walking while black - Trayvon Martin

[HairOfTheDog]

^ I corrected that mistake before you replied, Zero. Sorry for the confusion.

To clarify then. Is it the prosecution that wants the calls included but the defense wants them excluded. And the grounds are that they are more inflammatory then probative in scope. Who is declaring them 'past bad acts'?

The prosecution wants them in. They contend that they go towards George's state of mind (as in, why he "profiled" Trayvon as "suspicious"...).

The defense is contending that the previous calls aren't relevant and don't go towards George's state of mind at the time, so it's as as though the prosecution is introducing "prior bad acts". Messy arguments the defense made there, but that's essentially it to the best of my understanding.

I think that the defense understands how those previous calls are relevant to establishing state of mind, but they don't want the jury to hear them. They could either argue that the calls indeed can be classified as prior bad acts and shouldn't be let in (using the legal definition of "prior bad acts") because they're too prejudicial. Or, they could keep trying to argue that they're not relevant to state of mind. These are just my guesses/opinions/understanding. I think they'd have better luck with the former strategy than the latter, but will likely fail either way and the call(s) will be heard by the jury. JMO.

We'll see where it ends up tomorrow morning.