Lawmakers line up for prosecution, investigations of Zimmerman

[CatWoman]

UPDATE 9, 11:10 a.m. EDT, Tuesday, March 20: Grand jury convened; lawmakers line up for prosecution, investigations

The state attorney for Sanford, Florida, has announced he will convene a grand jury on April 10 to investigate Trayvon Martin's shooting, according to WESH-TV in Orlando. "I share in the desire of the family and the community to accurately collect and evaluate all the facts surrounding the tragic death of Trayvon Martin," prosecutor Norm Wolfinger said in a statement.

Meanwhile, two state legislators who sponsored Florida's "stand your ground" deadly-force law in 2005 called for George Zimmerman to be arrested for shooting Martin. "They got the goods on him. They need to prosecute whoever shot the kid," one of the lawmakers, Republican former Sen. Durell Peaden told the Miami Herald. "He has no protection under my law." His co-sponsor, current Rep. Dennis Baxley (R), told the paper: "There's nothing in this statute that authorizes you to pursue and confront people, particularly if law enforcement has told you to stay put. I don't see why this statute is being challenged in this case. That is to prevent you from being attacked by other people."

Even so, the Democratic state senator from the Miami district where Martin lived, Oscar Braynon, called for legislative hearings on the effectiveness of the "stand your ground" law. "The Legislature needs to take a look at Stand Your Ground," he told the Herald. "This is a perfect case of where it goes awry. This could only be the beginning of more problems down the road. It has unintended consequences. When the Legislature passed this in 2005, I don't think they planned for people who would go out and become vigilantes or be like some weird Batman who would go out and kill little kids like Trayvon."

http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/what-happened-trayvon-martin-explained#grandjury

[seabeyond]

1. I don't think they planned for people who would go out and become vigilantes

Last edited Tue Mar 20, 2012, 01:01 PM - Edit history (1)

or they simply ignored the likelihood. more than enough people argued this is exactly what would happen

[CatWoman]

2. wish I could rec your post

this isn't the wild fucking west

[Aerows]

4. Clearly they didn't plan for it

This is, unfortunately, what happens when the wrong person gets hold of a gun and becomes convinced that they have a right to shoot at will.

[Aerows]

3. I don't see this as a "Stand Your Ground" problem

A nut job toting a gun and trying to act like a police officer is the problem here. The other problem is that he wasn't prosecuted from the beginning. This was a murder, plain and simple, carried out by an individual that obviously has issues. He should have been arrested on the spot.

I don't think it is fair at all to lump every gun owner or every person that "Stood their ground" in the same category as this guy. If anything, maybe at the very least some good can come out of this horrible tragedy by reminding people of the limits they have under the law in "Stand your ground" situations. That's not much, and it's horrible that this young boy was murdered, but at least we are starting a national conversation about what you can and can't do just because you own a fire arm.

There really also needs to be a discussion of what people can and can't do under the guise of "Neighborhood Watch". A Neighborhood Watch should watch - they aren't authorized to run around being a private militia.

[CatWoman]

5. Mike Papantonio is on with Big Ed discussing this

Mike lives in Florida

He says Jeb Bush passed this law simply to get campaign money from the NRA.

There was much testimony and arguments against passing this.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. Mike Papantonio is using this for publicity

I find it pretty tacky on his part.

[madokie]

7. I was wondering where the NRA is

This is the kind of laws they support and try to get passed hoping to stay relevant