Those construction workers that followed that guy who was caught and turned out to be a burglar (the Zimmerman’s HOA’s president testified about that) - was that a “wise choice” to follow him?
I don’t know how you’d define a “societal problem”, but there are certainly gun owners and RKBA organizations that are concerned about malicious prosecutions after a justifiable homicide. Here are a couple of examples:
http://www.allsafedefense.com/Articles/Martin-England.htm
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/01/20/man-faces-jail-after-protecting-home-from-masked-attackers/
Please note, I’m not trying to argue the merits of any of these self-defense cases, just pointing out that there are indeed people out there who are concerned about wrongful convictions for self-defense, even if they haven’t yet formed the Society For Blowing Every Motherfucker Away.
I’d argue that the fact that legislators have passed Castle Doctrine and SYG laws is evidence that they felt it was a societal problem. I could probably dig up some committee hearing and floor debate footage if you really, truly don’t believe it.
I went and looked another one up. Here is the Florida Legislature’s enrolled copy of Florida’s SYG law:
Maybe the FL legislature can set up a Standing Committee on Blowing Every Motherfucker Away …
In hindsight, no. And I would not have done so in his shoes nor would I advise anyone in their shoes to do so. I also would not advise young women to walk alone at night wearing 6 inch heels and miniskirts but if they do and they get assaulted I don’t blame them - I blame their attackers.
This is how I want the law to be (and is in SYG states). I think the chance of a jury getting it wrong is sufficiently high as to make it not worthwhile for a jury to determine if retreat was an available option. The person in the moment decides that, and to overcome that the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person was not in fact defending themselves. FL law has it right in this area and I wish every state in the union followed suit.
That gives a person no comfort at all if he can only show that he couldn’t have retreated by 49.9% of the evidence at a later hearing in a courtroom with security, testifying about what he did on a split-second decision.
Of course. Most people on trial for anything, all the way down to speeding are guilty of the offense. Like Alan Dershowitz said, I hope we don’t live in a country where more than half of the people that are hauled before courts are innocent.
But your logic should apply to the guy on trial for larceny: Hell, he’s probably lying so make him prove his innocence instead of putting the burden on the state for beyond a reasonable doubt.
I’m not sure where you got that from but it’s got nothing to do with my logic. The prosecution bears the burden of disproving self-defense assertions, and I’m fine with that.
How does that differ from any other jury determination? Why are juries uniquely unqualified to weigh the evidence on this specific issue?
I acknowledge that juries are tasked with making similar calculus for a variety of other scenario. SYG carves out a specific situation from the rest of the jury’s fact finding duties. It’s different because the statue says it’s different - I know this is probably not compelling for you.
I think some juries will get it right [a jury comprised of people like me 
]. Others will get it wrong [a jury comprised of pretty much anyone who thinks GZ should have been convicted with the evidence presented]. SYG means a person fears the latter less than without SYG. The jury can still decide if the person was in fact defending themself - they just can’t second guess with the luxury of hindsight a person’s evaluation in the moment of confrontation.
Your problem isn’t with the jury employing a reasonableness standard just like they’d employ in thousands of other scenarios, then. Your problem is that you think the actual threshold for when it’s acceptable to kill another person is lower than a jury is likely to believe. Basically, you worry that most people think it’s unreasonable to kill somebody under circumstances where you think it’s reasonable to kill somebody. Right? In other words, you’re imagining a scenario where even if there was no question of fact at all – where everyone could watch a videotape of the incident and then enter a virtual reality program that gave them access to the hearts and minds of everyone involved – you would think the killing was justified and the jury would not.
I don’t think that’s a problem that Stand Your Ground legislation is going to fix either way. It just shifts the battle lines. Because, ultimately, if you don’t think a preponderance of the evidence is going to convince a hypothetical jury that this hypothetical failure to retreat was reasonable, what exactly are you basing your hypothetical notion that it was reasonable on? I think that sort of cuts to the heart of this entire debate - it’s not about wording the statute clearly and correctly to reflect the appropriate standard. It’s about the fact that a substantial portion of the population is totally OK with a person being killed in a set of circumstances under which another substantial portion of the population thinks it’s totally unacceptable that a person’s been killed. The only ways around that dilemma, legislatively, are to declare open season or to outlaw all killings.
No. I think we can define in legal terms when it’s acceptable to use deadly force against another and that is widely accepted. But since that definition rests on whether or not a reasonable person believes they are being threatened with great bodily injury or death - a lot hinges on what the person believes in the moment.
I think a magical device such as this would eliminate the question of what the person believed at the time, but that still doesn’t speak to whether or not a person has a duty to retreat or may SYG.
For the sake of example, let’s say a person genuinely believed that they were about to die from an incoming attacker. Now the jury with their magical device knows that this was the state of mind so the person should be in the clear. But let’s say the defendant was in his car that wasn’t started and did not have the keys in the ignition, and the incoming attacker was approaching on foot. The attacker has a shotgun visible and the defendant has a holstered pistol. Should the defendant be obligated to drive away or can he shoot the attacker? Everyone knows via the magical mind reading device that he was in genuine fear for his life so that is not in question. A jury may believe that he could have started the car and left in time. The person in the car may believe that in the time it takes to start the car and drive away he may still be attacked so he defends himself and kills his attacker. He may believe that he has a chance at escape, but he’s more sure of his shooting than his driving. Maybe he thinks, I can probably escape (75%) but I know I can mozambiquehim. With SYG, once the initial gate of self defense is established, no other gate of chance to flee is contemplated.
SYG means that a jury doesn’t get to decide if you should or could have escaped. They only get to decide if you were defending yourself. That’s how I would characterize it - your other restatement doesn’t sound quite right to me.
The standard is “reasonable belief,” not genuine belief. Thinking that someone swatting your shoulder with a rolled up newspaper puts you at a risk of great bodily harm or death doesn’t justify self-defense using deadly force even it’s a genuine belief, because it’s not reasonable.
And what if the approaching ne’er-do-well was armed with a Super Soaker?
Either I’m not understanding your objection, or like Acsenray suggested, you’re misunderstanding the standard itself, I think.
If you are unreasonably afraid that you’re at risk, and because you as a result put more faith in your shooting than your ability to avail yourself of an apparently fairly obvious means of escape, you “Mozambique” somebody (which it’s interesting to me that you’ve got the particular argot down for this hypothetical situation, but that’s admittedly a personal bias coming into play), well… that’s rather exactly the situation most of us are trying to avoid excusing you for, as far as I can tell.
In other words, I can’t really tell why what you’re saying is the problem isn’t what I said was the problem.
If the jury believes that your fear was unreasonable, SYG does not come into play.
Now - what if you’re reasonably afraid you’re at risk, and because you as a result put more faith in your shooting than your ability to avail yourself of an apparently fairly obvious means of escape, you shoot someone?
What does either of those points have to do with Bone believing the jury should never be tasked with finding whether retreat was available?
Because whether retreat was actually, objectively, available is not material. If during the confrontation it is your belief that by retreating you’re exposing yourself to more danger than by shooting the attacker, you should not retreat. And the law should not punish your for not retreating.
As far as I can tell, you have responded to a post where I was arguing that there’s a moral divide that is far more significant to how these cases get resolved than whether Stand Your Ground statutes are on the books in a given jurisdiction, in order to tell me that it is morally right to kill a person under certain circumstances, regardless of what the law says.
Replace in my example “genuine” with reasonable such that it meets the reasonable person standard.
No one is threatened with great bodily harm or death from a super soaker. No reasonable believe of such should or would be sustained. Unless maybe if it was filled with flammable liquid and being used as a flamethrower? I dunno. I’m positing a hypothetical to flesh out the details in good faith.
For the sake of discussion, assume that the person is reasonably afraid they are at risk. As to whether there is an obvious means of escape, this is where the question comes into play and why SYG is necessary. You believe there is an obvious means of escape. Is there? The jury will decide if there is a duty to retreat and that is what SYG avoids. My Prius takes a second to power on. Then another second to engage the gear, and I can accelerate oh so very fast (good enough for me). I can squeeze off 3 rounds faster than that. Not only that, the attacker can fire too, and his shots will be faster than the vehicle. So is it such an obvious means of escape?
You think the hypothetical shows an obvious means of escape. I don’t. That’s the problem.
So what’s wrong with the pre-SYG law, that didn’t?
With the pre-SYG law, you would have the burden to convince the jury that at the time it was reasonable for you to believe that by retreating you’d be exposing yourself to more danger than by shooting the attacker (even if in hindsight it may not seem so). The jury that is sitting in comfy chairs in air-conditioned room, not under the enormous stress being attacked.