The mother of Trayvon Martin said Monday that she believed Florida’s Stand Your Ground law played a role in her son’s shooting death, but she wasn’t ready to support a boycott of the state for not changing the self-defense law.
“The thing about this law is I just think it assisted the person who killed my son to get away with murder,” Sybrina Fulton, the mother of the 17-year-old from Miami Gardens, said at a National Bar Association event in Miami Beach.
“I think we have to change these laws so people don’t get away with murder,” she said, adding that her son was unarmed and peacefully walking back to his dad’s place when he was initially pursued by George Zimmerman.
Zimmerman, however, successfully pleaded self defense by arguing he was ultimately and violently attacked by Trayvon. A Sanford jury acquitted Zimmerman July 13.
The exact role of Stand Your Ground — which allows a person who is in fear for his life or grave harm to use deadly force without having to first retreat — isn’t clear in the Zimmerman acquittal. . . .
Much weight is put the claim by one juror that they relied on the "Stand Your Ground" law in making their decision.
Only two jurors have spoken up to CNN and ABC, and one indicated the jurors discussed the law, which appeared in the jury instructions.
Zimmerman’s legal team, which approved of the jury instructions, didn’t focus on mounting a Stand Your Ground defense, however. They said a common self-defense justification was all the 29-year-old man needed because he reasonably feared that Trayvon was going to gravely injure him during a fistfight.
Zimmerman’s legal team, which approved of the jury instructions, didn’t focus on mounting a Stand Your Ground defense, however. They said a common self-defense justification was all the 29-year-old man needed because he reasonably feared that Trayvon was going to gravely injure him during a fistfight. . . .The jury instructions were standard ones issued in all self defense cases. To say that the law was discussed, doesn't mean much. The Stand Your Ground law contains the old traditional self defense rules which apply when retreat was not possible. Given that, it isn't clear that even if what part of the law is being referred to here.
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