Trayvon Martin case: use of Stand Your Ground law or pursuit of a black teen?

[jimmy olsen]

Definitely looks suspicious

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2012/0320/Trayvon-Martin-case-use-of-Stand-Your-Ground-law-or-pursuit-of-a-black-teen

Trayvon Martin case: use of Stand Your Ground law or pursuit of a black teen?

A grand jury in Florida and the US Justice Department will both probe the Feb. 26 shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin. Key questions: Did the alleged gunman racially profile Trayvon? And did he use the Stand Your Ground law appropriately?

By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer / March 20, 2012

The shooting death of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin is no longer in the sole hands of local law-enforcement officials, meaning the wheels of justice appear to be moving, after a three-week delay, toward a fuller investigation of whether the shooter killed the 17-year-old in self-defense.

On Tuesday came the announcement that Florida's Seminole County will convene a grand jury on April 10 to look into the case, even as a team from the US Justice Department's civil rights division arrived in Sanford, Fla., the community where Trayvon died Feb. 26 after he was shot by a self-appointed neighborhood watchman.

The Justice Department would not ordinarily investigate such an incident, but the fact that Trayvon was black and the alleged shooter, George Zimmerman, is part white, part Hispanic – and that local authorities declined to press charges against Mr. Zimmerman, even though Trayvon was unarmed – opens the door to a civil rights investigation on grounds the teenager came under suspicion primarily because he is African-American.

Protests, rallies, and official pressure have been building ever since the police in Sanford declined to arrest Mr. Zimmerman. Before the shooting, Trayvon had been walking from a convenience store back to his father's fiancée's house in a gated neighborhood, with nothing more than a bag of Skittles in his pocket.

The 911 tapes, plus a report Tuesday from a girl who says she was talking with Trayvon on the phone just before the shooting, suggest that Zimmerman may have run after the teen. If true, that could allow the Justice Department to help draw the line on so-called "Stand Your Ground" laws and reaffirm civil rights protections for young men who draw suspicion by virtue of their skin color.

"The Stand Your Ground law was not intended to authorize vigilante action on the part of neighborhood watch guys when they have suspicions about the motivation of some kid walking through the neighborhood," says James Wright, a sociologist who studies gun violence at University of Central Florida in Orlando. "To simply say this case is ambiguous and therefore can't be prosecuted opens the door for a lot of nefarious" actions to take place. In that way, he says, "this case could help draw the line between what's right and legally justifiable and what goes beyond that."

"With all federal civil rights crimes, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person acted intentionally and with the specific intent to do something which the law forbids – the highest level of intent in criminal law," the Justice Department said in a statement, upon announcing it would investigate Trayvon's death. "Negligence, recklessness, mistakes and accidents are not prosecutable under the federal criminal civil rights laws."

The case has sparked outrage across the US, as well as rallies and protests on college campuses and in the Orlando, Fla., area.

While the exact circumstances of the shooting are not clear, the preponderance of evidence seems to point toward Zimmerman overstepping the bounds of the state's Stand Your Ground law, say some legal and criminal justice experts. The law obviates an individual's "duty to retreat" from threatening situations. Zimmerman had made several previous 911 calls about suspicious people in the Retreat at Twin Lakes community.

"He didn't stand his ground; he was hunting," says Alan Lizotte, dean of the School of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany in New York.

It also turns out that Trayvon was on the phone with a 16-year-old girl just before the incident, according to the lawyer for Trayvon's family, Ben Crump. At a news conference Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Crump played a taped conversation with the girl, in which she recounted what her talk with Trayvon as he walked back to the house that day.

"Why is this dude following me?" she says Trayvon asked. The girl said she suggested that he run, which he did. He stopped running for a moment, then saw Zimmerman again, she reported. At that point, he told her he was just going to walk fast, she recounted. Next, she said, she heard a man ask, "What you doing around here?" The call then ended, and she said she believes that was when Trayvon was pushed and his earpiece fell out.

Zimmerman's father, Robert Zimmerman, has said inferences that his son started the altercation are misleading and false. But as more evidence emerges, including revelations that police did not test Zimmerman for drugs and alcohol before releasing him after a short detention, the police department is coming under more and more criticism for its handling of the case. In the department's defense, Chief Bill Lee has said Zimmerman's bloody nose and bloody head supported his assertion that he was attacked and shot Trayvon in self-defense.

In other developments, voice and audio experts are combing through a series of 911 calls on Feb. 26 in which a voice can be heard calling for help before a shot rang out. The family says it's Trayvon's voice; police have said they believe it's Zimmerman calling for help.

"Because this case is so bizarre, how can [Justice] not do something about this, and at least investigate?" asks Mr. Lizotte. "If you don't look into why police say they can't charge him, what's left? Sort of a Wild West model for law enforcement, where if somebody draws on you first and you're faster, you're OK?"

In Florida, the lawmaker who sponsored the 2005 Stand Your Ground law said Monday that the statute was not intended to protect people who sought conflict, and some Florida legislators have vowed to hold hearings on whether to amend the law.

"No matter what your position is on [race or guns], nobody believes that your rights extend to the right to kill innocent and unarmed children on [public property]," says Professor Wright. "No member of the NRA would disagree with me on that."

Others say that, as evidence has mounted, the case has become less about the Stand Your Ground law and more about a central civil rights question: If the racial roles had been reversed, would an arrest have been made?

"That's what civil rights statutes are there for, when, in fact, local law enforcement fails to protect the rights of citizens, especially when race seems to be implicated, as it certainly is in this case," says Bob Cottrol, a law professor and gun rights expert at George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C.

[Martinus]

I just read quickly through the article but does it mention anywhere what the "Stand Your Ground" law means? It seems to be referring to it all over the place, but not explaining at all what it entails. If so it is rather shoddy journalism.

[DGuller]

I just read quickly through the article but does it mention anywhere what the "Stand Your Ground" law means? It seems to be referring to it all over the place, but not explaining at all what it entails. If so it is rather shoddy journalism.

The most widely accepted definition seems to be that you're not required to attempt to retreat before using deadly force in self-defense.  It also seems to apply when you're outside, as the castle doctrine already legally protects you in your home.

[CountDeMoney]

I just read quickly through the article but does it mention anywhere what the "Stand Your Ground" law means? It seems to be referring to it all over the place, but not explaining at all what it entails. If so it is rather shoddy journalism.

It's a shoddy law.

Basic principle is the only requirement for the justifiable use of deadly force is that you are in fear.  That's it.  No other existential factors, just fear.

[Valmy]

It is pretty amazing you would have a guy who openly admitted to killing somebody on public property and just take his word for what happened.  It took somebody lighting a fire under their ass to even go to a Grand Jury to present the evidence.  Wow those are some lazy ass cops.

[CountDeMoney]

It is pretty amazing you would have a guy who openly admitted to killing somebody on public property and just take his word for what happened.  It took somebody lighting a fire under their ass to even go to a Grand Jury to present the evidence.  Wow those are some lazy ass cops.

Dude, it's a white guy shooting a black kid in Florida.  Of course they're just going to take his word for it.

[MadBurgerMaker]

Dude, it's a white guy shooting a black kid in Florida. 

You count Hispanics as white?

[CountDeMoney]

What I find hilarious is this guy was a "self-appointed" Neighborhood Watch guy.  Self-appointed.  The community didn't even have a Neighborhood Watch.  He just decided to go out and play cop.

[Valmy]

What I find hilarious is this guy was a "self-appointed" Neighborhood Watch guy.  Self-appointed.  The community didn't even have a Neighborhood Watch.  He just decided to go out and play cop.

No wonder he ignored every rule about how to do a neighborhood watch.  Sounds like a nutcase to me, like a paranoid.

And the cops just trusted this dude?

[CountDeMoney]

Dude, it's a white guy shooting a black kid in Florida. 

You count Hispanics as white?

He's certainly no Dos Equis guy, that's for sure.  Zimmerman?  No accent?  C'mon, man.  Some spic banged his grandmother, doesn't make him Hispanic.   Douche.

[MadBurgerMaker]

He's certainly no Dos Equis guy, that's for sure.  Zimmerman?  No accent?  C'mon, man.  Some spic banged his grandmother, doesn't make him Hispanic.   Douche.

Just because you want him to be white for whatever reason doesn't make it so.  Mook.



Also, the Dos Equis guy is a Jew from New York, you fuckin tool.

[CountDeMoney]

What I find hilarious is this guy was a "self-appointed" Neighborhood Watch guy.  Self-appointed.  The community didn't even have a Neighborhood Watch.  He just decided to go out and play cop.

No wonder he ignored every rule about how to do a neighborhood watch.  Sounds like a nutcase to me, like a paranoid.

And the cops just trusted this dude?

Guy was a perpetual wanna-be:

The neighborhood crime watch volunteer who shot and killed Trayvon Martin last month, called 911 dozens of times in the months that led to the fatal shooting.

This afternoon six of the calls made by George Zimmerman were released by theSeminole County Sheriff's Office.

In four of the recordings Zimmerman called police to report "suspicious" persons — all of whom were black — in or near the Retreat at Twin Lakes neighborhood.

He called once to report his neighbor's open garage door. And in the sixth call, Zimmerman reports children are "habitually" playing in the street at dusk and running in front of cars. He asked dispatchers to take his complaint anonymously, but provided his name and phone number.

None of the newly released calls are related to the Feb. 26 shooting inside the gated neighborhood.

Many of the calls start the same way — Zimmerman mentions the recent rash of burglaries in the area and identifies himself as a member of the neighborhood watch.

"We've had a lot of break-ins in our neighborhood recently and I'm on the neighborhood watch," Zimmerman said during one call.

"There's two suspicious characters at the gate of my neighborhood, I've never seen them before. I don't know what they are doing. They are hanging out...loitering."

That day, the "characters" are two black men in a white sedan, Zimmerman tells the dispatchers. An officer is sent to check out the call, but it's unclear if anything suspicious was uncovered.

Another time he calls two report two black teens who match the description of suspects in recent break-in, who his wife saw and identified for police.

Zimmerman and his wife, who can be heard in the background, believed the suspects were back in the neighborhood and walking near the neighborhood's back gate. Zimmerman said he'd be waiting at the back gate to let an officer in.

On Feb. 26, Zimmerman called the non-emergency line to report a suspicious person — Trayvon Martin.

Zimmerman mentioned the break-ins, reported a young black male in his neighborhood who he didn't recognize and thought was acting suspiciously.

Minutes after that call, while officers were in route, Trayvon was shot and killed. Zimmerman said he acted in self defense. Officers have not arrested or charged him.

Records show Zimmerman, 28, called the cops 46 times between January 2011 and Feb. 26.

Many of the calls appear related to his crime-watch volunteer role. The most frequent reason for his calls — nine times — was to report a suspicious person, according to Sanford Police Department records released last week.

[derspiess]

What I find hilarious is this guy was a "self-appointed" Neighborhood Watch guy.  Self-appointed.  The community didn't even have a Neighborhood Watch.  He just decided to go out and play cop.

No wonder he ignored every rule about how to do a neighborhood watch.  Sounds like a nutcase to me, like a paranoid.

And the cops just trusted this dude?

With all the 911 calls he had made over the years, you'd think they'd be pretty annoyed by him & might not give him the benefit of the doubt. 

[CountDeMoney]

He's certainly no Dos Equis guy, that's for sure.  Zimmerman?  No accent?  C'mon, man.  Some spic banged his grandmother, doesn't make him Hispanic.   Douche.

Just because you want him to be white for whatever reason doesn't make it so.  Mook.

*picture of Jersey Shore reject*

Also, the Dos Equis guy is a Jew from New York, you fuckin tool.

You people need to stop seeing race in everything.

[MadBurgerMaker]

*picture of Jersey Shore reject*

I wonder if he rolls around the neighborhood with the top five buttons of his shirt unbuttoned making fish faces