"Stand your ground!" Love it - only in America!

I really do love American English.  They seem to encapsulate quite complex matters in one neat phrase.  "Stand your ground" is a perfect example.  For those Brits and Euros not familiar with it, let me explain that it has suddenly hit the headlines 'over there' following the shooting to death of a young black man by an armed community cop.  The proper local police investigated the matter and decided that the community cop had no case to answer on the grounds of the fairly recent "Stand your ground" law enacted in Florida and other States.  Needless to say, like just about every law ever written it is mired in a mixture of myth and half-knowledge and misinterpretation. which, of course, instantly confuses the peanut brains in your average news-room!  Over at The Cato @ Liberty site, Walter Olsen explains with great clarity the finer points of this law:

Let’s start with one of the most common misreadings of the law, namely that (in the words of Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne) it sets out a rule of “Feel threatened, just shoot.” Florida law justifies lethal self-defense in a public place only under reasonable belief that force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm.

Belief that’s not reasonable is of no account. No wonder, according to Sentinel reporting, Central Florida police regularly arrest people who try to claim self-defense after committing violent acts, and courts regularly convict them. That’s consistent with the “stand your ground” law.

The best-known provision of “stand your ground” rejects the so-called “duty to retreat.” Under that rule, prosecutors could sometimes overcome an otherwise valid claim of self-defense by arguing that you could have safely fled your attacker.

But — to clear up another misconception — the old duty of retreat would not have put Zimmerman at fault for following Trayvon around the neighborhood. Instead it came into play only when a confrontation had boiled up to a point of imminent violence.

The defence rests, m'Lud!

 Thanks again to Cafe Hyek

 

Comments

[dearieme]

"a point of imminent violence": if it's true that the young thug had already broken the fat chap's nose and was on top of him, banging his head on the ground, then the violence was hardly imminent. Nor was there any question either of retreat or of standing his ground. All-in-all, a more relevant American slogan might be "Never take a knife to a gun fight".

[Hank]

David

Once again you have an irrelevant post.

http://volokh.com/2012/03/27/floridas-self-defense-laws/

The Volokh Conspiracy http://volokh.com/ Is a top notch site on legal issues readable by ordinary people. The point of the post is that self defense law is irrelevant to the case.

A different subject put right up your alley.
http://volokh.com/2012/03/27/aggravated-pimping/

http://eclecticmeanderings.blogspot.com/>Hank’s Eclectic Meanderings

[David Duff]

Hank, this blog positively prides itself on its irrelevance, in fact, the day it ever become relevant I shall pack it in!

'Aggravated pimping' - well at least he stood his ground!