Florida stand Your ground law?

The state self-defense law eliminated a citizen's duty to retreat before using deadly force to confront an attacker. Police and prosecutors statewide have said the the law fosters a shoot-first, ask-questions-later mentality.

The law includes a provision that grants "immunity" from prosecution or civil lawsuits if a person is deemed to have acted in self-defense, though lawmakers did not clearly specify exactly who bestows the immunity.

After a series of court battles across the state, the Florida Supreme Court in December 2010 ruled that judges should be the ones to consider evidence under a looser standard than the familiar "beyond a reasonable doubt" one used before juries in criminal cases.

Since then, South Florida judges have dismissed charges in several murder cases in which defendants sought immunity based on the law.

Last month, however, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch denied the immunity claim of a Florida International University student who stabbed an unarmed football player to death during a brawl.

The law "does not justify the use of deadly force in response to threats or shows of force of any and ever kind. In ordinary circumstances a push or a slap may be met with a push or a slap, or perhaps a punch - but not with a bullet," Hirsch said.

Miami-Dade defense attorney Jeffrey Weiner, who recently had a murder case thrown out by a judge on self-defense grounds, said: "The shooter must be able to point out, preferably with witnesses, that he wasn't just seeking vigilante justice."

Still, legal experts say Zimmerman, if arrested, would probably be charged with manslaughter, not murder - and would have a strong defense under Florida's law, with a judge needing to decide first whether he is immune from prosecution.

"I think absolutely this is a case that squarely falls within the Stand Your Ground immunity statute," said defense attorney Bill Matthewman. "Even if he shouldn't have been following 1/8Martin3/8 he's not committing a crime and he can stand his ground."

(1) He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony"

Many readers have asked whether, given the 911 recordings, a case against Zimmerman would be easier than most homicides in which "self-defense" is cited by a defendant. In Florida, the answer probably is no: The courts' interpretation of the stand-your-ground law has been extremely broad—so broad that, to win an acquittal, a defendant doesn't even have to prove self-defense, only argue for it, while to win a conviction the prosecution has to prove that self-defense was impossible.

Numerous cases have set the precedent in Florida, with the courts arguing that the law "does not require defendant to prove self-defense to any standard measuring assurance of truth, exigency, near certainty, or even mere probability; defendant's only burden is to offer facts from which his resort to force could have been reasonable." When a defendant claims self-defense, "the State has the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did not act in self-defense." In other words the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt never shifts from the prosecution, so it's surprisingly easy to evade prosecution by claiming self-defense.

This has led to some stunning verdicts in the state. In Tallahassee in 2008, two rival gangs engaged in a neighborhood shootout, and a 15-year-old African American male was killed in the crossfire. The three defendants all either were acquitted or had their cases dismissed, because the defense successfully argued they were defending themselves under the "stand your ground" law. The state attorney in Tallahassee, Willie Meggs, was beside himself. "Basically this law has put us in the posture that our citizens can go out into the streets and have a gun fight and the dead person is buried and the survivor of the gun fight is immune from prosecution," he said at the time.