Hoody string:
So what, it proves nothing. When was it pulled? Was Zimmerman's DNA on it? Did Martin pull it himself after leaving the C-store to close up his hood because it was rainy and he only had 1 hand free? Is it pulled more on one side than the other because Martin thought it looked cool that way and he always did that? To convict Zimmerman, the state must produce proof, not pull guesses out of their butt. They must be able to say "X" happened because "Y", "z", "Q", & "R" show that it did. The entire prosecution hinged on Zimmerman attacking Martin and they have absolutely zero evidence to back it up.

I don't care, so why am I arguing:
Well, to start with, I enjoy debate, but I do also care about what is right and what is wrong, and the rules we live buy. In many ways I am an idealist. We live in a country that is governed by a set of laws, and those law should be followed (or changed if they can't be) without concern for perceptions, or what is the popular opinion at the time. One of the basis of our justice system is that the accused is innocent until the state proves them guilty. The state has completely failed to prove anything in this case.

Martin's history
It is not relevant to Zimmerman's defense as long as the prosecution isn't trying to portray him as some innocent little child who would never, ever, hurt anyone when that is not the truth. The defense can knowingly distort, the prosecution can not, that is our system. In this case the prosecution's (I won't even go into the media)portrayal of Martin is completely false. It is proven false via his own statements to friends via text and twitter messages. My question simply was "why can the prosecution characterize him, but the defense is not allowed to refute it?"

Theft
Martin was never charged, nor investigated over the jewelery, this is fact. However it is also fact that the week before they were found a house was burglarized and a police report filed listing strikingly similar articles. It is an additional fact that the confiscation of the items was never reported to the police, nor were they compared (until a journalist compared the reports). The victim of the robbery (to the best of my knowledge) has not yet been offered the chance to see the items to determine if they are theirs. In fact, the "school police" had implemented a policy of actively not reporting potentially criminal activities (by using some severely BS interpretations of medical confidentiality)to the police to lower the incident rate in the school system. All of this has been documented rather thoroughly, look it up.

kill an unarmed black...
kill anyone in any circumstances, I don't care if they are purple & paisley, you get away with it if the state can not prove your actions were criminal. In this case, they have not.

buy into a narrative:
I don't "buy into" any narrative, nor do I care what someone's color is. I care what people do. Black and criminal, go to jail, white and criminal, go to jail, green with tiger stripes and not a commit a criminal act, don't go to jail. I break the law, maybe I'll lie my ass off to try to stay out, maybe I'll admit my guilt and welcome 3 hots and a cot. Who knows, hopefully I will never find myself in that situation. However, if I do, I sure as hell hope my skin color, or the skin color of my victim, does not dictate whether the state prosecutes me, and if they do I want them to have to prove that I did it, not that they think I did. In my opinion, every other rational person who might some day be prosecuted should want that as well.