Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Smiler]

Hell, in my city two days ago there was a rolling shootout that went on for about 2 miles because a guy flashed a gun at another guy, and his defense for starting the shootout was "IF I DIDN'T STOP HIM, WHAT IF THE NEXT GUY HE FLASHED A GUN AT DIDN'T HAVE A GUN?" And people still wonder why it might be a bad idea to let everyone carry their gun in public.

[jsnlxndrlv]

First: civil wrongful death suit.

Reddit is terrible, but I just read this exchange and started wondering:

[–]drhuntzzz 163 points 12 hours ago
Wrongful death suit coming up next...
permalinkparent
[–]Mr_Yeshuite 237 points 11 hours ago
i could be wrong, as i work in law in another state, but i believe that florida law protects you from a civil suit if you succeed with a self defense claim.
permalinkparent
[–]DeuxBoy 186 points 11 hours ago
You are correct. Zimmerman would most likely be granted immunity.

[Mongrel]

Zimmerman is America. He thought he was an action hero coming to save the day, but it turns out he was just an idiot with a gun, and he killed a kid and never denied it and he got away with it.

The greatest country on earth, right?

McClain who? The McClain sisters?

[R^2]

Sounds like something McClain from Talking Time might say.

[TA]

First: civil wrongful death suit.

Reddit is terrible, but I just read this exchange and started wondering:

[–]drhuntzzz 163 points 12 hours ago
Wrongful death suit coming up next...
permalinkparent
[–]Mr_Yeshuite 237 points 11 hours ago
i could be wrong, as i work in law in another state, but i believe that florida law protects you from a civil suit if you succeed with a self defense claim.
permalinkparent
[–]DeuxBoy 186 points 11 hours ago
You are correct. Zimmerman would most likely be granted immunity.

Preeeeetty sure that's bullshit.  I'd like to see a cite other than "a Florida law", since that's not how criminal trials work at all, but I also wouldn't put it past Florida lawmakers to not understand the laws they're writing.

You don't "succeed" a self-defense claim.  The jury finds that the state proved your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and thus finds you guilty, or they find that the state didn't prove your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and finds you not guilty.  They don't enter explanations into the record, and a not guilty finding where you claimed self defense doesn't mean the jury finds that you acted in self defense, and doesn't mean that a jury can't find in a later trial that you wrongfully killed that kid by a preponderance of the evidence.

[Brentai]

The entire purpose of the civil suit system is to pick up where the criminal trial system fails, but like TA said that only matters if the lawmakers themselves understand the law.

[Thad]

Blog post: Robert Zimmerman versus George Zimmerman.

Mark Evanier has a couple good posts on the subject; I've little to add at the moment beyond overwhelming cynicism.  (Sample: Zimmerman WAS innocent under Florida law because he did exactly what the law was designed to protect.)

Not ready to take the rag away from my face.

[Mongrel]

Interestingly, up here even the totally conservative rag paper is describing it as "Trayvon's killer aquitted" (the headline they ran is "NOT GUILTY" but the subtitle pretty well shows that even they're playing it as a miscarriage of justice).

[DestyNova]

Getting gun back.

"All those hateful eyes! I had to put them out because I was afraid of my life! Look! I have them right here in my hands so you can look into them and see the hate!"

[Bal]

Sometimes you wish it was the 60's so civil rights violation charges could be made federally.

[Brentai]

George Zimmerman will get his gun back now that he has been cleared of murder and his lawyer said today that Zimmerman needs the weapon "even more" than before.

No he doesn't, he needs to not fucking go around aggravating any more situa...

He indicated that Zimmerman may file suits against others, however.

"There are a number of events that happened during this case and the way certain people handled it that we may need to hold responsible. We'll see," O'Mara said.

Oookay or maybe he should just go ahead and write out what he wants on his headstone.

[R^2]

Wait wait wait. Zimmerman himself is worried about gun-toting vigilantes out for justice? Really?

[Büge]

Well, yeah. Now that he's been proven how effective Stand Your Ground has been as a defense, some vengeance-seeker could unload a magnum into him and claim they were afraid he was going to attack them.

[Ted Belmont]

If said vengeance-seeker is white, maybe.

[Brentai]

SYG is a red herring.  It never got used in this case.

[Classic]

So, in fact, the way the law is written was already so heinously racist in its implementation that all the SYG laws might have done is skip the trial?

[Ted Belmont]

SYG is a red herring.  It never got used in this case.

Yes and no. It wasn't used by his defense to get the charges dismissed, but it was used in the instructions to the jury:

If George Zimmerman was not engaged in an unlawful activity and was attacked in any place where he had a right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he reasonably believed that it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.(emphasis mine)

[Brentai]

Which ought not be relevant, because George Zimmerman was both engaged in an unlawful activity and in a place where he had no right to be.

[Mongrel]

if Martin was alive, I guarantee you Zimmerman goes to jail for something.

This is probably the truest statement on the subject I've heard all week.

[Büge]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/22/gun-advocates-raising-money-to-buy-new-firearm-for-zimmerman/

:I