A Fox News guest on Monday suggested that George Zimmerman's lawyers will be able to argue that their client used reasonable force when he shot and killed Trayvon Martin, who was only carrying Skittles and a can of Arizona Iced Tea, because "you could kill somebody" with iced tea.
June 10, 2013

A Fox News guest on Monday suggested that George Zimmerman's lawyers will be able to argue that their client used reasonable force when he shot and killed Trayvon Martin, who was only carrying Skittles and a can of Arizona Iced Tea, because "you could kill somebody" with iced tea.

While waiting for jury selection to begin on Monday, Fox News host Jamie Colby and former federal prosecutor Doug Burns discussed the case on the network's live Internet video stream.

"I know that George Zimmerman's attorney will prove that he has no criminal background, he's not an aggressive guy," the Fox News host explained. "That he's a gentle kind caring soul who was minding the neighborhood, the police didn't get there quick enough and he had reason to pursue, even though he was told no to. He was just doing his Good Samaritan job."

She added that there was "no suggestion that Zimmerman kept banging his head on the sidewalk, doing it to himself."

"If I'm getting beaten up in an ordinary fist fight that's going to leave me -- here's the counterargument -- with a broken nose and some cuts and certainly no life-threatening injuries," Burns pointed out. "Broken nose, we'll assume just hypothetically is not a life-threatening injury. Then so runs the argument, you can't turn around and kill the person."

"The counterargument is, 'Well, wait a minute, you can die in a fistfight,'" he continued. "There's certainly a very good argument to be made that the force used was out of proportion to what was going on, and the kid was unarmed. We didn't even discuss that. Totally different case, let's say the kid had a gun."

"Which he didn't know," Colby observed. "All that Trayvon -- we learned later -- was armed with was a bag of Skittles and an iced tea."

"I know everybody keeps sarcastically saying about he Skittles," Burns complained. "You could probably kill somebody with Skittles."

"It's very compelling," Colby opined. "Only a kid who hadn't had dental work could eat Skittles."

"I know, but I find that rhetoric, 'He had iced tea and a Skittles,' it really doesn't matter," Burns replied. "The point is he didn't have a weapon."

"But he didn't take that iced tea and bang Zimmerman over the head with the bottle," the host noted.

"The thing is, yeah, you're spinning a lot of hypotheticals," Burns agreed. "And you could break a bottle of iced tea, right, with the jagged edge, and you could kill somebody with it."

"You could use it as a weapon," Colby concluded.

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