If Zimmerman was a 5’1" 105 lb woman and Martin was a 6’5" 250 lb man I might agree with you. Or if Zimmerman was a dwarf and Martin was a tyrannosaurus. Of if Zimmerman was Fay Wray and Martin was King Kong. But it wasn’t. In this case, I don’t see the need for anyone to use lethal force and what the law did was make it much easier for Zimmerman to convince himself to shoot.
Although the injuries (if any) might be evidence of whether Zimmerman reasonable feared death or serious bodily harm, I doubt that it’s simply a matter of assessing his injuries and deciding whether they exceed some threshold.
I don’t see why. If the 5’1" woman successfully drew a firearm and shot the 250 lb man who she claimed attacked her, then by your reasoning her life must not have been in any danger.
So - during a 40-second (I think) fight, Martin manages to give Zimmerman a broken nose, two black eyes, and head wounds. Martin, in return, during that fight, suffers broken skin on his knuckles. You don’t think that establishes that Martin had Zimmerman in “such a poor position”?
She’d better have some broken bones to back up her story. My extremely limited sympathy for the use of deadly force is in inverse proportion to the evenness of the fight. Society would be infinitely better off if nobody packed heat and these confrontations did not get deadly.
Martin had broken skin on his knuckles? Cite? I thought the funeral director said that he had no signs of any injuries to his hands.
OJ Junior?
Then you’re murdering the concept of accurate discussions!
Also, you’re raping the concept of a society of laws, burning the fabric of precise definitions, and robbing thread participants of the chance to participate in a discussion of the very terms most necessary to discuss a pending legal case: legal terms.
I think you are raising the burden of appropriate discussion too high for an IMHO thread … IMHO of course.
Again, what difference does that make? If a 250 pound man was in a position where he was breaking her bones, then by your reasoning it would be impossible for her to successfully draw her gun and open fire. Therefore, if she did manage to shoot the guy, she almost certainly did not have a valid basis to defend herself. By your reasoning, that is.
Not quite. A person could receive broken bones and be in position to flee to safety. Or one could be unable to flee (cornered, for example) and able to fire a weapon. When you claim to be on the ground getting pummeled, I’m less likely to believe you could get a shot off.
Just to recap in BobLibDem’s world:
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If you’re down on the ground and being beaten such that it justifies self defense, it would be impossible to use self defense.
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In general a small woman better have broken bones before shooting a much larger man.
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You can only validly use self defense if someone is trying to kill you.
I think this is all based on essentially extreme ignorance.
I think it is essentially “common sense” to imagine all kinds of different scenarios in which someone has you pinned down but you’re still able to pull a gun free. Pinned down and in threat of death is not synonymous with “pinned down and 100% unable to move your arms at all or access a gun.”
The contention that you must suffer physical injuries before resorting to self defense shows me why I’m so extremely happy that BobLibDem’s views are not at all reflected in the law. Women who have been victimized by larger men everywhere will probably agree with me in this.
What’s really bad about this is it shows BobLibDem most likely gets his knowledge of fights from Hollywood, where you can be thrown down a flight of stairs and punched in the face forty times and then get up and run away or turn the tables and win the fight. In the real world one punch can incapacitate (and rarely can kill) and that one punch can leave you vulnerable to being strangled, beat to death and etc. That’s why reasonable fear of imminent harm or death is a much more reasonable standard than “must show physical wounds consistent with being murdered”, because in many cases if you have not effectively defended yourself before suffering grievous wounds then you will not be able to protect yourself at all.
Finally it is ludicrous to say you should only be able to defend yourself to prevent death. If I’m too weak to stop someone from raping me, mutilating me, torturing me or etc, but I know they aren’t going to kill me, your system or law or morality or whatever you want to call it would necessitate that even if I had a gun, I must allow myself to be raped, tortured etc. in scenarios where I know the rapist or torturer has no intent to kill. That’s an affront to human dignity and common sense, and an affront to humanity itself. Humans have no moral responsibility to subject themselves to barbarism.
Ok, I understand. My response is basically the same as Hyde’s in post 1293.
“less likely to believe X” is not the same thing as “very confident that X cannot be so”
For you, which is it? i.e. how certain are you that assuming Zimmerman was being beat up as he claims, he could not have successfully drawn his weapon and opened fire?
I apologize if I’m asking you to repeat yourself, but I’ve searched with no luck. Can you elaborate on the case law behind this assertion?
“Reasonable fear of death or a wee boo boo”? Really?
I’ve seen contradictory statements about Florida’s definition of serious bodily injury from other sources including a Florida defense attorney, to the effect that it means disfigurement, loss of limb, or organ failure.
Frankly, the stand your ground legislation only begins to make sense to me with this higher standard for serious injury; I can’t credit that it is intended to justify the use of lethal force to avoid such trivial injuries.
The bloody nose isn’t the problem. Apparently, George Zimmerman received blunt force trauma to the back of his skull. If continued, blood vessels on the brain’s surface can rupture, filling the brain cavity, causing the enclosed brain to press against the brain stem, stop breathing, and terminate his life.
From an earlier thread:
The Owens Court also quoted another decision with approval, concerning how serious injuries have to be to qualify:
I knew someone who called OJ an acquitted murderer
I can see why you might think that. But it doesn’t jibe with my experience. ymmv.
Yeah, but WHICH “version of events that says it was Martin beating Zimmerman up?”