STAND YOUR GROUND: THE QUICK AND THE DEAD

Gun control? We need bullet control! I think every bullet should cost $5,000 dollars. Because if a bullet cost five thousand dollars, we wouldn't have any innocent bystanders.

~Chris Rock

As everyone is probably aware, the “Stand Your Ground” law became a hot topic in Florida when a teenager was killed by a volunteer neighborhood watch man who claimed that Trayvon Martin attacked him and forced him to shoot Martin after an alleged scuffle.

The trial was played out day by day on the television and George Zimmerman, with his perpetual glazed eyes look, was ultimately freed by a Florida jury.  It is my understanding that while Trayvon still lies dead, Zimmerman has become quite the successful artist selling his paintings for a lot of money to all of the pathetic loonies out there who like to collect memorabilia from killers.

Although the stand your ground defense was not specifically invoked by the Zimmerman defense team, but simply “self-defense,” (which requires a slightly different standard) the jury received instructions from the court very similar to the standard set forth in the Stand Your Ground statute.  Since its inception, this defense has led to some very bizarre results and acquittals that make it appear very strongly that shooting someone in Florida is not really something that guarantees any penalty will be assessed by the judge no matter how bizarre the circumstances and how at fault the shooter actually seems.

It again came to the forefront of national attention, when Michael Dunn fired into a car full of young black teenagers who were playing music too loud. Although he was convicted of three-counts of attempted murder for emptying 10 shots into their car, he was acquitted of first degree murder because enough doubt was created, based on the ambiguous language of the Stand Your Ground law and Dunn’s claim that he thought he saw a weapon.

Jurors and judges seem to have a terrible time understanding the purpose and nature of the law caused by the magic words that “if you are in a public place where you have a right to be, you have no duty to retreat and the right to stand your ground and meet force with force, including deadly force.”

Don’t get me wrong in this article. I believe that people have the right to bear arms and use them to protect their life and family when necessary. What I do not believe is that when you hear a strange noise outside, you should load up your shotgun and go criminal hunting or if someone cuts you off on the street, you get to get out of your car with a gun (and if you sense fear or claim you see a weapon, which all shooters claim they do) get to blast away at the driver who made you angry. That is not the purpose or intent of true self-defense.

 If we all go shooting into the night, there are going to be even more deaths caused by guns than we have now, which is an embarrassing amount compared to other nations that are not third world countries, and even some of them are doing a whole lot better than us when it comes to bodies hitting the floor on a yearly basis. I daresay we are becoming a distant cousin to Mexico when it comes to shoot outs and the acceptance of the “way of the gun” as just a part of life and death in the United States. It is my understanding that there are parts of Chicago commonly referred to as “Chiraq” due to the number of murders that occur every day.

Let’s discuss some facts that the Tampa Bay Times uncovered while carefully studying statistics related to the Stand Your ground law in Florida.  Among the findings:

· Those who invoke Stand Your Ground to avoid prosecution have been extremely successful. Nearly 70 percent have gone free.

· Defendants claiming Stand Your Ground are more likely to prevail if the victim is black. Seventy-three percent of those who killed a black person faced no penalty compared to 59 percent of those who killed a white.

· The number of cases is increasing, largely because defense attorneys are using Stand Your Ground in ways state legislators never envisioned.

· People often go free under Stand Your Ground in cases that seem to make a mockery of what lawmakers intended. One man killed two unarmed people and walked out of jail. Another shot a man as he lay on the ground. Others went free after shooting their victims in the back. In nearly a third of the cases the Times analyzed, defendants initiated the fight, shot an unarmed person or pursued their victims—and still went free.

· Similar cases can have opposite outcomes. Depending on who decided their cases, some drug dealers claiming self-defense have gone to prison while others have been set free. The same holds true for killers who left a fight, only to arm themselves and return. Shoot someone from your doorway?  Fire on a fleeing burglar? Your case can swing on different interpretations of the law by prosecutors, judge or jury.

The proper thing to do is remain in your locked house, with your gun in your lap if you must, and call 911.  Let the police do their job and if someone gets shot, let’s hope it is the police that do the shooting because they had no other alternative but to rely on deadly force to protect themselves or others from harm.

Things are beginning to get a bit out of hand.

Recently, I heard about a case that at first I thought was a bad joke and some sort of internet urban legend. Well, turns out, it is completely true and seems to have pushed the envelope of Stand Your Ground even further out into crazy land.  According to recent reports, a blind man recently had a murder case dismissed (in Seminole County—the land of Zimmerman) against him because he was able to convince yet another one of our more intellectual Florida judges that he was in fear for his life and had no other option but to shoot his friend (now an ex-deceased-friend).

Apparently these friends had been drinking for hours and then for some inexplicable reason, the guy who is now dead apparently decided he wanted to attack the blind guy, John Wayne Rogers.  Turns out, that Rogers keeps loaded guns in his house. It also turns out that even though Rogers cannot see, he can hear an attacker coming and he blasted his ex-friend in the chest and killed him.

Things looked bad for Rogers for awhile (no pun intended) until his attorneys unleashed the hypnotic Stand Your Ground defense on the judge. Rogers shot the victim from 18 inches away in the chest after going into another room to get his gun. Despite seeing his blind, drinking-buddy, friend with a very large caliber assault rifle in his hands, his ex-deceased-friend still decided to physically confront Rogers. This, of course, was his fatal and last mistake on this earth.  According to sources, Rogers had previously fired 15 rounds from a handgun at his cousin and punched a woman causing him to spend 71 days in jail for domestic violence.  This, of course, was of no consequence to the judge who found it perfectly understandable for a Stand Your Ground defense that Rogers argued with his now dead friend, went to another room to get a gun, and then came back and shot him (oh yes, because he feared for his safety).

The interesting yet scary thing about a slippery slope law like Stand Your Ground is that it eventually becomes applicable to almost any sort of circumstances you can imagine.

Greyston Garcia saw a man trying to steal a radio from his truck.  Garcia grabbed a large knife, ran downstairs and chased the man down the street for at least a block. The incident was caught on tape and showed Garcia stabbing the thief to death in the chest.

At the time, the only thing the thief had was a small pocket knife, which he never opened and a bag of stolen car radios.  Finding that the bag of radios could have caused serious injury to Garcia as he chased the thief to try and murder him, the judge granted Garcia immunity based on Stand Your Ground. She felt that although they were nowhere close to Garcia’s home, that Garcia chased the man with a knife a block away, and that the man was unarmed and fleeing literally for his life, Garcia was justified in murdering him.

Furthermore, the fact that Garcia went home and fell asleep after killing the thief, hid the knife he used to stab the thief, never called 911, and sold two of the stolen radios were all non-factors in her decision that a swinging bag of radios could have seriously injured Garcia. What was most important to the judge according to sources is that he “could have been killed or seriously injured if Roteta (the man Garcia stabbed to death in the chest) had hit him in the head with the bag of stereos.  Careful analysis, thoughtfulness, and jurisprudence certainly did not have their finest day with this case.

According the Miami Herald, Miami police Sgt. Ervens Ford, who supervised the case was floored when told of the judge’s decision. Ford called the law and the decision by Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Beth Bloom a “travesty of justice.” Speaking of justice and potential bad karma, Garcia was killed about three months after the judge dismissed the case against him by a stray bullet that supposedly resulted from a being caught in a gang crossfire shootout. Ironically, Garcia himself appears to have been killed by gang members who, under Florida law, some would argue were standing their ground while simultaneously emptying gun clips.  What can you say, this is Miami and it is a dangerous place to live?

In yet another interesting thief shooting/chase case, a Miami teen and his mother were not prosecuted for shooting a man who was trying to steal a WaveRunner from their waterfront home. The 20 year old man, Reynaldo Munoz, Jr., who was both deaf and mute, appeared on their property. The teen, just 14 years old at the time, fired a shotgun blast that killed Munoz.

At first, the teen’s mother told police that she was the one who fired the gun, but later admitted to police that it was her son who pulled the trigger.  In this particular case, the Stand Your Ground law was not even considered by a judge. The prosecutors, on their own, made a determination that even though the man was outside and unarmed, and the mother and son grabbed a weapon to go outside and confront him, the appearance of danger was sufficient that a reasonable person would have believed that danger “could only have been avoided through the use of deadly force.”

Is it me, or would it not be safer to call 911 while you look out of the window of your house with the door locked, even if you are armed? Why was it necessary or acceptable for the mother and son to go outside, armed with a gun, to hunt down a thief to protect a jet ski?  In fact, given that the man was deaf and mute, they could have screamed for help, or yelled at their neighbors for help, and he would have been none the wiser. Instead, the easy kill was the option chosen. Even if we give them the benefit of the doubt that they felt threatened, was it really necessary to fatally shoot Munoz in the “back of the head”?  Shooting someone in the back of the head is much more consistent with someone attempting to flee or having no clue that they are about to be executed.  There used to be a place where these actions were totally the norm and acceptable, it was called the Wild West, now we call it waterfront property in the neighborhood of Miami Shores.

Finally, we have perhaps the most creative application of the Stand Your Ground law that I have heard about to date, and I will conclude with this story because the surreal stories could go on and on concerning this law.  Turns out, two normal, totally regular, teenage cousins are bored and decide that they want to look for a prostitute. One was 14 years old and the other was 18 at the time of the crime. The problem they had was they were very excited about hiring a prostitute, but sadly had no money to fund their adventure.

They end up meeting a man, Gregory Hyppolite, who claims he can hook them up with a prostitute. It turns out that the guy is honest and he is able to get them a prostitute. In exchange, he asks for the meager payment of ten dollars. They decide to advise him, at that point in time, that they have no money. According to them, they offered him a broken necklace which was rejected because it was not made of gold.

Thereafter, the teens walk home but the wannabe pimp follows them demanding that they pay his ten dollar fee.  One of the teens goes into the house and returns with a used lap top which turns out to be unacceptable payment for a street person.  Thereafter, a fight breaks out. It just so happens that one of these normal, totally regular, teens has a pen, which he uses to stab the man multiple times, later testifying that he was aiming for the man’s eyes. The other cousin stabs Hyppolite repeatedly with a broken bottle. Needless to say, Hyppolite died of the severe stabbing and beating he endured from the two cousins.

Notwithstanding that Hyppolite was unarmed and never threatened to kill the cousins, guess what their main argument is going to be according to their defense lawyer? That’s right, you guessed it, they were standing their ground when they stabbed and beat a man to death who was unarmed and with no evidence that he had any capacity to cause serious harm to both them.

As crazy as this all sounds, and a pathetic as this Stand Your Ground defense seems to be for this set of facts, with the mathematical statistics in their favor, it never hurts to try.

I wonder if our founding fathers ever imagined that our constitutionally protected right to bear arms would be used in support of shooting unarmed people who for the most part are running or fighting for their lives to avoid getting killed.  Maybe our return to the Wild West has become too wild, even for the cowboys?

~ Leonardo G. Renaud