Posted on 07/14/2013 6:34:00 PM PDT by Hojczyk
One of the great strengths of our federal system is that individual states are allowed to define things like self-defense according to local community standards. In a continental country, a one size fits all legal code couldn't possibly work. People, to state the obvious, are different.Your average Floridian has a far different opinion about guns in society than your average New Yorker. Even issues like personal safety might vary from state to state,
I'm pretty sure if the Zimmerman-Martin incident had occurred in Illinois, a good prosecutor would have convicted George Zimmerman of manslaughter. My understanding is that self defense in Illinois is predicated on the level of force necessary to protect oneself. Since Trayvon Martin did not have a gun, the prosector's argument would be that Zimmerman used an unacceptable level of force to protect himself. And an Illinois jury could easily have seen it that way.
Similarly, I imagine in Texas, or Louisiana, or some other Southern state, Zimmerman would have had a better chance of being acquitted. That's the point that Cohen misses. Florida's self defense statute may be "outlandishly broad" to him but I would imagine to most people in Florida, it sounds about right.
Cohen's rather dramatic interpretation of the facts as we know them - that Zimmerman went "looking for trouble" and that neighborhood watch participants are "vigilantes" - is more evidence of a regional bias at work in the author's writing. Perhaps citizens in New York are more comfortable waiting for police to show up and save their property - or their lives - than in empowering their neighbors to proactively prevent crime. Given the draconian restrictions on guns in New York, that attitude would seem to work for local residents and is an acceptable, if incomprehensible to many, opinion to hold.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
>> In Texas, he never would have even been arrested.
YEP — and that is the *real* purpose of self defense/stand-your-ground/castle doctrine laws.
Not so you can use them to beat a rap in court — but so you never END UP in court because you are never charged with a crime.
Now, to be fair to Florida — Local law enforcement didn’t charge Zimmerman initially because in their (proven correct) judgment he was acting in self defense. And — if Corey or anyone else had convened a grand jury, IMO they would have no-billed the case. It’s only because that satan’s spawn Corey sidestepped grand jury and ginned up a charging document that poor Zimmerman ended up fighting for his life in court. Even liberal Dershowitz realized that Corey’s charging document was a fiction.
Sorry, but regardless of the opinion most people on FR have of California, Zimmerman would probably not have been arrested at all. CA law allows for size differential, experience in fighting and age differences when it comes to self defense. Zimmerman, at the time of the fight, was a lot smaller than Martin and had less experience in fighting(this evidence would have been allowed in CA)than Martin.
I am of an age, 71, where if any person who is significantly younger than I am attacks me(in CA) I can use a gun to defend myself regardless of how the other person is armed.
A lot of our laws were made before the idiotic lefties took over and they still stand.
A few years ago, not many, in Salinas, CA a guy defended himself by shooting someone, the news media picked it up and started the same BS that Zimmerman faced, the local sheriff got on the air and in the new papers and read the riot act to people about self defense and how this was a perfectly legal shooting.
Depends on the county also, many counties, including mine, are bright red, we are just out numbered population wise by the left in the cities.
What an F’ing waste of band width, he should be addressing the criminal behavior of the ObamaFascists, the list is very long and long getting longer.
Hopefully you are right but the whole OJ fiasco left a bad taste in my mouth for California justice.
Beating a head on a sidewalk is assault with a deadly weapon.
I was just reading that in 49 states once a person makes a claim of self defense the prosecution has to disprove the claim “beyond a reasonable doubt”.
The ‘oddball’ state?
Ohio, Which reqauires the self defense claim be proved by “a preponderance of the evidence”.
Of course that’s just ‘the law’ and doesn’t account for local prejudice and superstition or, of course, politics and money.
How many states would have violated his 5th Amendment right to a grand jury? Is there a grand jury in any of the fifty states that would have charge him? When you find that state, district, city, you will possibly find where GZ might have been convicted.
Every state but the Media State.
The trouble with limited intellects with a word processor is that these delusional morons deal in absolutes, based entirely on unsupported assumptions and inferences.
It totally escapes this intellectually handicapped doofus, that in a complex set of circumstances, there can NEVER be a guarantee that there can be a conviction.
That's why our system relies on juries to make that decision, instead of moron columnists.
Hypothetical, thy name is Irrelevant.
But for your fun, I would GUESS no. But I’d preface the guess by saying MOST would except a small few.
Zimmerman would have been convicted in EVERY traditionally blue state, IMHO.
What a load of crap....self defense is exactly that,
SELF DEFENSE. Where you are on some map with arbitrarily
drawn lines has absolutely NOTHING to do with the right
to protect life and limb from violence and criminal action.
Just as the right to infringe on other rights is assumed
to be a geographical variable based on arbitrary factors
this is merely more of the “we will decide what is or is
not a right” bullsh*t.
It was very straightforward self defense. For thousands of years, deadly force has been justified to prevent great bodily injury to oneself or another.
Left wing authoritarians are trying to destroy Freedom itself, and the right to use deadly force in lawful self-defense is a foundational pillar of human Freedom.
Furthermore, when someone is making an argument for self-defense, what is relevant is if they reasonably felt threatened as to loss of life or limb. In other words, if other reasonable people could reach the same conclusion.
Establishing the reasonableness of that state of mind, whether there has been injury sustained by the victim or not, is critical to determining when legitimate exercise of self defense has occurred.
The Zimmerman case easily established the reasonableness of his fear for loss of life or limb. It was 100% legitimate, and, barring judicial misbehavior, that is why GZ would walk away from this charge in almost any venue in America.
At least that's my understanding of self-defense theory and jurisprudence. I know these notions didn't originate in Florida.
Not in crapholes like all of Kali or any city area.
It is very much the same as stand your ground, which means you don't have to wait to be beaten to a pulp or stabbed or shot, before you blow your attacker to kingdom come.
I never leave home unarmed and I always have at least one extra speed loader or ammo clip.
If he were a billionaire.
Yeah pretty much.
I think people in every State are smart enough to know when they are being used buy the Government and will do the right thing and vote the evidence and not the spin........
Not in DC....
Right on. I remember about ten years ago, I went to a call for a robbery in DC - we call it "Robbery-Holdup (Gun)". When we got there, the victim (an Asian guy) was holding the suspect (a black guy) at gunpoint.
It emerged that while the black guy was holding up the Asian guy, the Asian guy grabbed the gun and held the suspect until police arrived. I was there as backup only (it wasn't my "sector"), so I watched in horror as they arrested the Asian guy for Carrying a Pistol Without a License.
Man I hate that city.
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