I didn’t follow the trial and IANAL, so I have little idea. I did think it would make a difference when the story first broke.
Instructions to the jury are in this article: Zimmerman jury asks for 'clarification' on manslaughter charge
I suspect future news articles will address this OP. Also, I’ll note that different states allegedly have different versions of Stand Your Ground.
I haven’t followed it especially closely and IANAL either, but I don’t think this ended up being a Stand Your Ground case.
Wikipedia on Duty to Retreat: Answers - The Most Trusted Place for Answering Life's Questions
In the criminal law, the duty to retreat is a specific component which sometimes appears in the defense of self-defense, and which must be addressed if the defendant is to prove that his or her conduct was justified. In those jurisdictions where the requirement exists, the burden of proof is on the defense to show that the defendant was acting reasonably. This is often taken to mean that the defendant had first avoided conflict and secondly, had taken reasonable steps to retreat and so demonstrated an intention not to fight before eventually using force.
American law
Some American jurisdictions require that a person retreat from an attack, and allow the use of deadly force in self-defense only when retreat is not possible or when retreat poses a danger to the person under attack.
Read more: Answers - The Most Trusted Place for Answering Life's Questions Presumably such issues would not have made their way into the Zimmerman trial, conducted under Florida law, where Stand Your Ground applies, rather than Duty to Retreat applies.
This wasn’t a SYG case.
Case had nothing to do with Stand Your Ground.
May not have been a SYG specific case, but the doctrine was not exactly wholly irrelevant to the case.
It seems to my that while SYG may not have been mentioned during the trial (and I can’t see why it would have come up) if Zimmerman had a duty to both avoid conflict and take reasonable steps to retreat then he would have been convicted. Since there is no such duty in Florida, the case would shift to whether he felt threatened. I trust he did.
That analysis rests purely on my citations above and there is much I don’t know.
As people have said, SYG was never an issue.
Question is (and hopefully some lawyer poster will answer) whether the “retreat” being spoken about is after being attacked, or before. Because Zimmerman hardly had any way to retreat once he was punched in the face.
The duty to retreat comes up after the fear of death or serious bodily injury but before the use of force up to and including deadly force.
If so, the duty to retreat was not a factor in this case.
It may vary by state. And there is the matter of a duty to avoid conflict and demonstrate an intention not to fight before eventually using force.
To be clear, there is no duty to retreat or avoid conflict in Florida, so the issue would not have been discussed at trial. Florida is a SYG state.
Given the case as presented by the State of Florida, it’d still come down only to Zimmerman’s word on when the fear and the force came into play, so the question of SYG is kind of moot. Given what they had and didn’t have, there was no way to disprove self defense, anyway.
Zimmerman certainly demonstrated an intention not to fight by lying there and taking it for 40 seconds before shooting Martin.
SYG may not have been specifically raised at trial, but it was the lever that removed ‘duty to retreat’ from the Statutes.
Pretty much the sole purpose of SYG legislation is to repeal ‘duty to retreat’ clauses.
If Florida were a non SYG state Zimmerman would have had a hard time demonstrating that he had exhausted his means of escape.
It wouldn’t have been Zimmerman’s problem. In Florida, the state must disprove a self-defense assertion beyond a reasonable doubt, rather than the more common preponderance standard for affirmative defenses.
That depends on whether he was punched in the face while standing or while on the ground. Certainly he had no duty to retreat once Martin was on top of him (which is why there was no argument at trial about the SYG law.)
It is relevant to the case in general because most people were under the impression (thanks to the news media) that Zimmerman was not charged because of subsection 2, which grants immunity from arrest for SYG assertions. It’s not the Stand Your Ground law itself, but it’s part of the same section and was added in the same bill.
I didn’t follow the trial and I am surprised that a man would simply lie on the pavement while being pummeled. I’m not familiar with the physical evidence. It seems to me though that his discussion with 911 did not reflect an inclination to avoid conflict.
ETA: RNATB (who has some legal training): help!
Given Dr. DiMaio’s testimony that the shot came while Martin was on top of or leaning over Zimmerman, and the witness Good’s testimony that Martin was on top of Zimmerman, I don’t think it’d be all that hard to demonstrate that Zimmerman couldn’t have retreated instead.
ETA: Also, the police report describing Zimmerman’s back as being wet and covered with grass.
I think I was wrong. The Florida SYG law got rid of the duty to retreat in this situation, and the jury instructions said:
“If George Zimmerman was not engaged in an unlawful activity and was attacked in any place where he had a right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he reasonably believed that it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”
So SYG was relevant (maybe there would have been an argument that no retreat was possible, but that wasn’t necessary), even if there was no immunity hearing.
Incidentally, to get the full jury instructions, you need to go here: the Yahoo story only quotes a selection.
New York does not have SYG. Nor does New Jersey. Would the duty to avoid conflict and take reasonable steps to retreat before the fight went to the ground resulted in a Zimmerman conviction in eg those states? Or do I misunderstand the duty to retreat principle? Because it seems to me (so far) that Zimmerman is not guilty in Florida and guilty in, say, New Jersey.
(And am I in the right forum?)