Trayvon Martin case: Inquiry into Stand Your Ground law launched in Florida

Florida lawmakers opposed to Stand Your Ground have formed a task force to investigate the law following the killing of Trayvon Martin. Among its members: prosecutors, judges, and tourism officials.

|
Kristen Mullen/The Citizens' Voice/AP
Leslie Miller, Howard Mapp, and Judi Myers bow their heads in prayer during a vigil on Public Square in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Wednesday, April 4, to remember Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old who was shot and killed in Sanford, Fla., on February 26.

The shooting of black teenager Trayvon Martin by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman may or may not be explicitly or legally connected to Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground law, which allows citizens to use deadly force rather than retreat in the face of a potentially life-threatening encounter.

That depends on whether Mr. Zimmerman is prosecuted for the Feb. 26 shooting in Sanford, Fla. – he has yet to be charged – and how his attorneys might frame a defense.

But the case already has raised questions about Stand Your Ground laws now in force in some two dozen states and under consideration in others.

And on Thursday in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida lawmakers convened a task force to investigate the state's first-in-the-nation Stand Your Ground law. Task force members include prosecutors, law enforcement officials, public defenders, judges, law professors, and state tourism officials.

The effort is led by state Sen. Chris Smith, a Democrat representing Fort Lauderdale. Sen. Smith opposed the 2005 legislation, and he faults Gov. Rick Scott (R) for not acting sooner in reexamining a law that has seen a tripling of instances in which justifiable homicide is successfully used as a defense in shooting cases.

Governor Scott says he will convene a task force once special prosecutor Angela Corey of the State Attorney’s office completes her investigation of the shooting and the police response. 

But for critics like Senator Smith, that just means more delay for a case in which an unarmed teenager was killed by a man who ignored the direction of a 911 emergency operator, and pursued Mr. Martin until some kind of confrontation (and perhaps a fight) occurred.

"I'm flabbergasted as to why there's the foot-dragging and hand-wringing. I don't know why they would want to wait," Smith told reporters this week. "To me, it seems a no-brainer that action is needed, and as leaders we need to take action right now."

Others are calling for a reappraisal of Stand Your Ground laws – particularly as they apply in cases involving armed neighborhood volunteers.

“I think the law is going to create real problems,” former President Bill Clinton told ABC News this week. “Because anyone who doesn’t have a criminal background, anyone not prohibited by the Brady Bill and caught by the checks, can basically be a part of a neighborhood watch where they have a concealed weapon whether they had proper law enforcement training or not, and whether they’ve had any experience in conflict situations with people or not.”

Clinton’s concerns about Stand Your Ground are the same voiced by law enforcement officials in Florida who opposed the law in the first place. (A main backer of the law was the powerful National Rifle Association, a principal reason why it was approved unanimously in the state Senate.)

In addition to gun-rights advocates like the NRA, such laws are modeled and promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative nonprofit policy organization whose major funders include billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch.

That ALEC is behind laws like Stand Your Ground and efforts to restrict voter registration (neither of which has much to do with the organization’s stated pro-business agenda) apparently is making some members uneasy.

On Monday, the Coca-Cola Co. withdrew its membership.

“Our involvement with ALEC was focused on efforts to oppose discriminatory food and beverage taxes, not on issues that have no direct bearing on our business,” the company said in a statement. “We have a long-standing policy of only taking positions on issues that impact our company and industry.”

Although what exactly took place between Martin and Mr. Zimmerman that rainy night remains hazy, the authors of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law say it shouldn’t apply in this case and therefore doesn’t need to be changed or repealed.

“When [Zimmerman] said ‘I’m following him,’ he lost his defense,” former Sen. Durell Peaden told the Miami Herald. “They need to prosecute whoever shot the kid. He has no protection under my law. There’s nothing in the Florida law that allows him to follow someone with a gun.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Trayvon Martin case: Inquiry into Stand Your Ground law launched in Florida
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2012/0405/Trayvon-Martin-case-Inquiry-into-Stand-Your-Ground-law-launched-in-Florida
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe