Florida's Stand your Ground law

The person who took the photograph of a bloodied Zimmerman, asking not to be identified, told ABC News exclusively that they did not see the scuffle that night, but did hear it. The person recalled seeing Martin's prostrate body on the wet grass and said the gunpowder burns on Martin's gray hoodie were clearly visible.

The photographer said that after the shooting, Zimmerman asked the photographer to call his wife. When the photographer asked him what to say, Zimmerman blurted out, "Man, just tell her I shot someone."

That's an interesting thought.

..Alexander did not shoot anyone. No one was injured when she fired her weapon, so why is she in jail?..

Quote:

..Alexander did not shoot anyone. No one was injured when she fired her weapon, so why is she in jail?..

Because she was convicted by a jury.

Marissa Alexander married Mr. Smith in 2010. He contacted Politic365 yesterday and described the 2010 confrontation he and his wife had saying, “Marissa is not portraying herself as she is, I was begging for my life while my kids were holding on to my side, the gun was pointed at me.” Mr. Smith confirms there was a restraining order on him requested by his wife at the time of the incident but also claimed he had a restraining order on his wife as well. According to Smith, the couple was married in May 2010 and the altercation where a bullet was shot by Marissa Alexander into a wall occurred in August 2010.

“I got my kids out of the house through the front door. We ran down the street. My son called the police on his cell phone and I called the police on my phone,” Alexander’s husband claims. He informed Politic365 he is a 36-year old self employed truck driver and that his wife Marissa is 31.

“Marissa didn’t come out of the house until 30 minutes later after SWAT had to be called out. SWAT had to get in touch with one of Marissa’s family members and SWAT had to tell Marissa if she didn’t come out in five minutes they were coming in there to get her. It wasn’t like she came out when the police got there,” Mr. Smith said.

“She’s just using the stand-your-ground because of the Trayvon incident. I feel sorry for her but at the same time I thought I was going to die that day in front of my kids,” Smith added.
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In 2011, Marissa Alexander’s case was subject to a stand your ground motion hearing according to Lincoln Alexander. Her stand-your-ground motion was denied by Circuit Court Judge Elizabeth Senterfitt. According to Lincoln Alexander, the judge said Marissa Alexander could have exited the house during the altercation as she and her husband argued – though the Florida stand-your-ground law states a person “has no duty to retreat.”

The stand-your-ground doctrine, which has vaulted into national prominence with the killing of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, isn't limited to the two dozen states that have passed laws since 2005 expanding the right to use deadly force in confrontations.

It's also the rule in California, by court decree. For more than a century, the state's judges have declared that a person who reasonably believes he or she faces serious injury or death from an assailant does not have to back off - inside or outside the home - and instead can use whatever force is needed to eliminate the danger.

The California Legislature has never enacted one of the National Rifle Association-sponsored laws, pioneered by Florida in 2005, that spell out the rights of a defendant in such confrontations and the procedures for applying them in court. But in California, the judicial rulings had much the same effect. The rulings are binding on state courts and are reflected in judges' instructions to juries in cases involving claims of self-defense.

The instructions say a person under attack is even entitled, "if reasonably necessary, to pursue an assailant until the danger of death or great bodily injury has passed. This is so even if safety could have been achieved by retreating."

Most states had similar rules until 30 or 40 years ago, when some passed laws barring a claim of self-defense outside the home if the person could have fled safely, said Andrea Roth, a UC Berkeley law professor. She said almost all states still allow the use of deadly force against home intruders.

"California's law perpetuates the old frontier rule," she said. "This is not some new brainchild of the NRA."

The Florida law, however, contains a major pro-defense feature absent in California and other states: a pretrial, nonjury hearing in which a judge, after considering the evidence, decides whether it's more likely than not that the defendant acted in self-defense.

If so, the judge must dismiss the charges. In California, such factual disputes must be resolved by a jury.

In the Martin case, a judge will have to decide whether it was more likely than not that George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watchman who fatally shot the unarmed 17-year-old in a gated community in Sanford, Fla., on Feb. 26, reasonably believed he was in danger from Martin.

"That hearing is the big difference," said Marty Vranicar, assistant chief executive of the California District Attorneys Association and a former Los Angeles prosecutor. "A jury's going to be deciding that in California. ... I have often had more luck presenting my case to 12 fact-finders than to an individual bench officer."

There are also differences in the legal culture of California and a state such as Florida, where self-defense rights have been broadened by the Legislature, said Robert Weisberg, a Stanford law professor.

Passage of such a law is "a signal to the courts that the overall legislative intent is to be extremely deferential to defendants who claim self-defense," he said.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/14/BA2J1O3418.DTL#ixzz1shg56sbk

I think this was it:

Quote:

The person who took the photograph of a bloodied Zimmerman, asking not to be identified, told ABC News exclusively that they did not see the scuffle that night, but did hear it. The person recalled seeing Martin's prostrate body on the wet grass and said the gunpowder burns on Martin's gray hoodie were clearly visible.