# SYG laws Post-Zimmerman **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 14, 2013, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syg-laws-post-zimmerman/663459 "2013-07-14T05:03:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 17
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syg-laws-post-zimmerman/663459/321 "2013-07-27T02:27:47Z")
No you wouldn’t. The prosecution had the burden of proving that your belief was _not_ reasonable. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syg-laws-post-zimmerman/663459/322 "2013-07-27T03:22:08Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > No you wouldn’t. The prosecution had the burden of proving that your belief was _not_ reasonable. But here’s the thing. If you throw the “duty to retreat” doctrine back in, some non-zero percentage of people will go to jail. Let’s be conservative and say 10 people. Maybe 3 of those didn’t really have a duty but the jury found they did. 3 innocent people in jail. So that means that seven people go to jail for what? For not retreating when they could have in the face of a violent felony. I don’t support that. Those seven shouldn’t go to jail. They have a right to stand where they legally are. And there might be mistakes there. Why should people be questioned about where they have a legal right to stand? Oh, the defendant could have run! Yes, but the dead guy could have not committed a violent felony against the defendant. The second is worse than the first. The seven are in jail because of a state imposed duty that the dead guy could have taken with ease. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syg-laws-post-zimmerman/663459/323 "2013-07-27T05:29:13Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > They have a right to stand where they legally are. And there might be mistakes there. Why should people be questioned about where they have a legal right to stand? This is where things get stupid. You have a right to defend yourself of you reasonably fear being killed. That’s all. This “right to stand where you legally are” is just bullshit when what you’re talking about is killing another human being. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syg-laws-post-zimmerman/663459/324 "2013-07-27T06:17:17Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > No you wouldn’t. The prosecution had the burden of proving that your belief was _not_ reasonable. And THAT is what Bricker et al are complaining about. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syg-laws-post-zimmerman/663459/325 "2013-07-27T13:26:35Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > This is where things get stupid. You have a right to defend yourself of you reasonably fear being killed. That’s all. This “right to stand where you legally are” is just bullshit when what you’re talking about is killing another human being. Not when that other human being is putting you in reasonable fear of death of serious bodily injury. Why should the law protect that person versus another person being where he has a legal right to be? Think of the duties impose on each person: 1) The good guy must show he could have retreated. He must show that in court after hiring an expensive lawyer in front of jurors in air conditioned comfort analyzing his actions months before under intense emotional circumstances. 2) The bad guy needs to simply stop committing violent felonies against individuals and putting them in fear of death or serious bodily harm. If his life is so valuable, all he has to do is not commit violent felonies. That’s it. Then his life is preserved. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syg-laws-post-zimmerman/663459/326 "2013-07-27T16:59:26Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > And THAT is what Bricker et al are complaining about. You might want to go back and read the whole thread, because no. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syg-laws-post-zimmerman/663459/327 "2013-07-27T17:21:22Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > You might want to go back and read the whole thread, because no. **Bricker** : “in the vast majority of cases, proof that you could, or could not, retreat should be relatively easy. And again, you only **have to prove it** by the barest margin – **preponderance of the evidence** means that the evidence needs to slightly favor you. If it’s 50.1% that you could not retreat and 49.9% that you could, you still win.” ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syg-laws-post-zimmerman/663459/328 "2013-07-27T17:33:49Z")
He’s not talking about Florida. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syg-laws-post-zimmerman/663459/329 "2013-07-27T18:26:51Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > He’s not talking about Florida. No he’s not. But he wants Florida to be like that. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syg-laws-post-zimmerman/663459/330 "2013-07-27T22:55:30Z")
Where did you get that idea? ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syg-laws-post-zimmerman/663459/331 "2013-07-27T23:05:26Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Where did you get that idea? [From **Bricker**.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=697114) ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syg-laws-post-zimmerman/663459/332 "2013-08-01T04:18:21Z")
By the way, I think there was a question in this thread, or maybe in another one, about which states require that the self-defense, if used as an affirmative defense, has to be disproven by the prosecution beyond reasonable doubt, and which only require preponderance of evidence. This article by a guy who wrote the book on this, so is probably pretty knowledgeable, says that 49 states are the “beyond reasonable doubt” ones and only one (Ohio) is the “preponderance of evidence” one. [http://legalinsurrection.com/2013/07/that-odd-duck-ohio-self-defense-as-an-affirmative-defense-kind-of//#more](http://legalinsurrection.com/2013/07/that-odd-duck-ohio-self-defense-as-an-affirmative-defense-kind-of//#more) ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syg-laws-post-zimmerman/663459/333 "2013-08-01T13:37:49Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > [From **Bricker**.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=697114) Huh. I’d forgotten about that thread. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2013, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syg-laws-post-zimmerman/663459/334 "2013-08-02T21:49:43Z")
[From _The Nation:_ “The Monsterization of Trayvon Martin.”](http://www.thenation.com/article/175547/monsterization-trayvon-martin#axzz2aqQZzQJC) > [@](#): > > Much of it comes down to an all-too-familiar double standard. Sociologist Troy Duster recently summarized the difficulty confronted by prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda when he asked the jury to reverse the circumstances and imagine that an armed 28-year-old black man followed an unarmed 17-year-old white teenager, shot him dead and then pleaded self-defense: “The problem with this invitation to speculate,” he said, “is that it asks that we break frame with ‘common sense.’” For all the legal language of the courtroom, racialized narratives will emerge and form along the very same lines that Gordon Allport and Leo Postman identified in their research more than sixty years ago: in the “retelling,” a razor will leap “from the white man’s hand to… a colored man’s hand.”\* > > And so, by the end of the trial, the 200-pound Zimmerman, despite martial arts training and a history of assaulting others, was transformed into a “soft,” retiring marshmallow of a weakling. The 158-pound Martin had been reimagined as an immense, athletically endowed, drug-addled “thug.” > > Consider, by way of inverted contrast, the 2007 conviction of John White, a black man who shot an unarmed white teenager in New York in 2006. According to The New York Times, the victim, Daniel Cicciaro, “showed up at Mr. White’s house just after 11:00 p.m. to challenge his son Aaron, then 19, to a fight.” Waking up to “threats, profanities and racial epithets,” Mr. White “grabbed a loaded Beretta he kept in the garage of his house in Miller Place, a predominantly white hamlet on Long Island.” At the trial, which the Times described as “racially charged,” the prosecution successfully argued that the case “did not hinge on race but the rash actions of a quick-tempered man who kept an arsenal in his house in preparation for such a situation.” White, unlike Zimmerman, was convicted of manslaughter. > > The same double standard permeates Florida’s so-called “stand your ground” law, controversial long before the Zimmerman trial for its leniency in the face of acts that might otherwise be charged as outright murder. Seventy percent of those asserting a “stand your ground” defense in a homicide are never charged at all. But a seven-year case review of “stand your ground” claims by the Tampa Bay Times showed that prosecution depends less on the merits of the case than the perpetrator’s color, the color of the victim and where the shooting happened. If the victim is black, the killer is much more likely to go free. If the shooter is black, the chances of conviction are much higher. > > Women fare badly as well: two months after Trayvon Martin was killed, a 31-year-old black woman named Marissa Alexander was sentenced in Florida to twenty years in prison for firing a “warning shot” into a wall during a fight with her estranged husband, a man who had a history of physical abuse. Charged with aggravated assault in which a weapon was discharged—by the very same prosecutor’s office that charged Zimmerman—her “stand your ground” defense was dismissed by a judge, and a jury convicted her after just fifteen minutes of deliberation. > > \ > > There are many tellings of Aesop’s fable about the hungry wolf who encounters a new spring lamb drinking from a river. “How dare you muddy my water?” he demands of the lamb. ”I have not muddied it,” replies the lamb, “for I am downstream of you.” “Well then,” said the wolf, edging nearer, “you spread evil rumors about me last year.” “It was not I,” replied the lamb, “for I was not yet born.” “Well, if it wasn’t you, it must have been your father,” said the wolf, and with that, he pounced upon the lamb and devoured him. > > I thought of that story when listening to the trial, to the repeated insistence that Trayvon Martin must have been guilty of something, to Don West speaking sneeringly to Rachel Jeantel. > > _It was he who fouled the water with racism, did he not? And if it wasn’t he, it must have been one like him, isn’t that correct?_ > > Rachel Jeantel had no answer to that or any other question. There remains that cold, sad silence at the center of it all. - I read about that once – a psychological study done in the 1960s: A group of (white) test subjects were shown – for just a moment on the screen – a photo of a white man and a black man fighting, the white man wielding a straight razor. Asked to describe the scene afterwards, most of them said the razor was in the black man’s hand. BTW, [the Dream Defenders](http://dreamdefenders.org/) [are **still** camping out in Fla. Gov. Rick Scott’s office.](http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/rev-jesse-jackson-joins-dream-defenders/2133976) ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2013, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syg-laws-post-zimmerman/663459/335 "2013-08-02T22:11:12Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > - I read about that once – a psychological study done in the 1960s: A group of (white) test subjects were shown – for just a moment on the screen – a photo of a white man and a black man fighting, the white man wielding a straight razor. Asked to describe the scene afterwards, most of them said the razor was in the black man’s hand. Sure. Why not bring up 1920s? Or 1860s? Oh, and I am sure that referring to Zimmerman as a “cracker” and “rapist” was not “monsterizing” him. It was just the way kids talk… ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2013, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syg-laws-post-zimmerman/663459/336 "2013-08-03T03:25:55Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > Sure. Why not bring up 1920s? Or 1860s? Because there are still a lot of people around who were around in the 1960s, or children of those who were, and that matters a **lot** here. As you know. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syg-laws-post-zimmerman/663459.md?page=16)