[Figment]

Agree fully with the assesment on who is responsible for their own behaviour, where external "stimuli" (as I'll just call what Malorn described with "flaunting their goods") can never lead to an action and then shifted under the pretense of a reaction, thereby placing the blame on the person who supposedly initiated the action. In this case that would be the female. You can not blame someone for walking somewhere or wearing particular things if that leads to them being the victim of crimes.

Only those who committed the crime can be held responsible for acting upon whatever opportunity or stimulus they (claim to have) "received": as long as there is no explicit consent by the victim, there's no reason to act. If people believe clothing to be an approval of a crime, then they are simply mentally ill.

Leaving a door open is not an invitation to come in. It creates an opportunity, yes, but then that would mean you should never be free to open your door. Is it naive and not recommendable to leave a door open? Certainly, but not because you invite people in, but because there are criminals actively looking for opportunities. Yet surely that doesn't mean you are to be blamed for those that intend to commit a crime the moment they get an opportunity?



@Sheppy: regarding the taking matters into his own hand after being told not to... I'm not sure we can be sure that's the case: verbally, Zimmerman approved/agreed/submitted to the order not to follow Martin. We don't know what happened after wards. If he returned to his car, but ran into or got jumped by Martin (for whatever reason), then technically he did abandon the pursuit.

We simply don't know what happened.