, you know, i mean, frankly, chris, if someone made a 911 call from the frontier in 1880, that is what it would sound like, right? so it raises the question, why are so many corporations supporting a group that is trying to shrink the number of people who can vote in this country, and who is out there pushing these sort of super powered laws that let people gun each other down in our streets. >> thank you ben jelous and chris for that great report.
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back to "hardball." let's turn to the web ad wars and first from the gop. president obama's personal exchange with dmitry medvedev earlier in the week turned into the open mic moments, super pac, crossroads spent no time mocking the president with a james bond-style trailer. let's watch. >> in a world where one man cannot lose, the fight of the man rests in one stop secret mission. >> it's my last election, afterwards i'll have more flexibility. >> your mission is simple, mr. obama. win one last election to gain flexibility, and weaken our
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defenses to fundamentally transform the world. dmitry medvedev will transfer the message. >> starring barack obama as president flexible. dmitry medvedev as andriskov. >> wow, it is yet to be seen if the incident we saw will be a long-term problem. the democrats might have you singing along with this. mitt romney got the endorsement of congressman paul ryan today, and the dnc had fun linking ryan and the tax-cutting medicare-threatening budget with mitt romney. ♪ when old mitt claps his hands for the paul ryan plan ♪ ♪ that's amore >> when the plan came out, i applauded it. ♪ when paul ryan gives props to
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mitt romney's chops ♪ ♪ that's amore ♪ pain for the middle class ♪ the middle-class ♪ if they pass the budget >> their plan is to end medicare as we know it. ♪ but it is for the billionaire and the millionaire to give tax cuts ♪ >> gives tax cuts to the wealthy. ♪ and they prepare to find ways to end medicare ♪ ♪ that's amore >> we have done coordination on the plans. ♪ when old willard goes nuts for the congressman's cuts ♪ ♪ they are in love >> paul ryan is one of the brilliant visionaries in the party. ♪ when you work hand in hand ♪ pushing parallel plans ♪ it is amore and you see with ryan and romney that's amore ♪ >> well, somewhere the great dean martin is smiling. that is "hardball" for now.
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