The man, identified in prosecution documents as “Witness 6,” originally said Zimmerman was the person screaming for help as he fought with the unarmed 17-year-old from Miami Gardens.

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But a few weeks later, on March 20, while sitting for a follow-up interview by a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigator the witness said he was no longer sure who was calling for help.

“At first, I thought it was the person on the ground, just because, you know, me thinking rationally, if someone was on top, the person on the bottom would be yelling,” he said.

Now, though, he said, “I truly can’t tell who, after thinking about it, was yelling for help just because it was so dark out on that sidewalk. You can’t see a mouth …”

The witness did not, however, change his account that Trayvon was the one on top as he and Zimmerman fought. He identified both combatants by skin color and by the color of their clothes, although he described Zimmerman’s orange jacket as red, and Trayvon’s dark gray hoodie as black.

“The black guy was on top,” he told FDLE Investigator John Batchelor. “The guy that was on the ground, under him at that point, wrestling, was definitely a lighter color.”

It was dark outside, he said, and at first, he thought he was witnessing a dog fight. When he stepped to the door, he realized it was two people on the ground wrestling.

The person on top was either hitting or pinning the other to the ground, he said. The person on the bottom was struggling to get up.

He yelled at them to stop, he said, “Hey, cut it out,” and thought they would, but they didn’t, so he stepped inside and headed upstairs to call 911.

He heard a loud pop, “like a rock hitting a window,” he said.

It was the gunshot.

When he looked again, the person who had been on top, he said, was “in the grass not moving while the other gentleman has his hands in the air … The one guy that was on the bottom said, ‘I shot the other guy in self-defense. The gun is on the ground.’ “

rstutzman@tribune.com or 407-650-6394.

Article source: http://sunsentinel.feedsportal.com/c/34258/f/623322/s/1f7d7700/l/0L0Ssun0Esentinel0N0Cos0Etrayvon0Emartin0Eevidence0Ewitness60E20A120A5180H0A0H53223150Bstory0Dtrack0Frss/story01.htm

“Help! Help! Help!”

No one knows who was crying out.

In a steady drizzle that February night, George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin were fighting for their lives — a fact that wasn’t immediately clear to the witnesses in a case that has riveted the country. Details of that night emerged Thursday as the recorded and written accounts of the shooting at the Retreat at Twin Lakes gated community were released, although most witness names were blacked out.

The information gathered by police and other investigators, released publicly for the first time, offers a glimpse into the demeanor of Zimmerman immediately after he shot Trayvon. But no one really saw what happened, their views limited by the night and fear. Some were too scared to look. Some peered out of windows from behind blinds. Some peeked but only saw figures entangled.

But there were no eyewitnesses to give a start-to-finish account of what happened the night the 17-year-old Miami Gardens teen lost his life.

One man peeked through his door. At first, he said, he thought the dispute was far away. But the yelling and fighting got louder and closer to his home. When he looked outside, he saw Trayvon and Zimmerman fighting as if they were in mixed martial-arts combat.

Trayvon appeared to be on top.

“Hey, cut it out!” the witness said he yelled.

The two kept fighting. So he ducked inside to call 911.

And then, a shot. Zimmerman’s .9 millimeter handgun fired.

“It sounded like a rock hit a window,” the witness said. “I’ve never heard a gunshot before.”

He looked outside.

“The person that was actually on top at that point was laying in my grass, kind of in a sprawled position — not moving,” he said. “And then I saw another person with his hands in the air.”

That was Zimmerman.

Flashlights from neighbors began to illuminate bits of the night. Police were en route. Zimmerman stood over Trayvon.

“The gun’s on the ground,” Zimmerman said, according to the witness. “I shot this guy in self-defense.”

They appear to be his first words after the shooting.

Another neighbor whose wife had been peering intermittently at the squabble soon came outside. He shined his flashlight on Zimmerman.

“Man, I got blood on my face?” Zimmerman asked, the witness told police on the night of the shooting.

“Yeah, you got blood all over, man,” the witness said he responded. “I looked over and he’s got blood on the back of his head. You all right man?”

Zimmerman: “Ah, man this guy he was beating up on me so I had to shoot him.” The witness asked what kind of gun Zimmerman shot.

“Did you use a 9 [mm] or a .40?” he asked.

Zimmerman: “I used a 9.” Witness: “Did you call 911 yet?”

Zimmerman squatted down and, the witness said, he could see “blood on the back of his head, grass stains. And by that time I flashed my light down. And there was this kid face down in the grass.”

“Can you please call my wife,” Zimmerman reportedly asked him, the witness said in a follow-up interview a month later. “Let her know what happened.”

The witness complied, called Mrs. Zimmerman and told her that her husband was handcuffed and being held in a shooting. Zimmerman apparently chimed in.

Article source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/17/2804894/cries-in-the-night-witnesses-conflict.html

Roger Clemens’ lawyer jabbed his left index finger and hammered away, relentlessly attacking Brian McNamee over his personal life and accusing the government’s chief witness of ”making up this stuff on the fly.” The attorney finally sprung his trap and pointed out what appeared to be a flaw in the McNamee’s story about the collection of evidence that turned up in a beer can.

CLEMENS IN COURT

Learn who the key players are in the case against the former pitcher.

McNamee’s explanations: ”I misspoke; I’m sorry” and ”It’s never been asked that way to me.”

Clemens’ longtime strength coach endured a fifth day Friday of questioning — he’s now spent some 24 hours in the swivel chair between jury and judge in the perjury trial of the 11-time All-Star pitcher.

Clemens is charged with lying to Congress in 2008 when he said he never used steroids or human growth hormone. McNamee is the only witness who will claim firsthand knowledge of Clemens using performance-enhancing drugs, and he never wavered from that central accusation during Hardin’s cross-examination.

McNamee will return to the stand Monday in a trial moving so slowly that U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton – for the first time in more than three decades on the bench – imposed time limits to speed things up: Only 90 minutes per side for witnesses after McNamee and closing arguments limited to two hours apiece.

”I just can’t let this case meander on forever,” the judge said.

The trial was supposed to last four to six weeks, but it’s just wrapping up its fifth week – and the government said Friday it still has nine witnesses to call, down from the 14 it estimated the previous day. If the trial isn’t done by June 8, Walton said he may have to call a recess for about a month because of various scheduling conflicts.

”And then we’ll have some real unhappy jurors,” Walton said.

Clemens’ attorney Rusty Hardin spent three-plus days of cross-examination portraying McNamee as a chronic liar who frequently changes his story. Toward the end, Hardin raised numerous unsavory personal details: McNamee tampered with a dead body when he was a New York City policeman, he lied to investigators looking into a Florida incident in 2001, he had two driving-under-the-influence arrests in 2002, he got caught up in an Internet fraud investigation after ordering diet pills over the Web in 2004.

ROCKET SCIENTIST

How did Roger Clemens get here? See the timeline of events and look back at his career in pictures.

”Would you agree that you had a severe drinking problem?” was among the many accusatory questions from Hardin. McNamee answered ”No, sir” to that one.

The aim was to take McNamee down little by little, and his weariness showed as he hung his head more than once. During one of many pauses in testimony, a juror reached over and handed McNamee a tissue so the witness could wipe his nose. McNamee also indicated, reluctantly, that he was hypoglycemic, thus explaining why he needed frequent breaks to elevate his low blood sugar.

But Hardin also aimed for a classic ”gotcha” moment while asking McNamee about the Miller Lite beer can. McNamee says he put the needle and other waste from a 2001 steroids injection of Clemens into the can, but he also says the can contained remnants from injections related to other players.

When Hardin talked McNamee through a timeline of events dealing with the can, it became apparent that McNamee had not accounted for the actual moment at which he put the items from the other players into the can.

Hardin angrily demanded to know how materials from other players ”flew” or ”showed up magically” in the beer can. When prosecutors objected, the lawyer said: ”Well, how did they get in there?”

”I put them in the can that night” after injecting Clemens, McNamee said.

McNamee went on to say ”I misspoke; I’m sorry” when explaining the apparent gap in the story. When Hardin asked whether McNamee ever told government investigators that he put the other players’ material in the beer can that night, McNamee said: ”It’s never been asked that way before.”

”Isn’t this,” concluded Hardin, ”a classic example of you making up this stuff on the fly?”

COMING CLEAN

The Mitchell Report blew the lid off MLB’s steroid culture. See which players have admitted to PED use.

McNamee never wavered over his core testimony that he injected Clemens with performance-enhancing drugs from 1998 to 2001, but the government has its work cut out for it as they try to rebuild their key witness in front of the jury. The judge said he would allow only 90 minutes of follow-up questioning from prosecutors, and they used up 20 minutes of that allotment before court adjourned for the weekend.

To bolster McNamee’s credibility, the government hopes to win an argument to include previously barred evidence that shows McNamee supplied drugs to other players who have since acknowledged that they were users. Hardin claimed that would open up a ”bunch of minitrials” over each player associated with McNamee and could extend the trial for months.

The judge said he will rule on the matter Monday morning.

Late Friday afternoon, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and its chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, filed a motion to quash Clemens’ subpoenas for Issa’s testimony and committee documents. That committee held the hearing that Clemens testified before in 2008; Issa, a California Republican, was not chairman at the time.

The motion argues that the subpoenas are barred by the Constitution’s speech or debate clause, which protects elected officials from being questioned in a lawsuit about their legislative work.

”In particular, the subpoena to Chairman Issa should be quashed because high-ranking government officials may not be compelled to testify absent extraordinary circumstances, including that the official is uniquely able to offer that testimony, unlike here,” the House general counsel’s office said in its motion.

Article source: http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/brian-mcnamee-says-some-items-stored-in-beer-can-not-from-roger-clemens-051812

A key witness to the Trayvon Martin shooting changed the story he had given Sanford, Fla., police, telling state authorities he was not sure who was screaming during the altercation with George Zimmerman, NBC Dateline confirmed Friday.

The man known as Witness #6 originally told Sanford police Zimmerman cried for help. The witness stuck to his account that he saw Martin, 17, straddling Zimmerman and pinning him to the ground before Martin was shot.

Earlier: Court docs: Trayvon Martin shooting ‘ultimately avoidable by Zimmerman’

On March 20, according to the Orlando Sentinel, while sitting for a follow-up interview by a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigator the witness said that he was no longer sure who was calling for help.

“At first, I thought it was the person on the ground, just because, you know, me thinking rationally, if someone was on top, the person on the bottom would be yelling,” he said, according to the Sentinel. “I truly can’t tell who, after thinking about it, was yelling for help just because it was so dark out on that sidewalk. You can’t see a mouth …”

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Article source: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/18/11761522-key-witness-in-trayvon-martin-shooting-changed-story?lite

Near the end of a days-long assault on his credibility by the defense, Brian McNamee, Clemens’ former trainer, backed away from his courtroom statements that the waste came only from drug use by Clemens, one of baseball’s greatest pitchers.

McNamee, who has spent more than 20 hours on the stand in U.S. District Court, turned the medical waste from an alleged injection of anabolic steroids he gave to Clemens in August 2001 over to federal agents in January 2008 as evidence.

The waste included needles, gauze, a broken steroid ampoule and human growth hormone stuffed into a Miller Lite beer can that was stored at McNamee’s New York home.

“Yes, sir,” McNamee said when defense lawyer Rusty Hardin asked during a marathon cross-examination if all the waste from the beer can showed that Clemens had a steroid shot.

Did the items involve only Clemens “and no one else?” Hardin asked.

“I’m not sure about everyone else,” McNamee said. “I just know that there are other things in there that might have belonged to some other players.”

Asked how the other items that did not involve Clemens – a capped needle used in subcutaneous injections and vials of human growth hormone – got in the can, McNamee said: “Because I put them there.”

McNamee denied he was changing his testimony, saying he had told federal agents and congressional investigators that the evidence included items from other players.

Prosecutors say scientists have linked Clemens’ DNA and steroids to one of the syringes in the can. McNamee is the only person with first-hand knowledge about Clemens’ alleged use of drugs.

MOTION FILED

Prosecutors filed a motion asking U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton to let them to show the jury evidence that McNamee supplied human growth hormone to former New York Yankee teammates Andy Pettitte, Chuck Knoblauch, Mike Stanton and other major leaguers.

The prosecutors argued that jurors needed to hear about McNamee’s dealings with Clemens’ former teammates because of the defense team’s attack on McNamee’s credibility.

Walton said before McNamee took the stand for redirect questioning that he would have a ruling by Monday. McNamee will return for more testimony on Monday.

The filing said Pettitte, Knoblauch and Stanton told the grand jury that indicted Clemens on six counts of perjury and obstruction that McNamee had told the truth in telling an independent commission investigating drug use in baseball and Justice Department officials that he provided them with growth hormone.

Clemens was known as “The Rocket” during a career that ran from 1984 to 2007. He won the Cy Young Award as best pitcher seven times and is among the biggest names implicated in drug use in baseball.

McNamee worked with Clemens when the right-hander pitched for the Toronto Blue Jays and later with the New York Yankees. He also was employed as Clemens’ personal trainer.

The trial end its fourth week of slogging courtroom testimony. To pick up the pace, Judge Reggie Walton imposed a 90-minute limit on questioning by prosecutors and by the defense.

Testimony was scheduled to end on June 1 but Walton has moved back the expected termination date to June 8.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Vicki Allen)

Article source: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/key-witness-baseballs-clemens-trial-131507131--mlb.html

A man listed as witness 13 was one of the first people to approach Zimmerman minutes after the shooting. He saw him bleeding from the back of the head and nose. Zimmerman asked the unidentified man to call his wife for him.

“Let her know what’s happening, been involved in a shooting and will be held for questioning,” the witness told the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. “He was more like, talking like he was having a hard time, looked like he just got his butt whipped … not like he was in shock, not like, ‘I can’t believe I just shot someone,’ but like, ‘Just tell my wife I just shot someone,’ like it was nothing.”

A woman identified as witness 5 walked out of her home after hearing the altercation to find Zimmerman standing over Martin’s body. She said she asked him what was going on and he curtly said just, “Call the police.”

The woman told police that Zimmerman, 28, examined Martin’s body as he slowly paced back and forth when the police arrived. She watched as they checked the teen’s body and turned him over, eventually starting CPR. But he was already dead for five or 10 minutes, she said.

“I do honestly feel that he intended for this kid to die,” witness 5 told investigators. “If you’re in self defense, shoot him in the leg. He’s a 17-year-old, scrawny little kid. You get into a physical fight with him. … I think the kid was running for help.”

Zimmerman is charged with second degree murder for the Feb. 26 killing.

Martin was in Sanford, Fla., while serving a suspension from his Miami school for being caught with an empty marijuana bag. At the time of the shooting, he was staying at the home of his father’s girlfriend. An autopsy found THC, the intoxicating chemical in marijuana, was in his system.

At 7:11 that night, Zimmerman, a member of the area’s neighborhood watch, had called 911 to report a suspicious teenager. Minutes later, the police dispatcher told Zimmerman to stop follwing Martin. Moments later, Zimmerman got out of his car. That’s when the two met and Martin was killed.

Zimmerman has claimed that when he shot the 6-foot, 160-pound teenager he was on his back and Martin was astride him pounding away.

Trayvon Martin Shooting Video: New Evidence

The key problem facing investigators is an 80-second gap between the time Zimmerman hung up with police at 7:15 p.m. and when the first 911 calls from terrified neighbors began flooding in.

A man identified only as witness 6 told investigators that he heard a commotion coming from the walk behind his residence. He witnessed a black male wearing a dark-colored “hoodie” on top of a white or Hispanic male who was yelling for help.

Police said the witness elaborated by saying the black man was mounted on Zimmerman and throwing punches “MMA” style, meaning mixed martial arts style. The witness stated that the man on the ground yelled out for help.

Witness 6 said he was going to call for police when he heard the “pop” of Zimmerman’s gun.

“When I looked down, I saw the person that was on top was laying in my grass in a sprawled position,” witness said. “Saw another guy with his hands in the air, saying, ‘The gun’s on the ground, I shot this guy in self-defense.’”

Police said they believe Martin noticed he was being watched and “was in fact running generally in the direction of where he was staying as a guest of the neighborhood.”

Multiple witnesses and injuries sustained corroborate Zimmerman’s account that he was involved in a serious altercation with Martin, one that police say could have been avoided if he did not leave his car as directed by the 911dispatcher. The investigator said the tragedy was avoidable.

Witness 3 said the timing was terrible.

“I saw the police arrive. And they were literally like 5 seconds too late — like right after the gun went off. Like, they were literally that, that, that short a distance late,” the witness said.

Also Read

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/trayvon-martin-witness-believes-intended-kid-die-204338831--abc-news-topstories.html

Reuters

6:04 p.m. CDT, May 17, 2012

Article source: http://chicagotribune.feedsportal.com/c/34253/f/622872/s/1f71da89/l/0L0Schicagotribune0N0Csports0Cbreaking0Csns0Ert0Eus0Eusa0Ebaseball0Eclemensbre8460Awe0E20A120A50A70H0A0H77365110Bstory0Dtrack0Frss/story01.htm

The potential witness list has been released for the insider trading trial of Rajat K. Gupta, the former director for Goldman Sachs and Procter Gamble, and as expected, it is chock full of boldfaced names.

Possible witnesses who could be called to testify — or whose names may come up during the trial — include Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman; Gary D. Cohn, the bank’s president; A.G. Lafley, the former chief executive of Procter Gamble; and Kenneth I. Chenault, the chief executive of American Express.

The trial of Mr. Gupta, the former global head of the consulting firm McKinsey Company, is scheduled to start on Monday. He is charged with leaking boardroom secrets to his friend and business associate Raj Rajaratnam, who was convicted last year and is serving an 11-year prison sentence.

Goldman is expected to be on center stage during the trial. The government says Mr. Gupta told Mr. Rajaratnam confidential details about Goldman Sachs before announcements were made public, including news of Warren E. Buffett‘s $5 billion investment in the bank at the depths of the financial crisis.

Byron Trott, the former Goldman banker who oversaw the Buffett investment, is a possible witness. Other Goldman executives who may be called to testify are David A. Viniar, the chief financial officer, and Stephen R. Pierce, the head of the bank’s capital markets business. Even one of Goldman’s outside lawyers, Steven Peikin of Sullivan Cromwell, is on the list.

The government is likely to ask Mr. Trott about the timing of the Buffett investment and how quickly it came together. He also may be asked about how many people knew about it, including the Goldman board.

Mr. Pierce is expected to discuss a secondary stock offering of Goldman stock that Mr. Gupta is accused of passing along to Mr. Rajaratnam.

At a pretrial hearing on Wednesday, the government said that its first witness was expected to be Caryn Eisenberg, Mr. Rajaratnam’s secretary at his Galleon Group hedge fund. She is likely to testify about how frequently Mr. Gupta and Mr. Rajaratnam spoke to each other, according to people briefed on the case.

Witness List for Rajat K. Gupta Trial

Article source: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/the-boldface-names-on-the-witness-list-for-guptas-trial/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Brian McNamee, Clemens’s former trainer, faced unrelenting cross-examination about his role in the star pitcher’s alleged use of anabolic steroids and human growth hormone.

But while admitting he had delayed handing over evidence of an alleged injection and lied about how many times he had given Clemens shots, McNamee repeatedly told jurors in U.S. District Court that Clemens was a drug user.

“I never lied about the usage (of steroids), just the amount,” said McNamee, who will return for more cross-examination on Friday. “I wanted to not make it look like he was a bigger steroid user than he was.”

In about 20 hours of testimony, McNamee, 45, has sworn he injected Clemens with anabolic steroids in 1998, 2000 and 2001 and with human growth hormone in 2000.

McNamee, at the core of prosecutors’ charges that Clemens lied to Congress about using performance-enhancing drugs, repeatedly answered “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure” under a grilling from defense attorney Rusty Hardin.

McNamee testified that he had kept mum on stashed medical waste from a 2001 injection even though federal agents and an independent commission headed by former Senator George Mitchell had asked him if he had evidence of Clemens’s alleged drug use.

Asked if he had lied about not having evidence, McNamee said: “Yes, sir.”

‘FALL GUY’

He had held onto the waste, including used needles, to show his wife that he would not be a “fall guy” as he had been during incidents while a New York police officer, he said. McNamee, who is estranged from his wife, did not detail the incidents.

McNamee said he had lied to Clemens’s agent in a January 2007 email in which he said a federal drug investigator had assured him he was not named in a sealed affidavit that was part of a probe into drug use in sports.

The Los Angeles Times had reported in October 2006 that McNamee was among those named.

“It was basically to know that Roger knew I wasn’t going to rat him out and had his back,” McNamee said when asked why he had deceived the agent.

McNamee also was inconsistent on when he had given Clemens’s wife, Debbie, an injection of human growth hormone. He testified on Thursday that it was in late 2003 or early 2004, but had previously said he remembered it in connection with a photo shoot for the February 2003 Sports Illustrated magazine.

Clemens, 49, was known as “The Rocket” during a career that ran from 1984 to 2007. He won the Cy Young Award seven times and is among the biggest names implicated in drug use in baseball.

‘ARE YOU REALLY SERIOUS?’

Hardin questioned whether McNamee had told Clemens about his secret contacts with federal agents, leading to a rapid-fire exchange:

McNamee: “How could I answer if he didn’t ask?”

Hardin: “How could he ask if he didn’t know?”

McNamee: “How can I answer if he doesn’t ask?”

Hardin: “Are you really serious?”

Clemens is being tried for a second time on federal charges of lying in 2008 to the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which was investigating drug use in Major League Baseball. His first trial ended in a mistrial last year.

McNamee is the only person with first-hand knowledge about the former pitcher’s alleged use of anabolic steroids and human growth hormone.

He worked with Clemens when the right-hander pitched for the Toronto Blue Jays and later with the New York Yankees. He also was employed as Clemens’s personal trainer.

The trial is in its fourth week of slogging courtroom testimony. Judge Reggie Walton urged both sides to pick up the pace, saying the jury was becoming impatient. Two jurors of an original pool of 16 have been dismissed for sleeping.

Testimony was scheduled to end on June 1 but Walton moved back the expected termination date to June 8.

(Editing by Vicki Allen and Mohammad Zargham)

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/key-witness-clemens-trial-faces-124600547--mlb.html

Back in 1994, a teenaged Usher dropped his self-titled debut album and skyrocketed to fame. Nearly 20 years later, Usher is still on top, having lost little career momentum. While he’s maintained his own career over the years, he also helped launch Justin Bieber to mega-fame as well.

As Bieber continues to grow as an artist, Usher explained that the 18-year-old has built up the kinds of friendships and relationships that he would have wanted as a kid star. “Cool part about it is, he’s really able to live a dream that I think most teenagers would want to. To be able to have friends like Mayweather. They are actual friends, hang out, talk,” Usher told MTV News during “MTV First” about Bieber’s friendship with boxer Floyd Mayweather, who he recently hung out with in Las Vegas. “It’s really cool to be able to have friends all around the world and people that can relate to your reality.

“I don’t think Michael [Jackson] had people like that,” he continued. “I didn’t have a ton of people like that. I had Puff. I had JD [producer Jermaine Dupri] … but to be able to have friends all around the world that keep you, it’s cool.”

Their friendship was on full display recently when Usher performed in “Fuerza Bruta” back in April in New York City. Bieber dropped by to catch him getting his theater kid on, and midway through the show, the twosome battled it out on the dance floor.

“I was like, ‘Come on, I got you. Just chill out.’ Set it up,” he recalled about tricking the sleepy globe-trotting star to hang with him at the show. “[We] brought him to the middle of the dance floor, and we got it in. But we always show support for each other like that. We was housing a little bit.”

The guys will soon go head to head on the Billboard charts: Usher is set to drop his album, Looking 4 Myself, on June 12, and one week later, Bieber will release Believe. While it’ll be interesting to see those two fight it out on the charts, what’s more interesting for Usher is watching Bieber go through the same stuff he went through as a teen heartthrob.

“I relive every bit of it, from the screaming fans and the first reactions, shutting down the malls. The first reaction is like no other. To be able to be there, to be there with him and go through those emotions and see that shock for the first time [is exciting],” he said.

Article source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1685265/usher-justin-bieber.jhtml