Posted on 04/13/2012 6:21:55 AM PDT by marktwain
TAMPA — Trevor Dooley's lawyers say it was an act of self-defense — pulling the trigger kept him alive.
David James was on top of him, hands around Dooley's neck. Dooley couldn't breathe. He tried to warn James by poking him in the leg twice with a handgun.
When it didn't work, Dooley fired.
Lawyers for Dooley, the man accused of killing his Valrico neighbor, submitted their argument Thursday in a motion asking a judge to dismiss the manslaughter charge against him.
Their main defense? Florida's "stand your ground" law.
The law allows a person to use deadly force to save his own life, even if retreat is possible.
The filing comes at a time when national attention is focused on another Florida case in which the "stand your ground" law has been invoked.
More than six weeks after the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, authorities arrested George Zimmerman Wednesday amid public outcry for justice. Charged with second-degree murder, Zimmerman told Sanford police he shot Martin in self-defense after Martin attacked him.
Dooley's lawyers also say the then 69-year-old was protecting himself when he shot James, 41, after a 2010 argument over skateboarding.
According to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, the altercation began when Dooley approached the basketball courts in his Twin Lakes subdivision telling a skateboarder he wasn't allowed. James protested.
Dooley, who had a concealed weapons permit, started to walk away with a gun partially visible in his waistband, deputies said. James called after him and Dooley turned back. James lunged, and they both tumbled to the ground.
James, a 20-year Air Force veteran, was kneeling on top of Dooley when the gun went off.
(Excerpt) Read more at tampabay.com ...
The race-baiters in the Zimmerman case have been loudly proclaiming that the SYG law would never be used to protect a black man who shot a white man.
Well, that is exactly the case here. Got exactly zero coverage. I’m in the Tampa area and hadn’t heard of it.
Of course, the guy is still being tried, he didn’t just walk like Z did at first.
These laws are upsetting the Democrats because it allows decent folk to fight back..
I used to live near Twin Lakes. That was in the late 50’s. It wasn’t very built up back then.
This will be interesting to watch.
So in this case the shooter is black? If so,is the dead guy white..or some other race? It surely doesn't matter...a 40 year old guy assaulting a 70 year old guy? Who can blame the 70 year old for being scared silly...afraid for his life? From what I see here it sounds like the 70 year old acted reasonably under those very dangerous circumstances.
Dead guy is a white veteran. Several kids.
As is usual in these cases, the confrontation was not a case of one person attacking another without cause.
They got into a stupid argument about the old guy telling off kids that were making too much noise or something, and things escalated.
Which is, I think, the major problem with SYG. It more or less assumes there is an easily determined perpetrator and victim. And that is quite often not the case.
In this case neither party chose to retreat and now a man is dead. Does SYG help in some cases give people the illusion that not having the common sense to back down is okay? I don’t know, but it is problematic.
A clear case of one man being the agressor and the older guy being the victim. The white guy didn't have to call to the old man and stop him and he sure as he** didn't have to attack him.
As for the old guys gun escalating the problem that is pure BS, since the young guy is the one who chose to escalate the argument, even after the old guy tried to leave.
Self defense and STG laws do NOT cause these situations, what they do is save someone's a** from being beaten to death by an idiot.
My point is that it doesn’t appear the old guy had an opportunity to retreat.
So the SYG law wouldn’t apply because after the young guy attacked him he had no safe way to retreat. Quite similar to the Zimmerman case, in fact. Can’t really retreat when someone is on top of you.
So the SYG law doesn’t apply because it would have equally been self-defense before SYG was passed.
That said, the “duty to retreat,” at least in principle goes WAY back in English common law. And common law often makes a great deal of common sense. Which is not to say the way modern judges have applied the “duty to retreat” always makes common sense.
Conservatives are supposed to conserve traditions, at least when they make sense. The duty to retreat, or at least the principle, is one of those traditions. Throwing centuries of common sense overboard may have some unintended consequences. Though IMO neither this case nor the Zimmerman case is one, since they are (probably) fully covered under older self-defense provisions.
Were there other witnesses to this confrontation?
Were there visible signs of confrontation, i.e., strangulation marks? (which on an elderly person would be very visible)
Was there an competent investigation by the officers on the scene?
If these all appear as the defense says it is then appropriate force was used.
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