= new reply since forum marked as read
too fucking tragic to be funny
By Lalo Alcaraz.
I'll never go back to any stand your ground state. What an immoral load of feces. 
exactly
White hood
= Open season
When I glanced at the first pic, this automatically came to mind.
...as Zimmerman does. 
But since you insist, how about a cartoonist from MIAMI???
CLOSE ENOUGH FOR YA? Ya Sure Ya Betcha!
And a cursory search shows that this isn't the first time this law has been 'misapplied'
If it makes you feel virtuous...
Now that I have a job with a desk and a wall I'm starting a pretty good collection of printed-out comics. I put up the one of Rush Limbaugh screaming at a cartoonist last week, actually.
Good editorial cartoonists put a lot of hard work into their trade, I'd wager most of them understand these laws. People don't develop opinions out of thin air. 
...I always do love the claim though that intelligent people don't understand something that's pretty basic and being discussed ad nauseum by legal experts by all major news organizations. Kinda up there with all those times I get told "down where the sun don't shine" that I have some problem reading.
The defendant was trying to get the judge to tell the jury that he did NOT have a duty to retreat. In other words, Stand Your Ground.
The judge refused to tell the jury that, so that the defendant DID have a duty to retreat. Even though he was in his home.
I admit I had trouble narrowing this down; the problem is that Google searches keep coming up with cases where people weren't arrested because of Castle Doctrine. This is the stuff that blogs and news and discussion boards focus on, and it really clutters up the Google Machine.
Okay, maybe more than a cursory Google search is needed.
But I will reiterate that even if, after a trial, a person is in fact found innocent of murder charges after using lethal force in self-defense, the person still had to go through a trial. A trial that costs him hundreds of dollars per billable hour over how many months or years.
I mean, what's the point of defending yourself against a violent attacker if either way you get your life ruined? On the one hand, you're facing the possibility of being crippled for life and facing untold financial losses due to medical bills, future lack of medical coverage (now your crushed skull is a pre-existing condition), and loss of ability to work. On the other hand you're facing psychological trauma, a legal bill that could have put your kids through college, and possible jail time in prison.
And it doesn't change the fact that prosecutors are political animals, often times elected, with political ambitions, who can and do prosecute cases that they think they can win in court, regardless of the truth. To make a "statement" or polish their anti-gun credentials or look tough on crime or some shit.
Or they threaten with trail in order to get a plea-bargin, so some poor slob who gunned down a burglar pleads out to a lesser charge in order to avoid the expense of a trial because they can't afford a good lawyer or don't want to take the risk of 20 years in prison. Maybe two years of negligent manslaughter with credit for time served is the better option than risking 20 years.
The outraged public ("my baby was gunned down by that mean old gun-nut" gets a conviction, the prosecutor gets another victory under his belt, and the homeowner gets a criminal record and a few years in jail.
No, it didn't happen all the time. But it definitely it did happen.
If it's a suspicious death, then OF COURSE it should be investigated. And the Sanford PD was negligent in investigating a suspicious "self-defense" shooting, probably for racial reasons. And because they didn't investigate it properly, Zimmerman might get off. Not because the law was good or bad, but because the police fucked up (very possibly deliberately) and failed to secure evidence and witness testimony.
That defense attorneys will, "hundreds of times a year" try to represent such a case as "self-defense" is obvious to anybody with a cursory knowledge of NBC police procedurals. That such claims are almost always bullshit is also fairly obvious (though I will say that it is amusing to see the NRA types embracing defense attorneys for a change). I'm still waiting to see the boatload of cases where a clean self-defense shoot was aggressively prosecuted as a murder. Whenever you scratch the surface of these poor saps forced into a self-defense killing, you notice that the cousin had a grudge, and similar situations. Or, it's a pharmacist who straight up and with malice aforethought executed a defenseless and wounded robber. Big fan of that guy, too, I suppose?
It's a myth.
makes me want to - probably 'cause I have an 11 y.o. son...
