Even if the stand your ground law doesn’t seem to apply, is there any downside for Zimmerman seeking to have the SYG hearing?
That’s a good question, but I suspect that it is a Catch-22.
That is, “Stand Your Ground” is a peculiarity as a law, because it is not describing a crime, but a defense to what could be described as a crime, but shouldn’t be.
But the only way you might be able to use this defense is under the situations written into the law itself.
SYG was created not as a stand-alone law, but to fill a loophole in the much more comprehensive laws of “self defense.”
That loophole was that “if you could retreat, you should retreat, and can be punished if you defend instead of retreat”. So SYG says, “if you could retreat, you don’t have to retreat, and can defend yourself where you stand.”
But in Zimmerman’s case, he could *not* retreat, because he was punched, knocked down, pinned to the ground, and in a life or death struggle. Thus, it was purely self defense, and would have been legal even before SYG was written, going back to long before the United States existed.
That is, it would never have come under the SYG loophole, so it would have never needed the SYG defense.
*But*, because of that, and this is the zinger, he may not have the SYG hearing *available* to him! That is, the SYG hearing may only be available to those who are caught in an SYG situation.
Had he shot Martin as Martin was charging him, he could invoke the SYG hearing. But after Martin punched him, knocked him down, and was straddling him trying to kill him, any SYG argument was superfluous. He was desperately trying to save his life in pure self-defense, long recognized by the courts as legitimate.
And because of this, he might not be permitted an SYG hearing. And likewise, he may be vulnerable to a wrongful death lawsuit.