How Does Stand Your Ground Work?

Hi,

I'm asking around about Stand Your Ground, and I got told to make another thread.

1. Is stand your ground an affirmative defense?
2. Given that malice aforethought has been shown, why is SYG not an affirmative defense from here on in, like everything else (self-defense, insanity, etc).
3. If SYG isn't an affirmative defense, what's stopping me from luring my victim into a private area, killing him, then claiming SYG at the trial - without evidence to the contrary would I not get off scott free?

Thanks guys, all answers are appreciated

 

Apparently it allows to you instigate a fight with anyone you want, and then kill them when you are getting beat up.

 

Beat me to it, but I couldn't have said it better.

 

If you can get 12 people to believe you were in fear for your life, you can legally shoot under stand your ground laws.

The jury in Trayvon's case are all white women, they hold their purses tight when they see young black teens walking in close proximity.

 

This is a general stand-your-ground thread, I'd appreciate it if we discussed it in general terms.

This is not a Trevon/Zimmerman thread. It's a thread about the law itself.

 

It allows you to pack a concealed gun, follow somebody you don't like, bait them into confronting you, and then you get to kill them, claiming self defense. That's pretty much what the law effectively does, for everyone.

 

Perfectly stated.

 

NONSENSE! Nobody has to attack anybody just because someone walked up to them to talk to them. Everyone is free to walk to somebody and talk to them. 100% legal and proper. Only time self-defense comes in to play is if there's an attack. Don't want to get shot ? Don't attack. Got it ?

 

In Florida it means, you can start a fight with a child minding his own business...and when you start losing the fight because you're a fat slob, you can shoot him to death. At least that's what the evidence points to.

 

You left out the part where the former convict, with a history of violence, and an alcohol problem, and presumably mental health issues, otherwise how else do you flunk out of junior college; stalks and harasses a child on a Bluetooth, who chases and tackles him from behind and starts rubbing his erection on him...or a chambered pistol can't tell the difference when the bullets are flying...and puts a bullet in his chest because he's losing a fight he started.

 

FALSE! Nothing Zimmerman did meets the definition of Stalking in Florida (Florida Statute 784.04

I was going to respond to the rest of your post, and then I read the part that shows it does not even deserve the dignity of a response. Nah!!

 

Your parentheses and number 8 is a cool emoticon. And you want to have an intelligent discussion about a man with a violent record and sordid history, who murdered a baby who was praying his mother would come and save him from the bad man? You're a bit too obtuse to dialog with. But I will for the sake of your people. Zimmerman will probably go free but only because the prosecution is going for the wrong charge just so they can get rich and famous.

 

Interestingly, there has been a lot of false propaganda spread about Stand Your Ground in the wake of the Zimmerman case. The opponents all claim that it gives you the right to pick a fight, then kill the person who reacts.

Stand your ground is supposed to be simply the opposite of a duty to retreat law. Under duty to retreat, you are required to use every means possible to leave, escape or run away from an attacker before you use force to defend yourself. Basically if someone comes up to you and hits or stabs you, or if someone breaks into your house and comes after you, you have to try to run away, you may not defend yourself unless you have exhausted all means to flee.

Castle doctrine is the opposite when it comes to home entry. The principle of castle doctrine is that you have the right to defend yourself in your own home. You have no duty to flee from an intruder, you may use force to defend yourself without fear of legal prosecution for doing so.

Stand your ground extends the castle defense to anywhere you are legally allowed to be. If you are standing in the street and a thug attacks you, with stand your ground you can defend yourself, without it you are required to run away.

So, to your questions.
1. is problematic. It is an affirmative defense - you are supposed to prove that you believed your life to be in danger. You don't have to prove that your life was actually in danger, just that you had a reasonable belief that it was. According to Florida case law, the burden of proof still lies on the prosecution. This gets interesting. Basically, the prosecution claims that you murdered someone in the street. You reply that you were just defending yourself and he attacked you. Now the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you weren't just defending yourself. The level of proof doesn't change - it must still be beyond a reasonable doubt. The defense just has to provide doubt.

I'll skip the second because I'm a little unclear on exactly what you mean.

For the third, what is to stop you? That is a good question, and a risk of this kind of legislation. It does favor the survivor of any encounter. So consider the opposite: Without stand your ground, what is to protect you if you are attacked while minding your own business, and end up killing your attacker when you try to fend him off?

So who should be forced to prove their position? In the absence of clear evidence either way (video recordings, eyewitnesses, etc) with whom should the burden of proof for a murder vs. self-defense case lie - with the prosecution or the defense? Should you be forced to prove that you were defending yourself, or should the prosecution be forced to prove that you were attacking this person?

In most criminal law, the burden of proof lies with the prosecution. I don't think it should be any different with any self-defense case - including with stand your ground cases.

 

Oh yeah, right! HA HA HA.

Ludicrous!

 

Good stuff, thanks.

So now I wonder if Zimmerman was in danger, or just losing a fight, against an unarmed kid, that he'd started...presumably because he had a loaded gun and new he could not lose?

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What's the red font for....outrage? How ironic.

 

Well, first, you have to make sure you're white. If you're black, you're SOL.

 

It is an affirmative defense.

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The acquittal rate for blacks is higher then that of whites. That is just some everyone but black people are racist crap.

 

Anyone who can call a dope smoking 17 year old gang banger a baby has not only gone beyond the realm of logic but sanity.

There is thus far way too much leftist stupdity in this thread.

Steady the actual answer to this question is that it varies somehwat from state to state. One of the things you are supposed to be taught in C&C classes is the ins and outs of the local self defense ordinances.

 

Source?

www.salon.com/2013/06/11/stand_your_ground_law_helps_white_defendants_a_lot_more_than_black_ones/

One example that stands out:

Abused black woman shot a WARNING shot and got 20 years. Abuser even admits she was acting in self defense.

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/11/sta..._white_defendants_a_lot_more_than_black_ones/

Not really. Black people can be racist. I never said otherwise. Don't put words in my mouth. You look foolish.

 

Which gang banger?

Is a student who got an F in Criminal Justice, and has a history of beating the (*)(*)(*)(*) out of black woman, to be trusted when they say they were in danger from an unarmed child who was just trying to go home?

 

Gang banger? Um, what? Yes, there is way too much stupidity in this thread, but it is not "leftist." And what does smoking weed have to do with age/maturity or danger level? Talk about stupidity.

 

Oh get real AKR, where'd he get the weed? And a 17 year old is infinitely more dangerous than any baby. Me I'm still waiting for the trial to play out and so far it looks really bad for the prosecution. Their star witness can't get her story straight and the rest of the witnesses contradict each other at every turn. No one should be convicted on the basis of the evidence supplied thus far.

We've got a dead young man, a crime plagued neighborhood which the dead young man may or may not have contributed to the crime and another older man now on trial for apparently defending himself with deadly force, meanwhile another way to look at the police testimony regarding Zimmerman is that the cops simply aren't willing to waste too much time resolving criminal issues in a brown neighborhood. And that may have had as much to do with this as anything either Martin or Zimmerman did.

 

That is what this case comes down to, and what the prosecution has to prove. I honestly don't know what actually happened. I've seen both sides come up with very bizarre conclusions based on what evidence we actually have. I personally think that there isn't enough evidence to convict Zimmerman, but I don't know what evidence will be used or allowed in the trial. We'll have to wait and see what the jury decides.

 

And of course that is why SYG is not a defense in the current case, because you couldn't be more wrong.

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Stand Your Ground means that if threatened you do not, by law, have to back down. For instance, if you are at home and a home invader breaks into your house and threatens you, you can defend yourself, unlike the UK where you are the criminal if you do.

 

SYG simply affirmed the right to self-defense. You can't kill someone in self defense "with malice afore thought."

SYG or not, any kind of antagonizing (to include verbal or 'tailing') is not sufficient to warrant a vicious attack on another person. This is what baffles me about this case. As far as I can see, both parties made mistakes, but the defenders of Trayvon seem think he is absolved of ALL blame because he was being followed. So if I'm on the streets being followed by a reporter, or anyone else who didn't show violent intent, I would somehow be in the right to beat the living hell out of them?

Liberals don't really believe this. This is just sheer hypocrisy.