Stand Your What Now?
Okay, this just doesn't make any sense to me. Could someone please explain why claiming self-defense under Florida's Stand Your Ground law prevents someone from even being charged? Doesn't it make more sense that you go to trial for second-degree murder, and if it is then found to have been in self-defense, then you are acquitted?
Frankly I think ( Read more... )
Frankly I think ( Read more... )
Your friend does help to illutrate the thinking behind the implementation of such a law, but I still just can't see how someone gets off scott-free, without even an investigation to determine whether or not, in fact, it actually was a life-or-death-I-had-to-protect-myself situation. I mean, it's like mowing down someone on a crosswalk, and the driver going "But the light was green and they just stepped out in front of me," and the cops going "Oh okay then" without so much as checking to see if it was! Or if the driver was impaired, or had any history of mowing people down at crosswalks, or was allowed to drive at night, or was wearing (or required!) corrective lenses, or anything. The killer, the causer of the accident, said the light was green and they were not at fault. How does a law that goes "Good enough!" and simply takes someone at their word when they've just killed someone even get passed?!
I suspect that this may be one of those very great cultural divides that are not immediately apparent between our countries. I mean, we're exactly the same, right? Canada is just like the US, only smaller and stupider or something. We wear more flannel and have better beer. Except of course underneath our cultures and attitudes are completely different, to the point that when something like this comes up, and especially when I hear that virtually the same law exists in something like fourteen other states (which means it's not just Florida being nuts, not that they don't seem to have started the crazy), all I can do is stare blankly and ask, "What have you been smoking?" Except, you know with a far higher level of incomprehension and condemnation than that, because, dudes, WTF.
It's the "We can't even investigate under this law, let alone prosecute" part that just... dudes. You REALLY didn't think through the implications of that one, did you? It was just all, "Whoa, no, some guy comes at me with a knife, it's my right as an AMERICAN to fucking shoot his ass! Why the hell should I have to back off or what? HE'S coming at ME. Fuck that shit." Wasn't it?
And now some unarmed, innocuous kid is dead, and we can't even find out the truth of what happened in a court of law, because, whoa, self-defense. And his KILLER says so so it MUST be true. >
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-trayvon-federal-20120329,0,7398798.story
Also: Grand jury to probe Trayvon Martin killing
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/19/2703029/us-department-of-justice-fbi-and.html
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er .. not the best link but:
http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2012/mar/26/christopher-l-smith/sen-chris-smith-claimed-deaths-due-self-defense-fl/
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Perhaps this poor guy's death may end up being for some good in the end after all. I doubt that's a very great consolation to his family, but it may be something. And perhaps they may, in the end, see his murderer in jail.
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