The State of Florida vs George Zimmerman: The Trial

The only poll that should matter is the six women who hear the case as jurors

Just today the Dr. Phil show and Nancy Grace show was doing their level best
to sell the same line of disproven nonsense and to this day
the picture shown of Trayvon is of a smiling 14 years old.

Nancy Grace has a long and inglorious history of trying
to justify the prosecution and conviction of innocent people.

The only poll that should matter is the six women who hear the case as jurors

As it is right now in these states with laws like Florida's self defense and stand your ground laws,

it is too easy to plead self defense and too difficult to disprove it.

As it is right now in these states with laws like Florida's self defense and stand your ground laws, it is too easy to plead self defense and too difficult to disprove it.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/frankminiter/2013/07/23/what-no-one-will-tell-you-about-the-george-zimmerman-case/

Actually, The Daily Caller has reported that “Black Floridians have made about a third of the state’s total ‘Stand Your Ground’ claims in homicide cases, a rate nearly double the black percentage of Florida’s population. The majority of those claims [55 percent] have been successful, a success rate that exceeds that for Florida whites.”

So, as blacks seem to be benefiting from the ability to defend themselves outside their homes, is the president simply practicing political opportunism by using a crisis to push his preferred policies? The president says racial profiling is to blame, but the facts show that most blacks killed today are killed by other blacks (93% of the time). He says we need to reduce the rights of law-abiding citizens to carry firearms even though most of the murders today are taking place in areas where handgun ownership is either banned or severely restricted.

All those who realize that GUNS should not be carried by psychologically unstable individuals,
with past legal histories involving aggressive actions, should sign the above petition.

Regardless of whether or not blacks have benefited from the stand your ground laws, it still needs to change back in those states with the news laws of stand your ground and self defense laws like Florida.

It does not matter, it was a terrible racist picture bringing up memories that many older blacks mostly in the south had to live with.

HUNTINGTON -- The recent acquittals of George Zimmerman in Florida and Aaron Searls in Huntington have brought a renewed focus on the nation's self-defense laws, specifically the responsibility of a person who utilizes deadly force.

West Virginia and Kentucky, like Florida, are among at least 22 states with laws that place no duty to retreat upon the threatened party before that person reacts with deadly force.

In the wake of Zimmerman's acquittal, President Barack Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said last week they believe it's time to rethink such laws in regard to incidents that happen outside of a person's home, such as Zimmerman's killing of Martin on Feb. 26, 2012.

Those involved in passing West Virginia's law have resisted calls for change since Martin's death, and that's a position Larry Keaton Sr. wishes lawmakers in both Charleston and his home state of Kentucky would reconsider. His comments came Thursday, two days after Holder's speech and three days after a Cabell County jury acquitted Searls in the death of his son, Larry John Keaton Jr. of Catlettsburg, Ky.

"You'll get into 'he said, she said' and it's just an excuse to get away with murder," Keaton Sr. said. "So no, I don't believe that's a good law at all."

Attorneys for both Zimmerman and Searls claimed self-defense, describing the person their clients killed as the aggressor. Both confrontations, they claim, involved an unarmed attacker throwing the first punch and following it with additional blows that placed Zimmerman and Searls in fear.

Both men responded with gunfire in shootings that killed Martin, in Sanford, Fla., and Keaton Jr., outside of a bar in the 1500 block of 3rd Avenue in Huntington. The specifics were vastly different, and defense attorneys in Huntington insist Searls' acquittal was based upon a lack of physical evidence. But one similarity they share is both occurred away from the gunman's home in states that do not require that person to retreat.

Such laws are generally referred to as castle doctrine or stand-your-ground, and Holder believes those statutes undermine public safety "by allowing and perhaps encouraging violent situations to escalate in public." He told those attending last week's NAACP Annual Convention in Orlando, Fla., that Martin's death is separate and apart from the country's collective obligation to "stand our ground" and ensure its laws reduce violence instead of contributing to it.

"It's time to question laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defense and sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhoods," he told convention attendees. "These laws try to fix something that was never broken. There has always been a legal defense for using deadly force if -- and the 'if' is important -- no safe retreat is available.

"But we must examine laws that take this further by eliminating the common sense and age-old requirement that people who feel threatened have a duty to retreat, outside their home, if they can do so safely," the attorney general added.

Obama addressed the issue talking with reporters at the White House on Friday.

"How do we learn some lessons from this and move in a positive direction?"

West Virginia Senate President Jeff Kessler, D-Marshall, and Sen. Evan Jenkins, D-Cabell, this week said they remained comfortable with West Virginia's statute, passed in 2008 as the "Castle Doctrine" when Kessler chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee and Jenkins was a member of it.

Both senators stressed their legislation limits justifiable self-defense, both inside and outside of one's home, to "reasonable and proportionate force" at a time when the person being attacked "reasonably believes that he or she or another is in imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm" for which deadly force is the only remedy.

From there it becomes a question for jurors to analyze the facts on a case-by-case basis, both senators said.

"We could not, nor should we, try to contemplate every fact scenario and try to write a law to cover every potential circumstance," Jenkins said. "I think our law is clear; it's workable and it is there for the jury to apply."

Local attorney Cheryl L. Henderson disagreed with the two senators. She sided with Holder, explaining her belief that America has become a "gun-toting country." She said Martin's death underscores the wide latitude of such legislation and the potential for someone to shoot if they feel scared.

"That gets to be scary at some point of who's really standing their 'ground,'" she said. "I think it's a scary proposition."

West Virginia's legislation, signed by then Gov. Joe Manchin, was included in statutes pertaining to civil liability, however Kessler and others interviewed said it resembled many years of common law that has been long depended upon in criminal court.

It differs from that of Kentucky and Florida only in that those states use terminology that a person threatened away from home can "stand his or her ground and meet force with force" without a duty to retreat. Seven other states use such wording, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Ohio's version of the law is limited to the person's home and/or vehicle. Unlike West Virginia and Kentucky, the Buckeye State does not extend its no-duty-to-retreat to other areas a person may legally be -- not even a significant other's vehicle. That was the decision of an Ohio appeals court in January that declined to extend the state's Castle Doctrine to a vehicle owned by a convict's girlfriend, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

The Kentucky State Supreme Court is considering a divided, appeals court decision that cited the state's Castle Doctrine in overturning a manslaughter conviction. It stemmed from a bar fight in Newport, Ky., a suburb of Cincinnati. The appeals court ruled, 2-1, that prosecutors didn't present enough evidence to overcome the defendant's claim of self-defense, while the court's lone dissenter argued the state's law needs clarification.

Like West Virginia, the Kentucky and Florida laws limit deadly force to when the threatened person "reasonably believes" such action is necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm.

Cabell County Prosecutor Chris Chiles stands by one's legal right to self-defense, but said such laws can be problematic. That's especially true in a case outside of one's residence, as he and others said a victim attacked at home has no other place to retreat.

Elsewhere, Chiles said it can become very subjective.

"In addition to jurors having to decide is this person telling the truth, is that person telling the truth, is this how it happened -- they also have to get inside the defendant's head," he said. "They have to say, 'A. Did he really believe this? and B. Was it reasonable?'"

Abraham Saad and Rich Weston, two attorneys who have successfully argued local self-defense cases, said state lawmakers should guard against a knee-jerk decision, as did Wendell Searls, father of Saad's client in last week's local verdict.

Saad and his client's father agree that someone threatened should always retreat first and only use deadly force as a last resort, but they said any review by lawmakers should be cautious and done from the perspective of each state.

"They shouldn't be pressured from a political perspective," Saad said. "I think that's oftentimes when bad laws get written is when there is political pressure from above based upon one event."

Weston used the Castle Doctrine in September 2008. That is when he successfully represented a homeless man, who defended himself at Harris Riverfront Park by fatally stabbing an intruder who tried to enter a vehicle where Weston's client had been sleeping.

"Most of the time, decisions made in those types of situations are made on a very, split-second basis," he said. "Bad facts make bad law sometimes."

Huntington Police Capt. Rick Eplin, also a federally licensed firearms dealer, does not believe a nationwide review of self-defense laws is warranted. He said the duty-to-retreat standard has been ambiguous, at times, as far as the distance one should retreat.

Eplin furthermore cited the words "reasonable and proportionate" in West Virginia's statute. He equated such language to the escalation-of-force standard used in training his officers, meaning that deadly force should be a last resort and then the shooter must be able to articulate and explain that imminent danger.

Even B37, who name the defendant by his first name said that the law needed to be changed.

As it is right now in these states with laws like Florida's self defense and stand your ground laws, it is too easy to plead self defense

and too difficult to disprove it.

Rethink such laws" for how long? Bet they forget it by next week!

In the wake of Zimmerman's acquittal, President Barack Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said last week they believe it's time to rethink such laws in regard to incidents that happen outside of a person's home, such as Zimmerman's killing of Martin on Feb. 26, 2012.

In April, more than a month after the shooting of Trayvon Martin, we looked the incidence of justifiable homicides in states with “stand your ground” or “castle doctrine” laws like Florida’s.

In general, such laws grant people more leeway to use lethal force on an attacker. More than 20 were passed after Florida’s in 2005. They typically do at least one of the following:

• Remove a person’s duty to retreat in places outside the home

• Add the presumption that the person who killed in self defense had a reasonable fear of death or harm

• Grant people who killed in self-defense immunity from civil lawsuits

Justifiable homicides nearly doubled from 2000 to 2010, according to the most recent data available, when 326 were reported. The data, provided by federal and state law enforcement agencies, showed a sharp increase in justifiable homicides occurred after 2005, when Florida and 16 other states passed the laws.

While the overall homicide rates in those states stayed relatively flat, the average number of justifiable cases per year increased by more than 50% in the decade’s latter half.

In a new study, an economics professor and a PhD student at Texas A&M University take a broader look at the laws’ effect. The authors, Professor Mark Hoekstra and Cheng Cheng, use state-level crime data from 2000 to 2009 to determine whether the laws deter crime.

The answer, they conclude, is no. In fact, the evidence suggests the laws have led to an increase in homicides.

From the study:

Results indicate that the prospect of facing additional self-defense does not deter crime. Specifically, we find no evidence of deterrence effects on burglary, robbery, or aggravated assault. Moreover, our estimates are sufficiently precise as to rule out meaningful deterrence effects.

In contrast, we find significant evidence that the laws increase homicides. Suggestive but inconclusive evidence indicates that castle doctrine laws increase the narrowly defined category of justifiable homicides by private citizens by 17 to 50 percent, which translates into as many as 50 additional justifiable homicides per year nationally due to castle doctrine. More significantly, we find the laws increase murder and manslaughter by a statistically significant 7 to 9 percent, which translates into an additional 500 to 700 homicides per year nationally across the states that adopted castle doctrine.

Thus, by lowering the expected costs associated with using lethal force, castle doctrine laws induce more of it. This increase in homicides could be due either to the increased use of lethal force in self-defense situations, or to the escalation of violence in otherwise non-lethal conflicts. We suspect that self-defense situations are unlikely to explain all of the increase, as we also find that murder alone is increased by a statistically significant 6 to 11 percent.

As the authors note, the increase in homicides may not be viewed by everyone as “unambiguously bad.” It could be driven by individuals protecting themselves from imminent harm by using lethal force. But it could also be driven by an escalation in violence that, absent the “castle doctrine,” wouldn’t have ended in serious injury for either party, they say.