Stand Your Ground Self Defense Laws Under Ferocious Attack

There’s an awful lot of divergent subjects going on here. The most important one to me is, of course, that this doesn’t become a political football for the Stand Your Ground Self Defense law and intent.

That, of course, would entail that Zimmerman is under investigation for how the event came down. And it *should* be under investigation. The law is for a defense, not active aggression. A teen is dead. A man who seems to be an angel protector to some, but also displays vigilante tendencies shouldn’t escape scrutiny. If that were my child, I’d be all over law enforcement for an investigation.

I’ve not paid much detailed attention to this. Just hoping this doesn’t turn into a reverse-the-mirror “Rosewood” event. Nor does it seem to be black/white as the neighborhood is mixed. Zimmerman is of mixed Hispanic blood. And Sanford itself has 57% white, 30% black and 20% Hispanic denizens. It’s a widely diverse community.

But HR, I listened to the calls on your link above. I’ve only heard one 911 call prior to those, and it was before all this transpired… Zimmerman, himself, making one of his ga’zillion 911 calls. In that, he specifically stated the teen was running away, and the dispatcher clearly told Zimmerman *not* to pursue. Below is the unedited initial 911 call from Zimmerman.

Now all of the sudden there’s calls about a scuffle, screams for help, the gunshot, and Zimmerman supposedly the victim of an attack.

Sorry… this crap don’t add up for me. Martin was running away, not towards Zimmerman. And now, as @Comm0n Sense suggests above, we’re supposed to assume this slender framed teen who was running away turned and attacked a heavy set, aggressive Zimmerman, chasing him, and was on top in the scuffle? Don’t think so. Smells bad for Zimmerman.

@Comm0n Sense, the last 911 call on that link from HR was a woman who said she could see a guy in a white tee shirt on top in the scuffle just before the shooting. But Martin was wearing a dark hoodie, as confirmed by Zimmerman’s own 911 call above, as well as saying that he has “buttons on his shirt”. Call me crazy, but I don’t know the last time tee shirts had buttons.

Would the heavier set guy with the gun be the one yelling for help? Somehow Zimmerman doesn’t strike me as the victim in this confrontation, but the aggressor.

But that’s what the investigation should determine. I’m not only all for an investigation, I find it offensive they’d not consider doing one from the moment after the event.

And why the heck should Mitt, or any other candidate speak out? The only thing that needs to be said, if asked, is that when these instances occur, there should be investigations. Other than that, it’s a matter for Florida. I’m not interested in any candidate weighing in on this issue. And I’m even less interested in what Obama has to say.

But as far as the excerpts Nan G posted… first of all, I don’t care what Zimmerman’s Dad has to say. He wasn’t there.

However INRE that boy walking the dog, and the impression left that the armed and hefty Mr. Zimmerman was being bested by a 140 lb teen, the Miami Herald has more statements from that dog walking kid. And it sure doesn’t sound like the Orlando Sentinel interpretation, as that teen believed it was Martin calling for help.

A neighborhood eighth-grader out walking his dog said his family also called 911.

“I saw someone lying on the ground, and I heard screaming,” said Austin, 13, whose mother asked that his last name not be published. “I don’t know that it was the person on the [ground] who was screaming, but to me it sounded like a kid who was crying. It was a yell for help, and I think it was Trayvon.”

Austin wasn’t sure if the person was in a fight or had slipped and gotten hurt. Austin’s boxer puppy got off the leash so the boy went chasing after the dog and lost sight of the scene for a moment. Then, he heard a gun go off.

He ran home and told his sister to call the police.

The boy, who is black, has been rattled ever since. He feels angry and disconcerted, and wonders whether he’s at risk too.

“That people can stereotype like that makes you scared,” he said.

Austin’s mom said he’s been acting out in school and seems mad all the time.

“My son has a terrible feeling of guilt, because he did not do anything to help. He’s angry,” said Austin’s mother, Cheryl Brown. “They are saying that Trayvon looked suspicious, because he was walking slow. So I guess I have to tell my son “make sure you always run fast.”

Statements from people on the scene right after the shooting?

“I heard someone crying — not boo-hoo crying, but scared or terrified or hurt maybe,” said Mary Cutcher, 31, who lives in the Retreat at Twin Lakes townhome community where the shooting occurred. “To me, it was a child.”

Zimmerman said he tailed Trayvon in a mission to find out if the teen was up to no good. Zimmerman was out to put a stop to recent burglaries. He dialed police — his 46th call since 2001 to report shady people, reckless drivers and other disturbances around his neighborhood.

He offered to follow his suspect, but the dispatcher told him: “We don’t need you to do that.”

Some minutes later, Trayvon was killed with a gun the watch volunteer was licensed to carry.

“This was not self-defense,” Cutcher said. “We heard no fighting, no wrestling, no punching. We heard a boy crying. As soon as the shot went off, it stopped, which tells me it was the child crying. If it had been Zimmerman crying, it wouldn’t have stopped. If you’re hurting, you’re hurting.”

She and her friend say they heard the sounds from a few steps away, where they were inside beside an open window. Seconds later, they dashed out to find a boy face down on the ground and a man standing over him, a foot on each side of the body on the ground, with his hands pinning the shooting victim down.

“I asked him, ‘What’s happening here? What’s going on?’ ” said Cutcher’s friend, Selma Mora Lamilla. “The third time, I was indignant, and he said, ‘just call the police.’ Then I saw him with his hands over his head in the universal sign of: ‘Oh man, I messed up.’ ”

The women, who were the first on the scene, said they saw Zimmerman pacing back and forth.

“I know what I heard. I heard a cry and a shot,” Mora said. “If there was a fight, it did not happen here where the boy was shot. I would have heard it, as this all happened right outside my open window.”

The women think there may well have been a physical altercation between the two, but it must have taken place in a different spot, where Zimmerman perhaps had a chance to compose himself and draw his weapon.

How nice of them to ignore the pleas for help, but show up afterwards to rubberneck…

Lastly, in the Herald article, Zimmerman himself reveals that he ignored the police instructions NOT to pursue, and chased Martin down to interrogate him.

Police have not moved from their official statement of the shooting. But as the controversy grows, so does the number of voices disputing the official version that watch captain George Zimmerman gave to police: that the six-foot, three-inch, 140-pound teen assaulted him when Zimmerman, 28, tried to question him. In fear for his life, he pulled Kel Tek 9mm handgun from his waistband and shot.

All the witnesses seem to agree that they believe the cries for help were not from Zimmerman, but Martin.

I had also read somewhere that Martin’s father’s fiance lived somewhere in that same neighborhood, but haven’t seen that addressed more in depth. Or that could be wrong. Wouldn’t surprise me.

But if all the accounts, combined, prove substantially correct in the investigation, Zimmerman absolutely pursued Martin… perhaps more than once. If they got into a scuffle not at the shooting scene, Martin must have gotten free, ran again, and was again pursued by Zimmerman. I’d say that, if all this evidence bears out, Mr. Zimmerman is going to have to find himself an attorney.

@Keyser Söze, a 6’2″ teen who only weighs 140lb teen is hardly a strapping muscle bound type of guy, as implied in that quote from the Charleston examiner/blogger. If he were on the football team, my guess is that he’d not be on the defensive front line.

Haven’t heard a witness yet that believed it was Zimmerman yelling help. But every bit of this comes down to a simple reality… did Zimmerman aggressively go after Martin, thereby putting the teen in the position to defend himself? Or was it the other way around.

According to Zimmerman’s own accounts, he tracked and confronted Martin.. not the other way around. And perhaps more than once. All against the express instructions of the police.

This means that the Stand Your Ground Self Defense is not applicable in this case. Zimmerman sought the confrontation. It’s far more likely that, had Martin been armed, he would have a better case for self defense.

@Comm0n Sense, I believe that the justified complaint is that, following the incident, it should have been investigated and not ignored… assumed as self-defense.

As I said above, if Zimmerman admits that he chased and confronted Martin instead of following the police instructions not to pursue, the Stand Your Ground Self Defense law is not applicable in this case, IMHO. You cannot provoke someone into a fight, then kill claiming self defense. The fact that Zimmerman admitted doing just that in his reports/accounts to the police should have been the heads up that this didn’t fall under self-defense.

Sanford PD was really off the mark in not doing their investigation at the onset.

@Skook, I think what makes this situation “special” is that the Sanford PD chose not to investigate Martin’s death, and merely accepted Zimmerman’s assertion that it was “self defense”. Considering the guy chased him down, and admitted doing so, that strikes me as questionable right off the bat. Taking into account the text of the law, how could they ignore Zimmerman’s own admitted confrontational account, and assume self defense?

I happen to agree that, if the Sanford PD didn’t plan investigations, they needed to be prodded into it by whatever means possible. It’s too bad that, by not doing what they should have done, they have allowed this to be inflamed into a racial issue.

Let’s even assume the worst of Martin, as some of the not so subtle suggestions have been offered here. What if he was, indeed, a gang member, casing the neighborhood for potential theft. The fact still remains that Zimmerman chased him down for interrogation, merely because he was walking down the public road. He wasn’t snooping in windows, nor intruding on anyone’s private property. He wasn’t carrying stolen goods. Wasn’t armed. Zimmerman’s weak “probable cause” was merely his presence in the neighborhood, and not walking at a pace that he felt was adequate.

That stuff may fly if it’s a law enforcement officer approaching an individual in that circumstance. But no citizen has the right to interrogate someone merely if they are walking down the road. And Zimmerman, himself, admitted that’s all the guy was doing when he called 911. Nothing more. He just decided he may be up to no good, or “on drugs or something”.

Therefore, there was no “self defense” necessity to pursue him. Martin was running away. Zimmerman called it in, and was told not to pursue… then obviously did exactly the opposite. Were that to happen to me, and I couldn’t get away from some nutjob, I’d be fighting back against aggression from a citizen as well.

@Tom: It’s not the idea that maybe this is a really poorly written law if it’s ambiguous enough for Zimmerman to legally hide behind it (that we will see).

Tom, this has nothing to do with it being a “poorly written law”. As a matter of fact, 31 states have some form of “Stand your Ground” laws, passed after Florida did it first in 2005.

What this has to do is the same as any criminal activity… that it may be that someone disobeyed the intent of that law, and that a law enforcement dept dropped the ball in investigating that incident. If a law enforcement agency chooses not to enforce a law and it’s intent as they understand it, based on the information they have, then it’s not the law’s fault… it’s that of the law enforcement agency.

Text of the law does state such Stand Your Ground remedies are not available to the aggressor who initially provokes the use of force, and describes those protected as having “… a reasonable fear of imminent peril of death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another when using defensive force that is intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm to another,”

Zimmerman’s gun was in his waistband, according to his own testimony. Did Martin see that when Zimmerman confronted him, against the dispatchers advice? Obviously he could tell that Zimmerman was not a police officer. Nor had Martin been been engaged in any illegal activity by walking down the street.

The more likely scenario is that Martin may have felt himself in danger of bodily harm from Zimmerman. In that case, had he defended himself and the tables reversed, that same law would have protected Martin.

Tom: I’m not going to get into virtues and vices of specific pundits, but is it your opinion that there’s something wrong with pointing out that it’s highly probable that Trayvon Martin died that night because he’s black, because from Zimmerman’s perspective, he looked “suspicious”, he is one of those who “always get away”? You’d have to be willfully blind not to consider that possibility.

Well, Tom… that’s a stretch into racial issues that really aren’t logical. The neighborhood is already mixed racially, so it’s not like a young black man walking thru Beverly Hills. What seems to be the most obvious from the accounts thus far is that the neighborhood had been experiencing increased robberies. So it’s not that Martin was black – like many of the neighbors – but that he wasn’t a local resident. And Zimmerman considered himself the quintessential neighborhood police captain, altho their neighborhood watch group wasn’t registered.