Stand Your Ground Law Trayvon Martin

Stand Your Ground Law Trayvon Martin, Sherry Colb, Cornell University professor of law, comments on the high-profile investigation into the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman.

She says: “The language of the Florida Stand Your Ground law does not seem to me to protect what Zimmerman allegedly did – pursuing a fleeing young man after having notified the police of Zimmerman’s suspicions.

“The language plainly requires that whoever uses deadly force must not only believe that such force is necessary, but must have an objectively reasonable basis for that belief. Furthermore, the fact that a person can stand his ground and not retreat does not seem to support an entitlement to chase another person, as Zimmerman did.

“Self-defense, while a possibility, is not the most plausible account of what had happened between Zimmerman and Martin, despite the fact that Zimmerman told police he had acted in self-defense. Since when is the word of a suspect binding on an investigating police officer?

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.