It's Watch!... Neighborhood Watch. Not shoot.

Where's George?

 

Link, please.

 

The police FUBARing this from the word go is as much of a problem as anything.

One crazy SOB with a gun is one thing, but the police better show some proof (bloody knuckles, bruises, torn clothing, gun shot residue) that there was a real fight going on here. I am very skeptical of the eye witness accounts.

 

How are you reaching this conclusion? It would be worse if the police started providing evidence outside of a court setting. Seems like that would compromise the case.

 

The police are required to prove it wasn't self defense, not prove that it was:

It immediately requires law enforcement officials to prove that a suspect did not act in self-defense, and sets the case on a slow track.

 

Former Gov. Jeb Bush and various Fla. lawmakers have said the law was misapplied, so that's apparently not what the NRA lobbyists intended when they wrote the law.

 

The person quoted isn't some local yokel cop, with an agenda. It's the Special Prosecutor, appointed to review the case.

I imagine she knows how the law -- and its practical effects -- work.

 

OK, so we're still left with a really bad law or really bad application of the law. So either the law needs to be repealed/revised or law enforcement folks need to be better trained in how they apply it. Because justice isn't being served.

 

YF, there was a link here a few pages back -- Tampa Bay Times I think -- that showed in very compelling detail that Jeb Bush, the prosecutor, and anyone else who says the Stand Your Ground law doesn't apply here is wrong. The people who pushed the bill into law and signed it simply do not know its powers.

 

Pretty typical.

It doesn't really matter what they say the intent was. It's how juries perceive it, and how it complicates prosecutions.

And, I think we should remember that the votes were 39-0 and 92-20 respectively, in the Senate & House.

 

Same with the Indiana bill that allows you to respond with violence against cops and other public officials who believe to be entering your home illegally. There are going to be cops shot and killed, and their killers are going to walk away because they "believed" they were entering illegally.

That legislators, particularly at the state level, don't think through how their laws might be interpreted is, unfortunately, nothing new.

 

By the way, a little NRA history: Harlon Carter, who led the 1977 Cincinnati revolt that turned the NRA from merely a hunting and sportsman organization to the association we know today, had his own George Zimmerman incident in 1931. The accounts vary, but they involve Carter's mother upset at Mexican-American boys loitering in front of their Laredo home, Carter getting his shotgun and accosting them (not in front of the house, but elsewhere), and Carter shooting and killing one of them after he may or may not have brandished a knife. Carter was arrested, went to jail for a few years, but was freed on appeal. And the rest, they say, is history.

http://nyagv.org/what-the-nras-founder-and-george-zimmerman-have-in-common/

http://books.google.com/books?id=HruW69B1VPwC&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=harlon+carter+ramon+casiano&source=bl&ots=ILa5DJZJiW&sig=0rn0H0aSQfMHZInBWxuPX8dY0Ko&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1OJ5T4agJcK_2QXjkem1Bg&ved=0CEAQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=harlon%20carter%20ramon%20casiano&f=false