A-R wrote:http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/24/2 ... a-sad.html
This article is VERY damaging to stand your ground. I'm frankly amazed that some of these crimes were ruled justified, this one especially is unbelievable:
Travesties of the Stand Your Ground kind keep adding up. At mid-afternoon on Aug. 11, 2009, a black Maxima chased a beige Infiniti at harrowing speeds down Old Cutler Road. Other cars veered off the road. One innocent motorist was sideswiped before the Infiniti crashed into a clump of bushes, the rear window blasted out, bullet holes in the trunk, spent cartridges littering the interior.
The driver of the Infiniti, Sujaye E. Henry, 26, was killed, slumped over the steering wheel, two bullet wounds in the shoulder, a third through his left eye socket. Here was a homicide brought on by reckless gunfire on a city street, spawned by a dispute over a drug deal. There was a time when Anthony Gonzalez Jr., 31, aka “White Boy,” a passenger in the pursing Maxima and the gunman who fired the fatal shot, might have faced harsh consequences.
The case never went to trial. Gonzalez, after all, as he fired away from the passenger seat, was acting under the permissive parameters of the Stand Your Ground doctrine.
Read more here:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/24/v ... rylink=cpy" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
A-R, that is devastating. That article is just the beginning of an avalanche if Zimmerman gets off scott-free. There is a fundamental thing that many posters in this forum seem to misunderstand: The more you defend Zimmerman and his actions, the more you endanger your own 2nd Amendment rights and self defense rights. It may
feel right to defend Zimmerman, after all he's a CHL, making him "one of us." By defending Zimmerman, it may
feel as if you're defending 2nd Amd. and self-defense rights. But back to reality, when it comes to practical matters, Zimmerman getting off without penalties will put the Stand Your Ground law in danger in various states, including FL if and when the legislature turns Democratic. Somebody has already posted something about Georgia looking at their laws. This is the type of ammo that the anti-self-defense people can only dream of. There is clearly now a push to reconsider, meaning repeal or weaken, the Stand Your Ground law, and all those coming to the aid of Zimmerman are aiding that push. Congratulations. Your over-zealousness may cost you your own rights.
I think that, despite what some people may fervently believe, the majority of people aren't animated by some over-arching desire to kill Stand Your Ground and make everyone defenseless in the face of violent criminals. I think that most people who are angered by this case simply want justice carried out, and feel that Zimmerman's got a too-fair deal so far. Put me in that camp. I find it amazing that one can get out of his car and pursue an unarmed teenager, triggering a confrontation ending in the teenager's death, and then claim self defense. If that is indeed the purpose of the Stand Your Ground law, then perhaps it does need to be revamped. But I don't think it is. I think it's being misapplied here. Some posters continue to throw out red herrings and talk about this in hypothetical terms as if we didn't know very important facts. We know very important facts. The rules regarding profanity and substituting for profane words on this forum are very strict, so I'll do my best to stay on the right side of the rules and if I stray, Keith, or some other mod, please correct me. On the Sanford PD call, Zimmerman can be heard saying the word "These," followed by an expletive, and then the words "always get away." That tells you all you need to know about the intent and mindset of Zimmerman as he exited his car to go and follow Martin. His mind was already made up for some reason. I don't want to get into racial matters, but those words show that Zimmerman's mind about Martin was already made up without any evidence. In Zimmerman's mind, Martin was one of the expletives who was about to "get away." It wasn't just a random, "Hey that guy's suspicious but he probably didn't do anything" type of thing, listen to the tapes. And then he lied to the police by telling them that he only exited his car to check the street name, when there is an exchange of him on tape telling Sanford PD that he was in fact following Martin upon exiting his car. He can also be heard saying "He [Martin] ran," and "He's running." The fact is that, according to Zimmerman himself, Martin was running away. His self-defense story just doesn't add up. And then on top of everything, the Sanford PD runs a drug/alcohol screen on the teenager's dead body, but not on the shooter. Why in the world not? Isn't it standard procedure to run a drug/alcohol screen on a shooter in a case like this? There have been claims made that Zimmerman sounds a little intoxicated on the tapes, and while at first I didn't hear it, after listening to Zimmerman's call (voicemail) to one of his neighbors who was defending his character in the media, I must say that he [Zimmerman] sounds much more lucid and clear in that voicemail than he does in the Sanford PD call on the night of the shooting. Just some food for thought...
IANAL or LEO. My opinions.
