The law, called Stand Your Ground, is one of 21 such laws around the
country, many of them passed within the last few years. In Florida, it
was pushed heavily by the National Rifle Association but opposed
vigorously by law enforcement officers.
It gives the benefit of the doubt to a person who claims self-defense,
regardless of whether the killing takes place on a street, in a car or
in a bar — not just in one’s home, the standard cited in more
restrictive laws. In Florida, if people believe that they are in
imminent danger of being killed or badly injured, they do not have to
retreat, even if it would seem reasonable to do so. They have the right
to “stand their ground” and protect themselves.
Trayvon Martin George Zimmerman
Mr. Zimmerman was on neighborhood watch three weeks ago when he fatally shot Trayvon.
That is precisely the question in the case: Was the gunman, George
Zimmerman, 28, a white Hispanic crime watch volunteer in Sanford, Fla.,
in imminent danger and acting in self-defense during his encounter with
Trayvon Martin, as he asserts?
In the three weeks since Trayvon, 17, a well-liked high school student
from Miami with no criminal record, was killed, public protests have
grown larger and louder, and so have calls for Mr. Zimmerman’s arrest.
The Police Department in Sanford, near Orlando, said that under the law,
it had no call to bring charges.
But late Monday, the Department of Justice said it had opened an inquiry
into the shooting. It will run parallel with one announced on Tuesday
by the state attorney in Seminole County, who said a grand jury would be
convened. State attorneys use grand juries in cases when they cannot
make a clear independent call, or when a case is explosive.
In recent days, Trayvon’s parents, Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, have
issued pleas for police officials to take action, and social media
campaigns, chiefly on the Web site
change.org., have pushed for the justice system to act. Celebrities like Spike Lee and John Legend have joined the effort.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, who is coming to Sanford for a rally this week,
said he was planning to raise awareness on the law, which he said
encourages vigilante justice.
“People can’t take the law in their own hands,” he said.
On Tuesday evening in Sanford, hundreds gathered along the wooden pews
and red carpeted floors of the Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church as community
leaders and residents gave testimonials of police harassment and
listened to N.A.A.C.P. officials criticize the law. The spirited crowd
called for the arrest of Mr. Zimmerman and the ouster of Sanford’s
police chief.
“The line has been drawn in the sand,” said Turner Clayton, head of the Seminole County N.A.A.C.P. office.
A lawyer for Trayvon’s parents, Benjamin Crump, said at a news
conference on Tuesday that Trayvon was speaking to his girlfriend on his
cellphone minutes before he was shot, telling her that a man was
following him as he walked home.
Trayvon told his girlfriend he was being confronted, Mr. Crump said. She
told him to run, and he said he would “walk fast.” Trayvon was headed
to the home of his father’s girlfriend after a visit to a convenience
store, carrying Skittles and a can of iced tea.
Trayvon asked, “Why are you following me?” Mr. Crump said. The girl then
heard a faraway voice ask, “What are you doing around here?” Mr. Crump
added. Then Trayvon’s voice falls away.
“She completely blows Zimmerman’s self-defense claim out of the water,” Mr. Crump said.
Mr. Zimmerman had reported a “suspicious” person to 911 shortly before
the encounter, saying a black male was checking out the houses and
staring at him. Mr. Zimmerman, a criminal justice major, often patrolled
the neighborhood. He had placed 46 calls to 911 in eight years, for
reports including open windows and suspicious people.
In the 911 call, Mr. Zimmerman, using an expletive and speaking of
Trayvon, said they “always get away.” The 911 dispatcher told him not to
get out of the car and said the police were on their way. Mr. Zimmerman
was already outside. A dispute began. Mr. Zimmerman told the police
that Trayvon attacked him and that he fired in self-defense.
Trayvon’s parents say they are sure they can hear Trayvon pleading for
his life on the 911 tapes. Several witnesses who heard the encounter
agree that it was Trayvon who was screaming. But Mr. Zimmerman told the
police that was his voice.
The police said they have found no evidence to dispute Mr. Zimmerman’s
claim of self-defense. Without that, the Stand Your Ground law makes it
hard to make an arrest, and for prosecutors to charge and bring to
trial. The state attorney is now in charge of the case and is being
assisted by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Gov. Rick Scott, asked about the law at a press gathering on Tuesday,
said he did not think the law was unfair but it merited a close look.
“Any time we see something like that we have to review and make sure
we’re not giving people the opportunity to use the law unfairly,” he
said. “You want to do everything you can to make sure this doesn’t
happen again.”
Florida prosecutors say the number of defendants who claim self-defense —
even when it should not apply — has jumped noticeably since the law was
passed in 2005. It has been used judiciously and fairly in many cases,
where it was clearly self-defense. Other cases have left prosecutors
scratching their heads. The law also prevents a person shooting in
self-defense from being sued.
“Self-defense is now used more widely than it was under the old law,”
said William Eddins, Pensacola’s state attorney and president of the
Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association. “It is a very broad law in
terms of the availability of the defendant to try to take advantage of
this law. It has created more litigation for the state in cases
involving violence and in murder cases, in particular.”
The state attorney in Tallahassee, Willie Meggs, who fought the law when
it was proposed, said: “The consequences of the law have been
devastating around the state. It’s almost insane what we are having to
deal with.”
It is increasingly used by gang members fighting gang members, drug
dealers battling drug dealers and people involved in road rage
encounters. Confrontations at a bar are also common: someone looks at
someone the wrong way or bothers someone’s girlfriend.
Under the old law, a person being threatened with a gun or a knife had a
duty to try to get away from the situation, if possible. Now that
person has a right to grab a gun (or knife, or ice pick, as happened in
one case) and use it, without an attempt to retreat.
Mr. Meggs said he lost a case on appeal that was clearly not a
self-defense shooting. The attacker, who was in a car, could have driven
away. The victim was unarmed but had angered the attacker earlier in
the night, and then he had leaned into the car.
It happens with rival gangs, too. “It puts us in a posture that, if you
and I had words, and I said, ‘Get your gun and I will meet you on the
street,’ we can have a shootout in the street and the winner is standing
his ground,” Mr. Meggs said.
Investigating the cases, prosecutors say, is time-consuming. “You have
to be very careful and very thorough,” Mr. Eddins said.
Unless there are good witnesses and clear-cut physical evidence, the
self-defense homicide cases are often murky and hard to sort out,
prosecutors say. The gunman’s side of the story usually prevails because
the victim is not alive to challenge the claim. So rather than let a
jury decide a self-defense case, which is mostly what happened under the
old law, prosecutors sometimes must drop the case.
“The person who is alive always says, ‘I was in fear that he was going
to hurt me,’ ” Mr. Meggs said. “And the other person would say, ‘I
wasn’t going to hurt anyone.’ But he is dead. That is the problem they
are wrestling with in Sanford.”
In Florida, the situation is particularly explosive because of the
state’s expansive gun laws. Most people in the state who are not felons
can buy guns in Florida, and a relatively large percentage do, with some
choosing to keep them in their cars. The National Conference of State
Legislatures has found laws in nearly every state that allow the use of
deadly force, to a greater or lesser degree, in self-defense, and in
defense of property and premises.
“This wave of laws started back in the 1980s,” said Jon Kuhl, a
spokesman for the organization. Laws like Florida’s, which give broad
license to use deadly force and to claim self-defense, in many cases
beyond the home, are a more recent phenomenon, he said. Some of the more
lenient ones are in Southern states.
Dan Gross, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence,
says that his organization tracks laws in 21 states that extend the
self-defense doctrine beyond the home. The usual label for such laws —
“stand your ground” — is politically charged, he said, suggesting that a
more apt label would be “Shoot first, ask questions later.”
Laws like the one in Florida allow situations like the Trayvon Martin
killing, he said. “We’re heartbroken, but we’re not surprised.”
Reporting was contributed by Jennifer Preston, John Schwartz and
Timothy Williams from New York, and by Joseph Freeman from Sanford, Fla.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: April 5, 2012
An
earlier version of this article misstated the time period in which Mr.
Zimmerman made 46 calls to 911. The calls were made over the course of
about eight years, not 14 months.
Mandatory voting would insure that elected officials are truly
representative of their electorates, and not just those most interested
in and most able to vote on election day. In the U.S. we are
experiencing political gridlock because both major political parties are
dominated by their most extreme wings which are most likely to vote and
be politically active. Mandatory voting would force both political
parties and all candidates to pitch their campaigns towards the
political center where the less politically attentive have been prone to
not voting.
