Many killers who go free with Florida 'stand your ground' law have history of violence

[applegrove]

Many killers who go free with Florida 'stand your ground' law have history of violence

By Kameel Stanley and Connie Humburg, Tampa Bay Times Staff Writers

http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/criminal/many-killers-who-go-free-with-florida-stand-your-ground-law-have-history/1241378

"SNIP................................



Maurice Moorer is not the kind of person lawmakers had in mind when they gave Florida the broadest self-defense law in the nation in 2005.

State legislators sold stand your ground as a legal protection for law-abiding Floridians who were forced, through no fault of their own, to defend their family and property.

But the day Moorer killed his ex-wife's boyfriend in 2008 capped two years of violent behavior that had landed Moorer in jail multiple times and left his wife living in fear.


Still, prosecutors set Moorer free, saying Florida's stand your ground law prevented them from pursuing murder charges.


................................SNIP"

[quinnox]

1. its a bonanza for criminals!

Every killer should claim a stand your ground defense in Florida at this point.

[rdharma]

2. I've stopped calling it the 'Stand Your Ground' law......

.... It should be called the 'Shoot First' law or the 'License to Kill' law.

[JeffHead]

14. Someone called into Thom Hartmann recently with this little gem.....

'The Dead Men Tell No Tales' law. That sounds about right.

[rdharma]

15. I agree! "dead men tell no tales" is an appropriate title for the law.

BTW - I like your kitteh "slam dunk" gif!

[Blue_Tires]

32. brilliant

[Crunchy Frog]

18. I call it the "Last Person Standing" law.

[Mariana]

3. If you have any imagination at all

you can figure out various ways to manipulate someone into a situation where you can credibly claim they threatened your life.

[Grammy23]

8. Well, excuse me if I am stating the obvious.....

but I think a fair number of members here think that Zimmerman pretty much "created" the situation with Trayvon Martin and responded with violence when he "feared for his life". In other words, he followed the teen, frightened him enough that he mentioned that he was being followed to his friend on the phone and when he and Zimmerman met, he was just as afraid for his life as Zimmerman. Unfortunately for Trayvon, the option to "stand your ground" apparently only applied to Zimmerman. Trayvon was out of luck....and the laws of the State of Florida agreed.

[Mariana]

10. I'm talking about planning ahead of time

to kill a particular person and get away with it. I don't think Z did that. His was more a crime of opportunity, I guess you could say. I'm talking about the kind if guy in the OP, the guy who wants to kill, say, his ex-wife's boyfriend, and makes plans how he's going to do it, and how to get away with it.

On edit:
The SYG laws make it easy for the Zimmermans, too. They just want to kill a "bad guy" and will do it if they think they can get away with it. I think Z would have just as easily killed a white person if he saw one that he decided was a "bad guy". Of course, Z's a racist, so he was much more likely to go after a black person than a white one.

I bet if Z ever kills another "bad guy" it will be a white man. He's not stupid, and he learned from all this.

[sigmasix]

26. Zimmerman planned to murder someone that night

Zimmerman had been preparing for that night for weeks. Trayvon's death was intentionally planned by Zimmerman. Z spent several weeks leading up to the murder studying the stand your ground law and the ways it can be used to commit murder and gat away with it. When Zimmerman started stalking Trayvon he had no intention of allowing trayvon to escape. That's why Z started to altercation and then pretended to be a victim after Trayvon decided to stand his own ground against a gun-weilding racist. Zimmy's courage stick (his gun) killed a child that night because he wanted to feel the rush of taking another humanbeing's life.

The most telling of all the facts from this case is the fact that zimmy (like all wanna-be cowardly gun owners) started an altercation with a small child, but because of his absolute cowardice the child was able to kick his weak cowardly ass- so Zimmy shot a little boy for fighting back.
I have yeat to meet a Teabagger with one shred of honor or courage. Zimmerman is the posterboy for cowardly right wing murder lust.

Someone said that there is a price on Zimmy's head now. There have been large amounts of indications that support the idea that Georgie wont survive a year on the streets of America.
It's good that there are citizens with enough courage to clean up messes like Zimmerman. I wonder if he'll just be shot in cold blood like trayvon, or hit by a car or poisoned or blown up.
America-loving patriots have their work cut out for them as far as despensing justice to Zimmerman and his hate-filled disgusting racist family. I'm hopeful that zimmerman will find justice from the barrell of a gun of someone that wants to take justice into their own hands. Hopefully that justice involves the forced humiliation of zimmerman upon and after his death -as a child murderer and coward.

[felix_numinous]

4. It's a freaking Wild West law

a fantasy for vigilante cowboy wannabes.

WTF happened to this country, it's like we got invaded by the Taliban/KKK and Nazi warmongers all at once.

[cprise]

11. Everyone wants to be a Superhero or supercop

Looking at American entertainment, people seem to fantasize about it constantly.

[Major Nikon]

30. The Wild West wasn't even that wild

Many towns in the old west had strict gun control laws.

[MisterP]

5. for the SYGers, that's called a résumé nt

[geek tragedy]

6. SYG is a pro-homicide idea. It is backed by the gun lovers because, well, what

good is a gun if you can't kill someone with it?

[billh58]

7. SYG as promoted

by Florida's NRA political puppets is nothing more than legalized vigilantism, KKK style. The big difference is that now they don't need to wear the hoods.

All a Florida CCW holder needs to do to prove their manhood now is to provoke a confrontation, and when they are rightfully getting their cowardly asses kicked, they can legally kill their target. It's open season on hoodie-wearing suspicious people, and other "undesirables" -- all with the blessings (and encouragement) of the Florida judicial system.

[otohara]

9. Florida Loves It's Guns & Getting Away With Murder

Fuck you GOP, ALEC, NRA for making Florida and other states so very dangerous and allowing killers go free.

[AZ Progressive]

12. Talk about endangering the public

These Republicans really want to make America more like feudal times.

[BrainMann1]

13. This a what we need to talk about

but the gun makers will kill it.

[blkmusclmachine]

16. .

.

[Crunchy Frog]

17. This is why any SANE person will stay out of Florida until the law changes.

[Kablooie]

19. Keepimg violent killers on the steet is the whole PURPOSE of the law.

The stand your ground law comes from the gun industry who's whole purpose is to sell guns.
The more violence in the streets and the more innocent people killed, the more guns are sold.

The gun industry WANTS a dangerous, terrified America because that increases their sales so they will do anything they can to increase innocent deaths on the street.

[sigmasix]

27. extreme right wing plans for feudalism

teabaggers, birthers. racists and bigots love this law because it is an important part of the extreme right wing agenda to destroy America and the cohesion we have. Right wing reactionaries want America to fail. Upon that failure they wish to reconstruct a new "america" with no federal government, that consists of feudal war lords with large personal armories and the tyranny of the states.

Why do teabaggers and NRA members hate America so much?

[Rebellious Republican]

20. Folks wake up its not just Florida, 20 states have similar laws!

George Zimmerman just brought the whole discussion to light. Time to start looking in your own back yards. That includes many of the Florida and South based comments I see here at DU. Nothing is going to change if people do not start taking a look at their own communities and quit pointing fingers elsewhere.

In general, such laws grant people more leeway to use lethal force on an attacker. More than 20 were passed after Florida’s in 2005. They typically do at least one of the following:

• Remove a person’s duty to retreat in places outside the home

• Add the presumption that the person who killed in self defense had a reasonable fear of death or harm

• Grant people who killed in self-defense immunity from civil lawsuits

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/06/11/study-says-stand-your-ground-laws-increase-homicides/?mod=e2tw

http://users.humboldt.edu/mstephens/hate/hate_map.html#

[GreenStormCloud]

31. Your second bullet point is incorrect.

You said: • Add the presumption that the person who killed in self defense had a reasonable fear of death or harm That only applies to inside your residence or place of business against those who enter unlawfully by force. Such presumption is never granted outside of those.

Further, there are 30 states that have some form of SYG. In some states it is established by case law, instead of by statute.

You may be interest in this link: http://www.tampabay.com/stand-your-ground-law/fatal-cases

The Tampa Bay Times is attempting to compile a list of all SYG cases in FL with all relevant data on each case. The results can be interesting to both those against and those for SYG.

[Rebellious Republican]

33. You are correct, this was a study based on State Laws or Statutes (pick a term)

Not case law, hence only the 20 states with SYG LAWS. Also those were not my bullet points, they were cut and paste from the article, hence the link to the article. I believe those bullet points were in GENERAL, pooled from the 20 states total with SYG laws, not all individual states would apply.

My point of this post was to remind some folks here at DU, that when they make blanket or uninformed comments maybe they should do a little research on the subject. This problem is not unique to Florida, it is not unique to the south. It is epidemic across this nation.

The Tampa Bay Times, formerly the St. Pete Times is a great paper. I read it regularly, and am glad they filled the void when the Tampa Tribune (conservative rag) went belly up.


Statute, Law and case study definition.....
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/statute

[rpannier]

21. I see we're still waiting for people who thougt this law was a good idea to come and defend it

I'm sure we'll be waiting a lot longer

[Rebellious Republican]

22. Notice how my post to this thread killed it.

Guess people just don't want to deal with the truth. Just want to start flame wars.

[jpak]

23. GOP, NRA, ALEC douchebaggery

yup

[madrchsod]

24. good thing illinois does`t have a stand your ground

the gangs and the racists would have a field day.

[Jerry442]

25. Even those of us who thought SYG was awful are shocked how far and fast things went downhill. nt

[felix_numinous]

28. It's not the SYG law, it's the Wild West law!!

SYG is RW Orweillian nomenclature, which are carefully crafted labels that give the illusion of safety and freedom, but mean the exact opposite.

Stand your ground indicates a defensive posture with no retreat, no other option, against an opposing or overwhelming force threatening your personal space or territory.

But this law is completely skewed towards whites, it has never applied to people of color. So the 'territory' being defended is obvious.

I would be surprised that the true stats of this law being applied to actual defense is anything but nominal. It is a deeply racist and unjust law.

[dusty trails]

29. Not advocating violence, but ...

I don't know why The Crips and the Bloods don't put a bounty on Zimmerman's head.