Stand Your Ground

[chris_gerrib]

So, on Facebook, I was asked to comment about the Trayvon Martin shooting. Since my thoughts don't easily fit on Facebook's abbreviated space, here they are in longer format.

*** I am not a lawyer. Do not rely on this post for legal advice.***

First, Zimmerman (the shooter) was out looking for trouble. There is no legal basis for him to get out of his truck and stop somebody walking down a public sidewalk. Even under Florida law, there is no excuse for Zimmerman to shoot anybody unless he was being actively attacked. "I thought he had a gun" doesn't work, even in movies. The initial police investigation appears to be half-assed at best, a deliberate whitewash at worst. Besides being flat wrong, this is the sort of thing that gives gun owners a bad name.

There is some confusion about Florida's "stand your ground" law. This law essentially says that if you are attacked in some place that you have a right to be, you do not have a "duty to retreat." A duty to retreat is exactly what it sounds like - it's the idea that you should back away from a fight. Now, backing away may be a good tactical and legal decision, but as I read the law, Martin (victim) had no legal requirement to back away from Zimmerman's aggression.

Actually, "standing your ground" is not particularly controversial in legal circles. Illinois has had such a standard since at least 1953. In this short Illinois Supreme Court decision, a murder conviction was overturned, saying, "The defendant was where he had a lawful right to be and it was not his duty to flee, but being assaulted first he had a right to stand his ground and if reasonably apprehensive of serious injury was justified in taking his assailant's life." Or as this legal expert says, it's not Florida's law that's to blame here.

No, what's to blame here are Zimmerman's rash actions and a decision by somebody in the local police to not properly investigate the case.

Comments

Standing one's ground

[(Anonymous)]

Lawyers have a saying that goes something like "extraordinary cases make bad law". To call this case extraordinary would be an understatement. There are just too many variables, many of them having to do with problematic police behavior.

- The officer in charge of the crime scene violated standard procedure by not testing the shooter for drugs or alcohol;

- That same officer had previously been known to have allowed a privileged individual get away with violent criminal behavior (the nephew of a police lieutenant was not charged after beating a homeless man, despite the fact that the beating was captured on film).;

- At least one witness claims that a police officer pressured her to change her statement to one more favorable to the shooter's story (she said she heard the teenager cry for help; he "corrected" her so that her statement said she heard the shooter cry for help).

- The shooter had a prior arrest record involving violence and was known to police for making an unusually high (to the point of being excessive) number of calls to them. He was carrying a firearm and the 911 call documented that he had previously been pursuing the victim. But the police found his story (that he was outside his truck merely to look at a street sign when he was attacked by an unarmed teenager almost half his size) to be credible!

I'm not a lawyer either, but if I recall correctly, the law states that a citizen may not be charged if there is no reason to doubt his claim that he was "meet[ing] force with force" - i.e., standing his ground after being attacked. Given the shooter's previous arrest record, his known belligerent character, his earlier behavior that night, and witness reports that they hear a boy and not a grown man calling for help, I'd say that there was MORE than enough reason to doubt his claim to have been the attackEE and not the attackER.

The problem here is with police and prosecutorial conduct that is, at best, grossly incompetent, if not criminally negligent.

Which is not to say that the law itself is a good one.