George Zimmerman

[Paint_It_Black]

One of the stories I linked to included a drug dealer who killed two people and was not even *charged* with homicide because he plead SYG and prosecutors accepted it

Yeah, that was one of the main reasons I concluded that law enforcement, prosecutors and judges all need to get on the same page with this or else scrap the concept of SYG providing immunity from prosecution and just take every case remotely like this to a trial by jury.

I can't help but feel that such instances are proof that the law (at the very least) needs to be reexamined.

Completely agree.

The way I see it, if someone deliberately tries to abuse the law to their personal gain, and they succeed, then that's an example of a law with a loophole that can be abused. And that is a bad thing.

It is a bad thing. But if you throw out every law with the potential to be abused you're going to be throwing out approximately all the laws. Let's move away from killing for a moment. What if I decided I wanted to get you sent to prison for rape? All I'd have to do is get someone to consensually have sex with you then claim it was non-consensual. People get falsely accused of rape all the time. People have served years in prison before being exonerated. Should we discard all laws prohibiting rape? People have been framed for murder too. Should laws prohibiting murder be abolished? Yes, the abuse of the law is a bad thing. Nobody is going to disagree with that. But I hope we can also all agree that throwing out all laws open to abuse is not a practical solution. Maybe SYG does need to go, but simply showing it is open to abuse is not a good enough reason on its own unless you're willing to discard every single law that has ever been abused.

[Static_Martyr]

It is a bad thing. But if you throw out every law with the potential to be abused you're going to be throwing out approximately all the laws.

Thing is, I never said I support throwing out every law with the potential to be abused; I support throwing this one out because I think it's redundant AND because it has the potential to be abused (it obviously wasn't very well thought-out when it was passed, in any case, which says to me that they (A) didn't have a clear idea of what problem the bill was meant to solve; (B) didn't have a clear idea on how to solve those problems, and (C) had no idea how to properly, definitively implement the law in any case; in the event that all of those are true, I'd say it's an unnecessary law, since the reason for its implementation isn't even certain).

Let's move away from killing for a moment. What if I decided I wanted to get you sent to prison for rape? All I'd have to do is get someone to consensually have sex with you then claim it was non-consensual. People get falsely accused of rape all the time. People have served years in prison before being exonerated. Should we discard all laws prohibiting rape?

That analogy would be more correct if I were arguing that we should abolish all self-defense laws, which I am not doing. I am arguing against one specific law. If there were a law saying that a woman could kill a man because she felt like he might rape her at some point (but had no clear reason to believe so), then I would be opposed to that law, as well.

People have been framed for murder too. Should laws prohibiting murder be abolished?

This analogy would also be more correct if I were saying that self-defense in itself should be illegal, which I am also not arguing. What I am arguing is that we already have self-defense laws on the books; it's already legal to defend yourself in the instance of a violent crime staged against you, and you're even justified in using force (sometimes even deadly force) if your life was in danger and you had no way to guarantee escape to safety -- remember, Zimmerman got off scott free, and he didn't even claim SYG as part of his final defense; the law was wholly unnecessary. Given that, this law is simply redundant.

Yes, the abuse of the law is a bad thing. Nobody is going to disagree with that. But I hope we can also all agree that throwing out all laws open to abuse is not a practical solution. Maybe SYG does need to go, but simply showing it is open to abuse is not a good enough reason on its own unless you're willing to discard every single law that has ever been abused.

It's open to abuse, and it doesn't have to be. No law is perfect, obviously, but when there is a clear loophole (or loopholes) that allows a law to be exploited, it at least bears close examination. That said, it's also redundant, which is reason enough in itself for me to declare it unnecessary -- it's like those Arizona laws that allow police to stop and search anyone who "looks like an illegal immigrant," even if they have no other reason to search them. It's already illegal to be an undocumented immigrant in Arizona; more laws that abridge the freedom of law-abiding citizens just in the interest of cracking down on people who are breaking the law is a bad thing, in my opinion; it's trading liberty for security.

[Static_Martyr]

PS Also, the more I read about the Zimmerman case, the more I realize that SYG *was* relevant to the final ruling; even though Zimmerman's attorneys never specifically invoked the law in their defense (they actually made a point to NOT use it), the judge's final instructions sent out to the jury prior to their deliberation included an endorsement of the law's main provision, effectively determining that in Florida, SYG is assumed to be implied in all such cases by default:

"If George Zimmerman was not engaged in an unlawful activity and was attacked in anyplace where he had a right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he reasonably believed that it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony."

--Debra S. Nelson, Circuit Judge

This order is taken straight from the raw text of provision 3 of the SYG legislation, which reads:

A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

[calichix]

Telling someone you don't need them to do something, and telling them NOT to do something are very different things.

the former is how someone whose job it is to politely operate a police telephone line would phrase the latter. this argument is fucking stupid.



tonight this fool followed me home 10 blocks from walgreens saying "I'll pay you to answer 5 questions. come here. I GO TO UT." when I started running to a gas station he started to run too and yelled "I'm not trying to creep you out!!!!" there are bajillions of skeelos in this world trying to get their rape on, and their fight on, and their murder on and lurkers need to be sensitive to that, and anticipate getting their ass kicked from time to time for being a lurky creepyass. who gets butthurt when they act creepy and murdery and rapey as fuck and the victim of their lurkery retaliates? racists, perverts, murderers... duh. that's why they do it!

[Llamas]

It is a bad thing. But if you throw out every law with the potential to be abused you're going to be throwing out approximately all the laws. Let's move away from killing for a moment. What if I decided I wanted to get you sent to prison for rape? All I'd have to do is get someone to consensually have sex with you then claim it was non-consensual. People get falsely accused of rape all the time. People have served years in prison before being exonerated. Should we discard all laws prohibiting rape? People have been framed for murder too. Should laws prohibiting murder be abolished? Yes, the abuse of the law is a bad thing. Nobody is going to disagree with that. But I hope we can also all agree that throwing out all laws open to abuse is not a practical solution. Maybe SYG does need to go, but simply showing it is open to abuse is not a good enough reason on its own unless you're willing to discard every single law that has ever been abused.

This is a really good point. Stand Your Ground can be abused, but rape laws and affirmative action laws are also easily abused. I still don't really agree with Stand Your Ground nor the Castle Doctrine, but for different reasons. The fact that a law can be abused it not a good reason to be against it.

[Static_Martyr]

The fact that a law can be abused it not a good reason to be against it.

The fact that a law can be abused because its criteria are so poorly-defined that it can be used to prosecute almost anyone in a particular type of situation, however, is a very good reason to be against it. I would say, "Need I show you examples of how differently this law is applied, depending on who is being tried and for what?", but I already have, and I've got better things to do today than write reference notes for an Offspring.com post.