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Another Shooting
- Thread starter Dr. Cheese
- Start date
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Waffles and Scotch said:TB needs to add one of those Facebook "like" buttons to the forum...
Oh, it was just what his status read, and I thought it was funny in context.
I also forgot to add this:
;-)
As a gun toting Floridian..who considers himself fairly well versed in the state requirements...
This is a stand your ground state. There is no duty to retreat. Not in your car, not in your house, not on the street. If you can prove threat and convince the powers that be that: "I was in fear of my life", fire until the slide locks open.
As far as proving legitimate fear, it's situational. I for example, have a medical history of full cardiac arrest. I have no internal defibrilator. The chances of me having another arrest are elevated. If someone threatens me physically with nothing more than a garden variety butt whipping...I have a legitimate fear of a resulting cardiac arrest just from the adrenalin dump and elevated heart rate. I will shoot the dookie out of you and get away with it.
A finding of fact on the legitimacy of the threat is also an affirmative defense for all civil litigation resulting from the shooting.
Having said all that, I'm not at all sure how anyone could prove legitimacy of threat and action under the stated circumstance. I'm glad I ain't that guy.
I watched the vid; there was enough bad reporting in that for me to not bother with the article. I don't know what Florida is like with these issues but alleged self defense is a bad argument for this guy; he allegedly used excessive force which would land him in prison. There's no point in speculating until a proper report comes out, though.
- May 30, 2000
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- Creator of: iGigBook Sheet Music Manager
You have to get your "shots" in quick, the scroll rate for OT is pretty quick and we can always revive this zombiewhen more info is available.
That may well have happened, but I still say that if Zimmerman had left him alone, and allowed the police to do their job, as they told Zimmerman, the kid would not be dead. As I said before, Zimmerman strikes me as a wannabe cop, and I suspect he was eager to confront a bad guy. Instead, he follows someone who saw him as a threat.
Heck, I know what it is like to have someone follow you and treat you like a threat when you are guilty of just being yourself. I can't blame the kid for confronting him and asking why he was following him. I have done the same thing myself. The bottom line is that Zimmerman made the situation something that it did not have to be.
As I said in my first post, he may be able to get off legally, but he came up short morally and ethically, IMO.
I also know that feeling and for the most part I agree with you. That doesn't change the fact that the old man was not legally obligated to back down from any confrontation. The guy probably is a wannabe cop and failed to follow directions given to him by the 911 dispatcher, nevertheless, I almost guarantee you that if he was attacked by this teenager, which a little further research suggests he was, he will never be charged.
His moral shortcomings as well as lack of critical thinking skills are however blatantly obvious.
Yep.
I can't blame him, but it's generally a poor decision.
Me too - and almost every time it made the situation worse in some way.
They both did.
If the kid physically attacked him with no more provocation than the guy following him - the kid came up short morally and ethically, as well as legally.
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I keep saying that I will not be surprised if Zimmerman walks, but IMO, he was wrong. He created the confrontation, and believe it or not, young black teens are not obligated to submit to every white man they see. The Fugitive Slave Law of the 1850s is no longer in effect.
The did not know who Zimmerman was or what he wanted. Trayvon Martin was a child from Miami, I'm sure he knew enough about the streets to be prepared to fight off an attacker, and that was Zimmerman appeared to be to him.
Zimmerman bears the burden because he started the situation by not following police instructions. Anything else that happened after that still goes back to Zimmerman disobeying police instructions.
I'm not disagreeing with you Doc. Although the last part of your post here is speculation on your part. Especially when you consider that in all probability the old man did not confront him with any threats like "Give me your money" or anything you would normally expect to hear from an attacker. Probably he said something like, "What are you doing out here at this time of night" or some other rant that one might expect from an overzealous wannabe cop. Which means that the kid was probably pissed off because he was being singled out as suspicious because he was black and decided to confront the old man. Obviously this was a poor decision. He would have been much better off waiting for cops to arrive and then suing the **** out of the old bastard.
911 Dispatcher instructions. Not police instructions. Not illegal.
Immoral/unethical? Definitely.
If Martin attacked attacked Zimmerman physically with no more provocation than being followed -
Illegal? Yep.
Immoral/unethical? Definitely.
So now we're down to weighing the LEVEL of the immoral/unethical actions which both committed. The initiation of force is where the line gets crossed.
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