Free Republic

Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, testified on Capitol Hill Tuesday that “stand your ground” laws must be reviewed and amended. “It’s unfortunate what has happened with Trayvon, and that’s why I feel like it’s so important for me to be here so that you all can at least put a face with what has happened with this tragedy,” Fulton said at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing. “I just wanted to come here to talk to you for a moment to let you know how important it is that we amend this ‘stand your ground’ because it did not,...

A 43-year-old father of three has been charged with murder after shooting a rape suspect on his property in New York. Many are hailing David Carlson has a hero for protecting his family and stopping a rape victim on the loose whom the police were chasing at the time, but because the state of NY does not have a Stand Your Ground law, Carlson has been charged with murder instead of being thanked by the police department. The accused rapist, Norris Acosta-Sanchez, was on the run from police in Carlson’s community. He was found to be living in an abandoned...

FULL TITLE: South Carolina man who shot unarmed teenager dead will NOT face trial under controversial Stand Your Ground law A South Carolina mother has spoken out in shock after it was announced on Friday that the man who shot dead her 17-year-old son will not be tried for his murder because of the state's 'Stand Your Ground Law'. In April 2010, Shannon Anthony Scott, who was then 33, opened fire on a SUV full of teenage girls outside his home in Columbia and unintentionally hit unarmed 17-year-old Darrell Andre Niles in his car, killing him. Despite being arrested and...

A North Miami-Dade man was justified in fatally shooting a pipe-wielding, drug-addled attacker during a wild confrontation on a sidewalk four years ago, a judge has ruled. The first-degree murder charge against Luis Martinez, 29, was dismissed late last month. It was the fourth Miami-Dade murder case dismissed by a judge since the 2005 passage of Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground law. The law eliminated a citizen’s duty to retreat before using deadly force to counter a deadly threat. The law also gave judges greater leeway in granting “immunity” to people deemed to have acted in self-defense. The state’s Stand...

Some Ohio lawmakers want to modify the state’s concealed-weapons law by vastly expanding the circumstances in which a person has no duty to retreat before using lethal force in self-defense. Such a “stand your ground” law is unnecessary. Worse, it would increase the danger of gun violence — something this state and its cities hardly need. City councils in several Ohio communities, including Toledo, Akron, Dayton, and Cincinnati, formally oppose the proposed bill. Members of the Ohio Student Association also have protested it. Current Ohio law states that people need not retreat in their residence, their vehicle, or the vehicle...

Stand Your Ground

In the midst of divorce proceedings against husband George Zimmerman, Shellie Zimmerman said she has doubts about what really happened in the shooting death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin last year, she told Matt Lauer in an exclusive interview. "I'm conflicted on that,'' Shellie told Lauer on TODAY Thursday. "I believe the evidence, but this revelation in my life has really helped me take the blinders off and start to see things differently." Lauer pressed further, asking, "So you now doubt his innocence, at least the fact that he was acting in self-defense on the night that Trayvon Martin was...

The Dream Defenders are taking their message to the floor of the United Nations. The group, which is against Florida’s “stand your ground” law and formed in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s death, submitted an eight-page shadow report Friday to the U.N. Human Rights Committee answering questions the committee raised as to whether stand your ground violates the United States’ civil rights obligations. The group has gained momentum since the July acquittal of George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin case. They initiated a 31-day occupation of the Capitol building in Tallahassee to pressure members of the Florida House of Representatives...

A French store keeper is charged with murder after shooting an assailant. The episode has sparked widespread outrage in the country. Many are critical fo the socialist government for being too lax.

Youth United for Change members are used to rallying against injustices in public education. In July, group members took hold of a somewhat different cause when they traveled to Tallahassee, Fla., to protest alongside members of a Florida activist group against the controversial verdict in the George Zimmerman trial, and fight for passage of a package of bills called the Trayvon Martin Civil Rights Act. Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch coordinator, was acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges for the killing of the unarmed 17-year-old Martin. The bills, also called Trayvon’s Law, were developed by the Dream Defenders, an organization...

Since George Zimmerman’s exoneration, Stand Your Ground laws have been under attack. President Obama injected race into the discussion by referring to the “pain” the black community feels over the Zimmerman verdict, and by claiming that the outcome would have been different had Trayvon Martin been white. Speaking at the NAACP convention, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder claimed Stand Your Ground laws “undermine public safety” and “sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhoods.” Both want these enhanced self-defense laws “reviewed.” (Read: “repealed.”) This rhetoric culminated in state Representative Alan Williams sponsoring a bill to repeal Florida’s Stand Your Ground.Wildly misleading...

I write this letter intending no disrespect concerning other comments about the Zimmerman trial or self-defense laws including Stand Your Ground. But, as Mr. Grossman correctly noted to his credit, these issues are being hotly debated and he invited further discussion. Other Longboat Key News readers seem to agree. The merit of such discussion, however, requires some correction of misunderstandings or inaccuracies. With all due respect, it cannot reasonably be claimed or implied that the man with the gun has all the rights and no responsibilities; that self-defense rights are not subject to restraints; that Zimmerman’s self-defense right was altered...

Attorneys for a Titusville man accused of shooting three people during a neighborhood feud say the charges against him should be dismissed under Florida's "stand your ground" law. William T. Woodward's attorneys say he'd been the target of threats and was exercising his right under the state's law to defend himself on Sept. 3, 2012.

First of a series: In addition to the several columns already published here, over the next few weeks, in a special series The Black Star News will review the George Zimmerman case to analyze what happened and to question: why did this killer of Trayvon Martin escape justice in Florida? Was the case against Mr. Zimmerman doomed from the time Florida’s Stand Your Ground law was invoked—especially, since the victim was an African-American who fits the profile of those deemed "the usual suspect" criminals? To begin analyzing this case, let’s first go back to the awful night of February 26,...

Times like these test the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s powerful pronouncement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Trayvon Martin’s shooting death by George Zimmerman’s gun, the difficulty with which he was brought to trial and his subsequent acquittal on all charges have justifiably generated a maelstrom of anger and confusion. These events clearly constitute a deep miscarriage of justice. What is less clear is whether this miscarriage operates only in an especially unmistakable corner of the realm of immorality, a place which is deeply unsatisfying for its formal unenforceability. The public...

Domino’s employee Bryon Park, 54, had just returned to his vehicle after delivering a pizza to a room in a Days Inn motel in West Melbourne, Fla., about midnight Friday when Fredrick Lorenza Kelly Jr., 32, approached him with a large knife, the Brevard Times reports. Kelly allegedly threatened to kill Park if he didn’t hand over money. A police official reports Park grabbed a gun he carries in his vehicle and fired once toward Kelly, who was later pronounced dead at the scene, the Times reports. “Preliminary evidence in the case demonstrates that the intended victim of the...

An overwhelming number of Florida legislators have rejected a call for a special session to repeal the state's "stand your ground" law. The Department of State on Tuesday released a final tally. It showed 108 legislators voted against the special session while 47 voted for it. Four legislators didn't vote.... The vote was split largely along partisan lines. Seven Democrats joined with Republicans in voting no.

As a resident of Florida, I had the strange experience of hearing fairly accurate, or at least un-embellished, reports of the Trayvon Martin incident for a day or two before the national media B.S. steamroller got moving – transforming George Zimmerman into a white (later “white Hispanic”) gun nut from a posh “gated community” who hunted down an apple-cheeked 12-year-old black boy and murdered him for sport. There’s no big mystery behind why the national media got so much of this story wrong. They tend to reflexively believe stories that fit into their pre-fabricated narratives, and they accept reports from...

Weeks have passed since George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin in mid-July, but a group of young activists known as the Dream Defenders only recently ended their occupation of the state capitol building in Tallahassee, where they called for a special session of the legislature to repeal Florida's so-called "stand your ground" (SYG) law, confront racial profiling, and end the school-to-prison pipeline. They were right to do so for four main reasons: •the "stand your ground" law is badly flawed, and the evidence is overwhelming; •it was directly implicated in Zimmerman's acquittal, even though Zimmerman's lawyers did not...

With the Trayvon Martin shooting still fresh in their minds, opponents of an effort to make Ohio the newest “stand your ground” state are circulating petitions and preparing for a fight when state lawmakers return. Members of the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus have been hosting rallies and circulating petitions at churches and businesses, looking to create grassroots opposition to House Bill 203, a gun bill that includes a “stand your ground” provision. County prosecutors and a variety of law-enforcement groups also oppose the provision, which would eliminate an Ohio law requiring a person to retreat before using deadly force in...