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Stand Your Ground Law

March 25, 2012 by · Comments Off on Stand Your Ground Law 

Stand Your Ground Law, The killing of Trayvon Martin was only the most infamous Florida homicide complicated by the legal inanity known as “Stand Your Ground.”

Police in Sanford, maddeningly hesitant in their dealings with the 28-year-old neighborhood watch zealot who shot young Martin, have been widely disparaged for citing the 2005 Florida statute that grotesquely altered the doctrine of self-defense.

But just last week, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Beth Bloom bolstered the Sanford cops’ contention that state law now trumps common sense. She sprang another stand-your-ground killer.

Stand Your Ground, the way the law has been interpreted, has proven to be a wild misnomer. Like Trayvon Martin, Pedro Roteta was pursued down a city street by his killer.

On Jan. 25, Roteta had apparently been trying to steal the radio from a truck owned by Greyston Garcia, parked outside his apartment in southwest Miami. Truck burglary’s a crime of course, but not a capital case. Not before 2005.

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