Another 'stand your ground' case? Florida shooting suspect claims he was attacked

Orlando Sentinel ^

[TigerClaws]

ORLANDO — The gunman accused of chasing and killing a 21-year-old man at an Orlando apartment complex Thursday told police he was pursuing a suspected burglar and acted in self-defense after he was attacked.

[SoFloFreeper]

...okay, check the race of each person in the episode. This will tell you whether or not the Obama buttlickers in the media will care.

[a fool in paradise]

“Another”?

Name the first one.

That wasn’t George Zimmerman’s defense.

So far it hasn’t been the theater shooter’s defense either.

[basil]

Thanks for the explanation….

[zencycler]

This line from the story caught my attention:

And Smith, unlike Zimmerman, reportedly admitted to physically restraining the person he suspected at gunpoint.

Hmmmm - so it would seem that the author wants to imply that Zimmerman actually did this too, but just never revealed or admitted to it.

The accurate and unbiased way to contrast these cases, with regard to this point, would be to write:

And certainly one factor here, which was not present in Zimmerman's case, will be Smith's reported admission that he physically restrained the person he suspected at gunpoint.

[yuleeyahoo]

Marissa Alexander, and I believe Michael Dunn may be pleading Stand your ground.

[zencycler]

If you're chasing it's hard to claim you're standing your ground.

Hard, but not impossible. This case, and any possibility of either straight self-defense and or SYG will turn on whether he had probable cause to pursue, and then what happened when he caught up with the suspect.

I guess the legal question boils down to this - if he had a good reason to want the police called to investigate a person, then is he allowed to attempt to use reasonable physical force to try to detain him, AND, when the suspect subsequently resists those efforts, then can a reasonable fear of imminent harm that follows that resistance be used as the basis for either a self-defense or SYG claim?

If so, then I would think that drawing his weapon and firing is defensible as long as the suspect is relatively nearby, even if after he drew his weapon the suspect turned and began to run before the shots were fired, since the shooter would not be under any obligation to hope that he would continue running, and not either turn and fire any weapon he might possess or again try to make a go for his gun.

[basil]

Thanks for the explanation-—I hadn’t really thought it through, I suppose.

[PowderMonkey]

Understandable. Luckily, the store owner was able to articulate reasonable fear of getting severely injured or killed by the oversized perp in a life and death struggle during armed robbery. Given any other circumstances, a shooter might not fare too well in court.