The Gadfly
Senior Member
- Feb 7, 2011
- 2,190
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It is strange, Uptown. You see, what the legislature was TRYING to do, was simply get rid of the "duty to retreat"; the idea was an extension of the "castle doctrine" from the home to the outside. The idea was that the old common law "duty to retreat" could put an unreasonable burden on someone trying to defend himself (primarily against lethal force). Well and good, and in and of itself, there's nothing really wrong with that. The problem comes in because of the way this particular law tried to do that; inadvertently or not, it actually does quite a bit more. Basically it seems to extend the concept of self-defense (to include use of lethal force,yet) to any case where someone is attacked, without having first broken any other law himself! That superficially sounds OK too, UNTIL you consider all the potential ramifications; at which point it's like intending to open a narrow gateway, and instead creating something you could literally drive a semi through! That IS crazy, and the more one looks at it, the crazier it looks. All I can say is, it's not the first time a bad criminal statute was created with good intentions, and a poor choice of words. Do you remember a case in GA a few years back, where the legislature had passed a new child sodomy statute that made oral sex with a minor under 16 child molestation? The problem was, that the law was worded in such a way, that it could also allow another minor who had oral sex with an underage partner to be charged with an offense that carried something like a fifteen year minimum sentence That was clearly not the intent, but that's what the law said, and sure enough, a prosecutor charged a 17 year old with this for getting oral sex from a sixteen year old at a party. He wasn't, as I recall, even chargeable with statutory rape IF he had intercourse with the girl, which he did not (not enough age difference, by law) but the prosecutor used the child molestation statute to throw the book at him over a BJ.. Just to compound that, the legislature fixed the defective language that made that possible the next year, but failed to make it retroactive, so the kid's sentence stood, the prosecutor stood his ground, in spite of the obvious injustice of the thing, and it eventually took a lot of outcry, and the state supreme court, no less, to right the outrageous wrong that had been done. Badly written law, alas, has unforeseen consequences, and I'm afraid that may be the case in this current instance. The problem is, you can fix the statute, but there's no way to make the fix retroactive to this case; it is a good deal easier to revise a law to let someone OUT of jail , than revise one, to put someone IN jail-I don't think the latter would pass constitutional muster, among other things.
Okay, thank you.
That's really interesting, and extremely strange. I was under the impression that only number 4 of the listed criteria is no longer necessary under Florida Law. I had assumed 1-3 were still in order, that he would have to prove that:
(1) did not initiate the confrontation unreasonably, (2) that he did not further aggravate the situation unreasonably, (3) that his fear of death or serious bodily injury was reasonable,
If Zimmerman started the confrontation unreasonably that would fall under #1. If he did pull out his gun and Trayvon began beating on him because of that that's #2. But then Trayvon would be able to claim self-defense too because #3 is all that applies, either party could have started the fight, aggravated it, and then killed the other and claimed self-defense... if what you're saying is correct. *ouch my brain hurts*
In that case, I don't see what on Earth Zimmerman or Trayvon could have done that was illegal in the state of Florida. If your characterization of the law is correct... that law is absolutely insane, and I'm JUST NOW realizing how insane it actually is.
