The fact that it amounts to legalizing murder, and has a strong racist component.
Murder by definition is the unlawful killing of another, so saying that it “legalizes murder” is nonsensical. In the case of FL law, which component is racist, specifically?
I linked to wikipedia so people would know what I was talking about. I’d never use wikipedia as a cite, especially a page that’s so clearly NPOV.
But sure, if we define SYG so incredibly broad as to encompass any sort of self defense, then most states have some form of it. Personally I consider there to be a significant difference between “some dudes with guns broke into my house” and “I saw some kid I didn’t know walking down the street” but I’m sure you’ll tell me how I’m wrong.
Or we could just acknowledge what’s obvious - gun extremists are inclined to call any common sense self defense law SYG so people think that’s what they mean when they legalize cold-blooded murder.
I should hope it would lead to the repeal of them.
“The fundamental danger of an acquittal is not more riots, it is more George Zimmermans.”
Thank you for Bricker-style pedantry. “Murder” is not and never has been solely a legal term, in the same way that “marriage” is not and never has been solely a religious term.
Redefining “murder” in a legal sense can very well logically and non-nonsensically de-criminalize acts that an individual might consider to be murder in a non-legal sense.
It would be far more appropriate for you to say you don’t want to be the next Martin.
Funny that despite how over-covered this trial has been in the media that so many people obviously didn’t see or at least didn’t understand much if any of it. They just keep recycling in the initial media stories from 2012.
The actual case as tried had almost nothing to do with ‘SYG’. Zimmerman claimed that when he shot Martin he was pinned to the ground by Martin and being pummeled. Whether that’s true or not (all we can say is the jury didn’t think Zimmerman’s basic account had been disproved beyond reasonable doubt), Zimmerman’s claim of justified legal force was in a situation where he couldn’t have ‘retreated’, so SYG was irrelevant. Likewise though others may ‘feel’ that Zimmerman’s actions in their entirety constituted a provocation of Martin, and indeed the prosecution tried to make such an emotional appeal, that’s not a valid legal theory and the jury rejected emotion and stuck to the fact that the prosecution did relatively little to refute Zimmerman’s account of the key point of the incident, the actual physical confrontation between him and Martin. And once again, Zimmerman did not claim he was justified because of SYG, as it related to either the final confrontation or anything else.
SYG only came in indirectly when the prosecution tried to impeach Zimmerman’s general credibility by pointing out that he said in a TV interview he wasn’t familiar with the term, even though he’d taken a course covering self defense law (though that assumed that Zimmerman was an on the ball person who would necessarily remember stuff even from a course he did well in, might not have been a very rigorous course, plus they never nailed down that the instructor in the course had ever used the term ‘stand your ground’ as opposed to the formal designation of the statute). Anyway SYG had an extremely minor role in the case.
Pardon my ignorance. I’ve only got a BBA & a JD. What’s a “CC Class”? I’m assuming it is “Criminal something-that-starts-with C” but I don’t know.
Back in my day we had Criminal Law I and Criminal Law II. We also took notes on paper in notebooks and legal pads so you can tell how long ago that was. 
But I’ve read that Zimmerman might be able to use Florida’s SYG law to get immunity from a civil suit by Martin’s parents. He should not have that immunity.
Posters here are invited to the IMHO thread Would Zimmerman have been convicted in a state without Stand Your Ground?. I opined that he would have been convicted in Ohio. Whether he would have been convicted in NJ, NY or a fair number of states that don’t have SYG is less clear. The core of duty to retreat covers the point when mortal peril occurs: it doesn’t cover walking into a dangerous situation. However, there is a more amorphous duty to avoid conflict and demonstrate an intention not to fight before eventually using force that isn’t clear to this nonlawyer. Also there are a number of legal methods of addressing the risk of false claims of self-defense being used as a cover for murder: duty to retreat is just one of four.
As for the OP, I hope that this case encourages the weakening of SYG laws: it seems to me that assholes thirst for violence and confrontation: such laws enable assholes and discourage prudent deescalation. This is a slightly different argument than merely pointing out that a false claim of self-defense could cover up premeditated murder or a depraved indifference to human life. It’s saying that assholes need to be told not make a bad situation worse even in cases when they didn’t initiate the situation. Unlike Zimmerman.
A ridiculous claim. Legalized murder is still murder. Murder by the law is still murder for that matter; as in “judicial murder”.
If a dictator kills someone, is he not guilty of murder if he bothers to do the paperwork to declare it legal?
This, for one:
I fully admit to not watching any of the trial, nor following much of the pre trial circus at all. But I was under the impression that Zimmerman started the confrontation by accosting Martin and demanding to know what he was doing and where he was going, and doing so without a shred of legal support and, in fact, in violation of what the police told him to do. Am I wrong on that?
Imagine for a second that Martin shot and killed Zimmerman. He testifies that Zimmerman stopped him for no reason and when Martin tried to get away, a physical confrontation occurred and he shot Zimmerman. Wouldn’t Martin be able to argue self defense because this guy, who wasn’t a police officer or in any way a representative of actual authority, stopped him. Zimmerman outweighed him and was armed, so Martin feared for his life, so he fought back and shot him. How would that case have worked out, do you think?
Speech has “legal support” unless it has a good reason for being illegal, and the police never told him not to do it. A dispatcher said something like “we don’t need you to do that.”
Regardless of what happened, why they didn’t need him to do that became abundantly clear within minutes. But I don’t see how there was a “violation” of anything the dispatcher said.
Just a WAG but maybe “conceal and carry class”?
Martin goes to prison, because he’s black. Assuming he isn’t “killed resisting arrest” by the police.
Yes, Zimmerman had free speech rights. Was that really an issue? My point was that he wasn’t acting under color of law or as a law enforcement agent. If some guy I don’t know who is bigger and stronger than me approaches me and starts asking questions where I’m going and such, and he’s not a police officer, I’m getting pretty damn defensive pretty quick. That was my point, not that Zimmerman couldn’t talk to anyone. And what about Martin, would he have been in his self defense rights to take physical action to stop Zimmerman from accosting him?
I’ll take your word for it. I thought they told him they don’t need for him to do it, and he said that he wouldn’t. Then they arranged for him to meet the police officers at the mailboxes or something, and Zimmerman said he would, but then went after Martin anyway. Am I wrong on that?
Yeah, cause he killed a guy. They didn’t need him to do that.
It’s important to distinguish between the Stand Your Ground law, §776.013(3), Fla. Stat.*, and the immunity doctrine that was passed in the same bill but appears in a separate section of the Florida Statutes, §776.032(1).
The latter was at issue in the Zimmerman trial. The former was not, because Zimmerman took the position that he could not have retreated in any event as he was on the ground.
Both are stupid, and I suspect there will be much talk of repeal. The NRA isn’t going to want to spend as much money to keep the law as it spent to pass it.
- “A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”
See post #29. Zimmerman should not have immunity from a civil suit here.
That’s §776.032(3). (1) is immunity from arrest. I don’t see why Zimmerman should have immunity either, but there will be a hearing so we’ll see.