Posted on 05/26/2010 12:18:36 PM PDT by neverdem
Self-defense is a fundamental human right. An individual who cannot protect his personal safety or his property — who must rely on someone else for protection — is not truly free.
That concept is embodied by Florida’s “stand your ground law,” which states that “a person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”
Alas, the world isn’t neatly divided into sinners and saints, and some Floridians who lack halos have attempted to use the 2005 law to justify their violent acts. These gray areas can be frustrating, even morally repugnant. But they should not be used to eliminate “stand your ground.”
Last week, a Leon County Circuit Court judge ruled that two of three men charged in the 2008 killing of a 15-year-old boy are immune from prosecution under “stand your ground.” He found that they were acting in self-defense during a shootout that resulted in the boy’s death.
Some of the men involved are members of rival gangs, and they allegedly engaged in a shootout at a restaurant minutes before the fatal shooting. Prosecutors had alleged that two men, Jeffrey Brown and Andrae Tyler, went to a housing complex and confronted Michael Jackson and Jamal Taylor, who Brown and Tyler claim fired on them first. Tyler responded by breaking out an AK-47 and firing into Taylor’s truck. Jackson, 15, was struck in the face and killed.
Did the judge correctly apply the “stand your ground” statute? Brown and Tyler aren’t exactly the types of “victims” the law envisioned, which is that of a law-abiding person attacked in a public setting — think a mugging or an assault. Perhaps there’s a loophole in “stand your ground” that needs to be closed to prevent gang-bangers from settling scores with rivals on self-defense grounds.
However, “that stinking law,” as State Attorney Willie Meggs called it in response to the judge’s ruling, should not be repealed. The right of self-defense cannot be surrendered to thugs based on a few hard cases.
The alternative is to place the burden on victims to yield control of public spaces when challenged. That’s tantamount to giving criminals the freedom to bully law-abiding citizens. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that there is no duty to retreat from anywhere that a victim has a right to be.
“Duty to retreat” also puts law-enforcement officials in the position of determining if a person who did defend himself had a reasonable means of escape. That requires second guesses of decisions often made in split seconds and at considerable personal risk.
In a landmark case upholding the right of self-defense, Brown v. United States (1921), Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote that “[d]etached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.”
Armed self-defense is a civil right that cannot be sacrificed.
I suspect that the judge is attempting to discredit the law. I seems as though everyone involved was out looking for trouble.
“These gray areas can be frustrating” Life is full of “gray areas”. If the law tries to solve all those problems, they become the problem.
"You've got to have a thick skin. But I can't imagine any other career path," said Meggs, who was first elected state attorney in 1985. He is a Democrat, as are almost all elected politicians in Leon County, but conservative. He does not recall ever voting for a Democratic presidential candidate.
First thought: Wow... Michael Jackson died... again.
On a more serious note: isn’t gang-related activity covered by the three-strikes law in Florida? I was under the impression that the law only applied to the home and automobile.
My first read has this as a poor decision by an activist judge.
There does seem to be a suspicious intent to make the law seem absurd, rendering it useless where it is most needed.
Where are our "LEADERS" who should be up to speed and working to defeat this crap?
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