I didn't follow the trial but I read up on the case prior to the trial, and have read the news since it. I think that Zimmerman acted foolishly in a few ways. Getting out of his car and following Trayvon was a bad idea, but maybe he was just trying to keep track of his location to help the police find him. Trayvon was almost certainly a burglar since he was previously found at school to have dozens of pieces of stolen jewelry, but who knows if he was casing houses or not, it is a bit irrelevant to the confrontation between Zimmerman and him. I think Trayvon was probably panicked that somebody was following him for whatever reason, he had no clue who Zimmerman was, etc. I don't think Trayvon really did anything particularly wrong in that he wasn't out looking to get in a fight and he probably felt some level of threatened, so he himself could have argued self defense if he lived through the ordeal, although it seems like he went way overboard given the perceived threat so he would have probably been convicted of at least assault and perhaps aggravated assault. But I can't really blame Zimmerman for shooting him. If somebody is on top of you beating on you, maybe you shouldn't shoot them if it is just a normal ass kicking. But when you start slamming somebodies head into concrete you are pretty much attempting to kill them or cause them serious brain damage. I have no doubt that Zimmerman felt in fear of his life, and it isn't like he did anything illegal or even particularly warranting of an ass kicking by following Trayvon, so for the most part Trayvon tried to kill Zimmerman after being spooked by him and somewhat provoked, and he ended up dying because Zimmerman had a gun. If he had just punched him in the face and brought him to the ground and then stopped, he should not have been shot. But he went way overboard and it seems like Zimmerman wasn't even really fighting back, was pinned to the ground and had his head repeatedly smashed into concrete, so although a violent reaction by Trayvon would have been justified, he took it way too far and escalated it to such a point that Zimmerman was perfectly justified in elevating his own confrontation to deadly force. Trayvon is the one who escalated things.