A defense attorney is not a police official. They are the furthest thing from that.
It's not what his attorney is saying, it's the medical report he is holding and talking about. It doesn't get any more official then that for injury evaluation, the police need to defer to someone else for that because they don't have requisite training to make a diagnosis.
If it holds up to scrutiny, I'll admit I was wrong. It just seems strange to me that it was only the known liars that were his first 'attorneys' that noted the broken nose, some 4 weeks later.
I have a very negative view of GZ's original attorneys as well so I can understand you not trusting them.
Those reports were wrong. The father said initally when he first heard the 911 calls, he could not tell they were of his son, becasue they were too distorted. Not long after, he heard a cleaned up version, and determined with certainty they were his son.
1)The "too distorted" claim is bogus, there is no magic audio cleaning trick to make it possible for TM's father to go from not thinking it was his son to determining with "certainty" it was his son. The first voice ID test for the father is the one that counts the most by far. Any claim of his to later hear the same audio and know it was his son with certainty reeks of bias that has nothing to with what he was actually hearing.
2)You must have missed it but Gilbreath doesn't even know about the father doing any voice ID testing at all:
O'MARA: How about the dad's ability to identify whether or not that was Trayvon's voice?
GILBREATH: No.
O'MARA: You're not aware of any inquiries made to Trayvon's dad as to whether or not he could identify that voice as being his son's?
GILBREATH: No.
O'MARA: Nothing further, your honor.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1204/20/cnr.02.html
3)Besides TM's father original non-ID there is TM's brother who said in an early interview that he wasn't sure if the voice was Tm. Meanwhile there has been an unequivocal eyewitness that said since the beginning that it was Zimmerman screaming for help. Plus Zimmerman told police right away he was yelling for help, plus Zimmerman has injuries that would match moments of pain that can be heard in the audio. (So far we haven't heard anything about TM having been injured prior to being shot.)
The mother also states with certainty.
Who do yo think is more trustworthy, a neutral eyewitness or TM's mother that didn't hear the audio till she was already convinced it was going to be TM yelling for help?
I would not take Gilbreath's coyness to share information in a unplanned, highly unusual witness stand episode during a bond hearing as being as oafish as you portend. He was only one of the investigators, and what was shared with him may have only been portions of the investigation.
Gilbreath would have been better informed about the case if just read this JREF thread, and I don't mean that as a compliment towards the JREF.
His reputation precedes him as being a very capable investigator. In fact, he spent 32 years as a homicide detective.
http://jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/031208/met_256046332.shtml
The above article is from 2008. Looks like he was about to retire then. Guess he decided not to, or his skills were greatly needed. Either way, the "crime scene guru" does not appear to be any slouch.
I have no prior knowledge of Gilbreath but IMO he came off incredibly poorly. Perhaps he usually is very good and this time he succumbed to overconfidence or groupthink.