Friday, March 30, 2012

Trayvon Martin #5: Florida's 'Stand Your Ground" law

Professor Edward Queen is the Director of an ethics program at Emory University.   He wrote about the Florida "Stand Your Ground" law that figures prominently in the Trayvon Martin killing and the way police handled the case initially.    This will be a combination of summaries and quotes from his article:
 ". . . Those who created the conditions for Martin’s killing those who, one might say, invited it were the Florida legislators who voted for a law that undid not only decades of positive law regarding self-defense but also centuries of legal tradition. . . . 

[Such laws] "rip apart the traditional understanding of the legitimate use of deadly force in self-defense and invite people to kill.  Traditionally, the law understood deadly force to be justified in self-protection only when an individual reasonably believed that its use was necessary to prevent imminent and unlawful use of deadly force by the aggressor. Much of the tradition also argued that deadly force, outside of one’s immediate home, was not justified if a nondeadly response, such as retreating to a safe place, would suffice. . . "
Twenty other states have similar laws to the one Florida adopted in 2005.   Before these new laws, most laws governing self-defense killings required one to show that it was reasonable to use deadly force to protect oneself.

Now the new Florida law "expressly presumes" all of this, without requiring reasonable demonstration of the claimed facts.  It "immunizes" the individual from arrest or even being detained in custody.  That's why the police could not arrest Zimmerman and do a thorough investigation. 
 "One can only be shocked at this law’s idiocy. It is, simply, an invitation to kill.

"Under the “stand your ground” law, any liar who kills someone and can concoct a reasonably plausible story cannot be arrested by the police or even taken in for questioning. Lest one think the Martin case is exceptional, justifiable homicide/self-defense claims have tripled since the law’s adoption, . . . "
If there had not been the public outcry and rallying of support, the facts would not have emerged, because the police are prevented from doing their job by this law.   This also increases the likelihood that biases and prejudices among the police officers themselves may easily get hidden behind these laws.
 "In their thoughtless attempts to undo the wisdom of centuries, extremists in the Florida Legislature went out of their way, if not to legalize murder, at least to decriminalize it. Each legislator who supported the law had a hand in Trayvon Martin’s killing and perhaps others.
"With its craven attempt to garner votes by purportedly expanding individuals’ abilities to protect themselves, the Florida Legislature has made all of us targets and each of us a potential victim."
This is very troubling -- yet another very wrong legacy of the gun lobby and the anti-government right wingers who have gained even more power over state legislatures than the federal government.

Ralph

1 comment:

  1. A letter writer in the AJC this morning pointed out that, under Florida's law that allows lethal force to be used if you feel your life threatened, then it's Trayvon Martin who would have been most justified in attacking Zimmerman, rather than the other way around.

    Here he was, unarmed and being stalked by a man with a gun.

    So, if the law protects Zimmerman, it also justifies Martin's attack on him -- if in fact he did attack, one of the points of uncertainty.

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