Stand Your Ground Review...Was it even used at all by the defense or Jury?

[foszoe]

I thought Zimmerman did not invoke the stand your ground statute and that the jury did not use it as part of their criteria in deciding self defense, but rather used something else. Please enlighten me on where my understanding is incorrect.


Thanks!

 

[Jack Burton]

The SYG was not used by the prosecution or defense. The SYG law was part of the general instructions given to the jury about self defense, including information that concerned home break ins and other stuff that didn't apply. There was no jury instruction that focused on SYG laws given to the jury in relation to the incident that night.

What the jury used to deliberate with was up to them.

 

[CathyInBlue]

The Z-man defense never raised SYG. Period. Everyone with "Stand Your Ground laws need to be reviewed" on their lips should be boiled in their own cosmolene and buried with a stake of a broken Springfield buttstock through their heart.

These people are merely anti-gun zealots who have been dealt a series of heart rending defeats on the national stage. It's driven them quite mad. Well, madder than they were before, and they are now flailing around for something else upon which to latch. SYG is just their latest red herring for their inexhaustible plot to eventually ban all firearms from private hands, only to be wielded against the common citizens by the military, the police, and the criminal element, which by that time will have neatly merged into a single entity.

 

[Kirk Freeman]

1. Zimmerman did not avail himself the SYG pre-trial procedures.

2. Pursuant to the pattern jury instructions from the Florida Supreme Court, the trail judge read an instruction which told the jury that there was no duty to retreat. The written instruction that the judge read used the phrase "stand your ground" but did not reference the SYG statute (which contains 3 different elements) but simply made it clear that there was no duty to retreat (even pre-2005 there would have been no duty to retreat).

3. The decision was whether a reasonable person under those circumstances (pinned to ground, having head bashed and punched, told he was to die and lunging for the pistol) would have used deadly force under the circumstances because of reasonable belief of serious bodily injury or death. The jury decided that a reasonable person would have used deadly force to prevent seriously bodily injury or death.

 

[VN Vet]

The trial was not a Stand your Ground trial. It was however a Self Defense trial. A gun was used as a last effort by the beaten man to stop the physical assault upon his body by the man doing the beating. The beating man lost and the beaten man won. The gun was never an issue until the last seconds of the attack on Zimmerman.

Low educated people do not care about facts. It confuses them, so they make-up their own to believe. Ignorant people don't care about the truth, since they create the truth as they want it to be. Stupid people can't understand what you are even talking about, so they just follow their leaders and do as they are told.

Obama wanted change. Well, Herr Obama you are making a big change in my mind and I don't like it. I know what you are trying to do to my country and I don't like that either.

 

[Twangbanger]

Please enlighten me. I thought SYG was a color-blind law. As in, anybody wanting to defend themselves could potentially benefit from it, regardless of color. Apparently the Civil Rights Industry, looking through the "Prism of Black History," feels otherwise.

And now gutless wonder John McCain adds his voice to the ruckus, placing SYG alongside MMA fighting and Assault Weapons on the list of things that might possibly be immoral or fattening.

People ain't getting any smarter, are they? I really hoped the Z case could be the starting point for a more sophisticated discussion of self-defense issues in a world where more people are CCW'ing. But nah...it's just another publicity op. for the Civil Rights Industry, ever-afraid of being put out of a job.

(Is the smear campaign against Charles Barkley starting yet?)

 

[Doug]

Stand Your Ground must be repealed so people can be prosecuted for successfully defending themselves from attack.

"You should have run away when the victim threatened you with the knife. He threatened you, not your pregnant wife or your toddler. You cannot prove they were in any danger, whatsoever. If you had just run away, this young man who was trying to turn his life around would be alive today."

 

[CathyInBlue]

Mein gott in heimel. Did some brain donor actually make that argument about some SYG case?

 

[indykid]

Pretty hard to stand your ground when you are getting your head pounded into the pavement and your face *****-slapped.

But then the truth is not important when a group has an agenda to push.

 

[Doug]

Mein gott in heimel. Did some brain donor actually make that argument about some SYG case?

Not to my knowledge, but it seems a natural outgrowth from a case several years ago in Massachusetts.

A man broke into a house. The female homeowner and her young son retreated to the basement, locking the door behind them. The burglar kicked down the door and, standing at the top of the stairs, shouted that he would kill them both. She fired one shot from a .22 rifle and he died. I don't recall what level of homicide she was charged with; I think it was 2nd. degree murder. The judge claimed she should have left her house in the middle of winter, taken her young son with her, and hid in the woods behind the house until the burglar left.

These kinds of opinions are, I believe, what led to the stand your ground laws.

 

[BravoMike]

Mein gott in heimel.

Mein Gott im Himmel.

Bitte schon!

 

[Doug]

Mein gott in heimel. Did some brain donor actually make that argument about some SYG case?

Mein Gott im Himmel.

Bitte schon!

HOLY CRAP! TALK ABOUT A SPELLING/GRAMMAR NAZI!

Just kidding.

 

[KG1]

Mein Gott im Himmel.

Bitte schon!

Donkey shane.

 

[Mark 1911]

Amazing how the Zimmerman trial had nothing to do with SYG, and yet the anti-gunners starting with Obama want to use the Zimmerman trial as a springboard for reviewing SYG laws. It's the same old political dog-and-pony show as ever.

 

[CathyInBlue]

Sandy Hook had nothing to do with mag capacity or background checks. Leftists have a bottomless capacity for engaging in non sequitors.

 

[Jack Burton]

Sandy Hook had nothing to do with mag capacity or background checks. Leftists have a bottomless capacity for engaging in non sequitors.

...or self delusion

 

[CathyInBlue]

What do you mean? "Or"?

 

[BigBoxaJunk]

Well, I don't know about you people, but my TV told me that the Zimmerman case was about "Stand-Your-Ground". I mean, how much more proof do you need?

 

[Cemetery-man]

Maybe these fine entertainers will have an impact with their boycott against SYG laws. Just more has-been celebrities taking advantage of a hot situation to make the headlines one more time.

Justin Timberlake, Jay-Z, Madonna, Kanye West, Others Join Stevie Wonder's Florida Boycott (Report) - Yahoo! TV

 

[KG1]

Maybe these fine entertainers will have an impact with their boycott against SYG laws. Just more has-been celebrities taking advantage of a hot situation to make the headlines one more time.

Justin Timberlake, Jay-Z, Madonna, Kanye West, Others Join Stevie Wonder's Florida Boycott (Report) - Yahoo! TV

Ho-hum. That'll show 'em. I could personally do just fine knowing they are boycotting and not performing. Only shallow people without any kind of life that care about such things as being entertained by the likes of these "celebrities" who don't know the first thing about the reason for SYG would be affected.

SYG is the latest ill-informed "cause célèbre"