excellent read - New Yorker, "...Stand Whose Ground?"

[one...two...tree 2,762]

In July 2007, Maryland's intermediate appellate court confirmed the definition of imperfect self defense. When the defendant convinces the jury of such a defense, s/he averts a murder conviction and instead gets a voluntary manslaughter conviction. The case is In re: Julianna B., __ Md. App. _ (July 3, 2007). As confirmed by In re: Julianna B., the 1984 Faulkner ruling on the subject from Maryland's highest court still holds:

"Logically, a defendant who commits a homicide while honestly, though unreasonably, believing that he is threatened with death or serious bodily harm, does not act with malice.... Therefore, as we see it, when evidence is presented showing the defendant’s subjective belief that the use of force was necessary to prevent imminent death or serious bodily harm, the defendant is entitled to a proper instruction on imperfect self defense. A proper instruction when such evidence is present would enable the jury to reach one of several verdicts: (1) if the jury concluded the defendant did not have a subjective belief that the use of deadly force was necessary, its verdict would be murder; (2) if the jury concluded that the defendant had a reasonable subjective belief, its verdict would be not guilty; and (3) if the jury concluded that the defendant honestly believed that the use of force was necessary, but that this subjective belief was unreasonable under the circumstances, then its verdict would be guilty of voluntary manslaughter." State v. Faulkner, 301 Md. 482, 500-01 (1984).

So many times, homicides result from matters going into a totally avoidable tailspin. Often alcohol is the culprit. Sometimes the scenario starts with an impromptu summertime gathering of a few friends or neighbors after a liquor store run, followed by ugly tongues loosened by alcohol, followed by fistfights escalated by adding converted or conventional weapons to the mix. Such situations sadden me, and often make me sick to my stomach, initially. Then, I dig right in, and do all I can to win for my client, whether or not I think my client has any legal or personal culpability. In doing so, I look for all possible defenses, and welcome the availability of imperfect self defense among the many other defenses against criminal accusations. Jon Katz.

http://katzjustice.com/justiceblog/archives/668-imperfect-self-defense-averts-a-murder-conviction-and-gets-a-manslaughter-conviction-maryland..html

[Penny Lane 8,159]

Nature Boy, do you read what you're replying to before typing your nonsense?

At no point ANYWHERE did I say or imply it was illegal to follow him.

I said it was stupid. And it was.

I like the fact that you conveniently ignored the part where I actually agreed with Karee's statement that TM was wrong if he decided to attack simply for being followed.

But yes. Continue to think that, despite what I'm actually typing, I just want GZ guilty. For no reason.

Maybe if you say it often enough it'll be true.

Edited July 10, 2013 by Penny Lane

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

Nature Boy, do you read what you're replying to before typing your nonsense?

At no point ANYWHERE did I say or imply it was illegal to follow him.

I said it was stupid. And it was.

I like the fact that you conveniently ignored the part where I actually agreed with Karee's statement that TM was wrong if he decided to attack simply for being followed.

But yes. Continue to think that, despite what I'm actually typing, I just want GZ guilty. For no reason.

Maybe if you say it often enough it'll be true.

You have asserted over and over that GZ provoked this thing by following him. A normal rational person would assume that by that you mean this thing is GZ's fault for following him

In fact it is not.

You always deny your position when cornered

Who me ? i did not fart ?

Yeah right

P.S. Good morning hope you are well today

Edited July 10, 2013 by The Nature Boy

[Penny Lane 8,159]

You have asserted over and over that GZ provoked this thing by following him. A normal rational person would assume that by that you mean this thing is GZ's fault for following him

In fact it is not.

You always deny your position when cornered

Who me ? i did not fart ?

Yeah right

You have selective reading.

I've said numerous times that I think GZ made the wrong decision by following him. It is not what a reasonable person would do.

I also said that it's not illegal, and that TM should not have initiated a physical confrontation because of being followed.

I will say, for the 100th time, I think they both made bad decisions that night and one of them ended up dead because of it.

I don't know how many more times I can say it before you actually read and comprehend it.

I THINK THEY WERE BOTH WRONG.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

You have asserted over and over that GZ provoked this thing by following him. A normal rational person would assume that by that you mean this thing is GZ's fault for following him

In fact it is not.

You always deny your position when cornered

Who me ? i did not fart ?

Yeah right

P.S. Good morning hope you are well today

Regardless of whether GZ is found guilty of murder or manslaughter or not guilty of either, any allegedly reasonable person can see this incident was the result of GZ's piss poor decisions to get out of his vehicle and follow TM.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Regardless of whether GZ is found guilty of murder or manslaughter or not guilty of either, any allegedly reasonable person can see this incident was the result of GZ's piss poor decisions to get out of his vehicle and follow TM.

Yep. It's a logical fallacy to believe that any of GZ's actions and behavior had no bearing on the outcome and curiously selective since he continuously uses conjecture about TM's behavior to imply culpability of his own death.

Edited July 10, 2013 by Lincolns mullet

[Karee 4,191]

Regardless of whether GZ is found guilty of murder or manslaughter or not guilty of either, any allegedly reasonable person can see this incident was the result of GZ's piss poor decisions to get out of his vehicle and follow TM.

No, any allegedly reasonable person can see that this wouldn't have happened if TM didn't jump on GZ and start pounding him. TM had a cell phone. He should have called the cops if he was scared of the cracker following him. Kinda like GZ called the cops.

[Penny Lane 8,159]

Kinda like GZ called the cops.

And that's all he should have done.

It is not ridiculous to say "If TM hadn't attacked GZ, he'd still be alive" in the same way it's not ridiculous to say "If GZ had just called the cops and not followed TM, TM would still be alive."

They're both true. They both did things they shouldn't have done that resulted in a death.

Even though GZ had every right to walk in his neighborhood, so did TM.

I don't know why some people can't admit that there's a possibility they BOTH did the wrong thing.

[Karee 4,191]

And that's all he should have done.

It is not ridiculous to say "If TM hadn't attacked GZ, he'd still be alive" in the same way it's not ridiculous to say "If GZ had just called the cops and not followed TM, TM would still be alive."

They're both true. They both did things they shouldn't have done that resulted in a death.

Even though GZ had every right to walk in his neighborhood, so did TM.

I don't know why some people can't admit that there's a possibility they BOTH did the wrong thing.

I guess we can go in circles.

Sure looking back GZ should not have followed him. However, following someone does mean you deserve to be beaten. TM thought he would take the law into his own hands and he paid for that mistake with his life. That's the real lesson to be learned by all of this. TM should have called the cops like GZ did.

[Harsh_77 718]

By the time Tracy Martin, Trayvon Martin’s father, arrived on the stand on day ten of the George Zimmerman trial, he had already been cast in unanticipated roles—grieving father, reluctant agitator, courtroom stoic—though none of that dimmed the discomfort of his latest turn: witness for the defense. His appearance proved to be the sharpest twist on Monday, a day that had already seen a witness compare the screams from Zimmerman’s fight with Trayvon with those of American soldiers during the Tet Offensive, and a live-action mixed-martial-arts tutorial featuring the lead defense counsel. It takes a certain kind of nerve to summon the father of the deceased as part of an effort to exonerate the man who killed him; it requires something greater than poise to endure being summoned. Toward the end of the cross-examination, the prosecutor asked Martin why he’d repeatedly listened to a 911 call in which the gunshot that killed Trayvon could be heard. His reply was jarring: “I was trying to understand why he got out of his car and chased my son.”

It’s doubtful that he was completely without answers. The knowledge that you can inspire fear in the most inadvertent of ways, that there is a protean set of descriptions that you always fit, is axiomatic of the black male experience in this country. This is knowledge fathers pass to sons just as sure as explaining how to tie a Windsor knot. The more salient question, the one that forms part of the core of this case—though it is unlikely to be posed, and certain not to be resolved in the Seminole County courthouse—is this: Is it ever possible for a white person to be suspicious?

There’s already been any number of indelible moments in this central Florida courtroom. Last week featured a scene out of King Solomon’s court, in which both the mother of the deceased and the mother of the defendant claimed it was her son’s voice screaming for help just before the shot punctuates the 911 call. A procession of witnesses testified about seeing one man atop another and striking him, though they couldn’t agree on the attacker. Their visual vagueness was matched by another theme—the common, enduring horror at realizing there was a man lying dead in the grass. Yet more than the conflicting testimony over who screamed for help, more than the question of which man was on top, this case is about a defendant’s presumed innocence and a dead man’s presumed guilt.

While speculation about the trial has centered on whether or not Zimmerman will take the stand, Trayvon Martin, in a real sense, already has. In a creeping set of rulings, Judge Debra Nelson decided to allow discussion of the traces of marijuana that were found in Martin’s system during his autopsy. The contours of the defense, like a great deal of the discussion of this case, are shot through with an antiquated brand of rape-think. What was he wearing? Was he high or drunk? Why was he out at night? Beneath these questions is a calcified skepticism toward Martin’s innocence that all but blurts out “He was asking for it.”

Amid their frustratingly uneven presentation, Assistant State Attorney Bernie de la Rionda and the rest of the prosecution have pegged their second-degree murder charges largely on the idea that Martin was losing the fight on February 26th of last year, that he shouted for help, and that Zimmerman, a vigilante would-be cop, shot and killed him anyway. In plotting their route to conviction, they necessarily bypass another set of questions. What if he wasn’t losing the fight? What if Zimmerman is the one who called for help? What if Martin did swing first? And, most crucially, is an unarmed black teen-ager ever entitled to stand his ground?

The answers to these questions have bearing that is more social than legal, but they’re inescapable in understanding how we got here in the first place and what this trial ultimately means. George Zimmerman got out of his car that night as an amateur deputy and protector of the Retreat at Twin Lakes gated community. Trayvon Martin was a visitor to that community. Nowhere in Zimmerman’s initial emergency call does he broach the idea that Martin might belong there, that he might actually be someone who warranted protection, too. Instead, there is the snap judgment that the teen-ager is one of the “fvcking punks” who “always get away”—a judgment that Zimmerman’s supporters and the Sanford Police Department either co-signed or deemed reasonable enough to absolve him of responsibility for what ensued.

What remains frustratingly marginal in this discussion is the point Martin’s friend Rachel Jeantel raised in her testimony—that Martin himself was afraid, that a black person might assess a man following him in a car and on foot as a threat, never mind that he might have seen Zimmerman’s weapon and suspected his life was in danger. The defense paid a great deal of attention to the implications of Martin referring to Zimmerman as a “creepy-as$ cracker,” but, to the extent that we think about the epithet, we’re concerned with the wrong C-word. Imagine George Zimmerman being followed at night, in the rain, by an armed, unknown black man and you have an encounter that far exceeds the minimal definition of “creepy.” Indeed, you have a circumstance in which anyone would reasonably fear for his life. Add a twist in which that black man fires a shot that ends a person’s life, and it’s hard to imagine him going home after a brief police interview, as Zimmerman did.

De la Rionda’s team is charged with prosecuting a crime, not a set of social attitudes that facilitate it. But whatever its legal merits, the prosecution’s approach has left intact the suspicion that Florida’s proactive self-defense laws are color-coded, intended for people in fearsome encounters with blacks, not blacks in fearsome encounters.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/07/trayvon-martin-zimmerman-trial-day-ten.html

Do some research before you make a post, look up the writer. He is so much influenced by south African culture, he uses word “Jelani” in his name which is not his last name or nothing. It is a Swahili word meaning powerful.

Do you think he can write an unbiased article?

[Penny Lane 8,159]

I guess we can go in circles.

Sure looking back GZ should not have followed him. However, following someone does mean you deserve to be beaten.

Well no, of course it doesn't.

I'm simply saying that when I pointed out that GZ should not have followed him, it doesn't suddenly mean I condone the actions of TM.

Nature Boy seemed to think that me pointing out a fault of GZ's meant that I am implying he a) didn't have the right to follow him and b) is guilty.

Edited July 10, 2013 by Penny Lane

[one...two...tree 2,762]

this wouldn't have happened IF TM didn't ALLEGEDLY jump on GZ and start pounding him.

You guys are comical with your inability to separate facts (GZ getting out of his vehicle) and speculation (lanky, unarmed teenager trying to kill GZ with his bare fists because GZ was a cracker.)

[Karee 4,191]

You guys are comical with your inability to separate facts (GZ getting out of his vehicle) and speculation (lanky, unarmed teenager trying to kill GZ with his bare fists because GZ was a cracker.)

Pot meet kettle.

[Harsh_77 718]

Well no, of course it doesn't.

I'm simply saying that when I pointed out that GZ should not have followed him, it doesn't suddenly mean I condone the actions of TM.

Nature Boy seemed to think that me pointing out a fault of GZ's meant that I am implying he a) didn't have the right to follow him and b) is guilty.

In very few post you have questioned TMs action, most post you are only questioning GZs action which would make anyone believe that you are implying GZ is guilty.

[Jacque67 7,328]

Do some research before you make a post, look up the writer. He is so much influenced by south African culture, he uses word Jelani in his name which is not his last name or nothing. It is a Swahili word meaning powerful.

Do you think he can write an unbiased article?

You appear to be associated with India. Does that mean your comments are biased?