I strongly suggest the law be changed in one significant way.
Presently the decision whether the SYG law applies is made at the administrative level by the district attorney. Therefore it can be reversed and the shooter prosecuted for murder at any time before the Statute of Limitations runs out, which may be never in a “murder” case.
As indeed happened to Mr. Zimmerman.
The law should be changed so that the determination of self-defense is made by a court and is irreversible, so that future attempts at prosecution would constitute double jeopardy. The hearing does not need to be a full-blown trial, just a judicial hearing to establish the facts.
In fact, I suggest such a hearing should be held for every homicide. I believe this used to be common as the Coroner’s Inquest, or something like that.
There also appear to be some peculiarities in how the law is interpreted such that when two men get into a mutual fight, with neither obviously the aggressor or the victim, the survivor gets to claim self-defense, solely because he’s the survivor, and is released from all charges. That’s just wrong, not least because he would have been charged with a crime had the other guy survived. We shouldn’t give people an incentive to finish off their opponent as a Get Out of Jail Free Card. At minimum he should be charged with A&B or negligent homicide.
As anybody who’s ever been around when a bar fight starts, such a situation is not at all uncommon.
I believe that Texas addresses this problem by sending every homicide to a Grand Jury. I believe that if the Grand Jury decides that the homicide was justifiable (or praiseworthy) self defense, it issues “no true bill” and the case is permanently closed.