Even without a SYG law, I don’t understand the prosecutorial discretion or how the case survived a motion for summary judgement–let alone how they made the case strong enough to convict.
What am I missing–what’s the prosecutorial angle?
The jury didn’t believe she was trapped in the garage. Instead they believed that she went to the garage to get the gun (at which time she was not in imminent danger of seriously bodily harm) and returned to the house to exact revenge.
You can’t get “summary judgment” in criminal cases (at least, not by that name), but you can move for a dismissal of the indictment for failure to make out the elements of the crime (or move for a directed verdict at the close of the prosecution’s case-in-chief). But the standard for that is that there is no genuine dispute of material fact (haha, that’s actually the standard for SJ), or, perhaps equivalently, for DV, no reasonable jury could find, on the facts presented in the prosecution’s case, that the alleged crime (and all its elements) occurred.
In this case, it seems plain that there was a material factual dispute, namely, what was the situation of the accused when she was in the garage?
The woman was so terrified that she… let her ex quietly leave the house with the kids? I’m with KG: the jury did not find her testimony credible.
It seems to me like she was firing a “warning shot” which means she didn’t want to injure her ex, just scare him enough so that she could leave the house. I don’t see how a bullet that was not intentionally fired at a human being could be construed as aggravated assault.
Can you find me a unbiased recounting of the facts and testimony the prosecutor elicited and the jury heard so I can actually develop an informed opinion?
Assault is actually the threat of violence, battery usually encompasses actual physical harm.
If I could, I probably wouldn’t have posted a thread asking “what’s the prosecutorial angle?”.
What I’m missing is that from a lot of background information in the various SYG threads is that she didn’t have a duty to retreat. That even if she went to the garage to get the gun, since she felt threatened (and was supported by the original deposition) in her home, she was within her rights to use deadly force–that if I’m threatened in our parlour and run upstairs to the bedroom to unlock the shotgun–the open window means that I can no longer go downstairs. I’m not following how things work.
Oh, sorry about the summary judgement/dismissal mistake–it’s been eight years since law school and I only work in policy.
For what it’s worth, a large part of the Florida SYG law talks explicitely about home invasions:
Since this was a domestic dispute and not a home invasion, the only part I can find that’s relevant is this:
My WAG, based on what little I know, is that the business about her being in the garage isn’t so much about whether or not she was able (or required) to retreat from there, but rather, was her explanation for why she went into the garage credible. She could have just flat out said that she went to the garage to get her gun, which she was legally allowed to do, and nothing else matters. But instead, she said that she was afraid and was trying to get out through the garage, and just happened to come back with a gun. I can see why the jury might not have found that believable.
Once she was in the house with the gun, the only thing left to decide is if she had a reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm. (I guess you could argue whether or not she was “attacked” at all, to use the language in the law.) Nothing in the OP’s summary suggest that the fight was particularly physical, so it depends on how severe this “history of domestic abuse” was. Given that he left peacefully after the shot was fired, you’d have to work to convince me (if I were on the jury) that she was justified in using deadly force.
steronz, that’s not “a large part of the Florida SYG law.” The Florida SYG law is subsection (3) only, not the whole section.
That’s one of the problems with Stand Your Ground: it confuses the fuck out of people. The Castle Doctrine is the principle that a duty to retreat does not apply in one’s own home (and often in one’s business), and is codified in Florida law as §776.013, Florida Statutes.
The doctrine itself generally does not apply to retreat from another resident of a shared home, and it does apply here since Gray was subject to a domestic violence injunction.
However, it’s not a carte blanche to shoot anyone who bugs you. It doesn’t matter if she felt threatened. What matters is whether she had a reasonable belief that she would be killed or suffer great harm, and the jury seems to have decided that her belief was unreasonable.
Or perhaps that her actions demonstrated she did not actually believe it at all?
(That’s not a rhetorical question — it seems like that would be the issue, but IANAL.)
I doubt that proves anything. Even a violent asshole will actually leave when you pull a gun on them. Particularly if you fire a warning shot. They may be stupid cavemen but they are rarely that stupid. I know it worked for me once.
Maybe for SYG to apply, you actually have to shoot the guy?
I can hardly think of an action that did not result in injury to anyone that would warrant a 20 year minimum sentence.
I’m sorry I didn’t take the OP as a request for research help.
Don’t sweat it, Prince of Denmark. I’m sure Rnythmdvl will understand if you excuse yourself from further participation in this thread of his which has caused you such evident dissatisfaction.
Though I often picture the multitude of posters and lurkers donning sackcloth and ashes whilst wailing “Where is Hamlet? What does he think? Where did I leave my box of leftovers from Bennigans?”, I fear you may be overestimating my importance to this thread. I think I can safely bow out until we actually hear more facts without causing massive riots or torture by forced Yanni listening.
There are transcripts linked from the article.
Supposedly she’d been hospitalised in the past.
From what I can see this is more about domestic violence than race, and the jury assuming that because she was angry, she wasnt in danger from him, ie it wasnt really argued on the details of SYG at all.
Otara