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Stand your ground law essay
Stand your ground law is unjust
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Seventeen years ago, in a small town towards the southern part of Oregon, Springfield, a well-known mechanic went into a fast-food restaurant, walked behind a man who was eating lunch, and shot him in the back of the head. There had not been any sign of altercation that the man who was shot was carrying a firearm. But the shooter thought that the dead man had threatened his daughter. A local lawyer said that the dead man was in fact “a violent man, a drug dealer by trade.” Some people believe that the shooter should have left the case to the police, the local lawyer said, but the victim should also have “moderated his behavior.” George Zimmerman, a neighborhood-watch volunteer/wanna-be cop, believed that a black teenager was acting suspicious in a gated neighborhood. Not listening to the instructions of the police, Zimmerman confronted the young man just minutes before killing him. The police arrested Zimmerman, put him on trial, and the jury found him not guilty.
When a Florida jury took charge on a first degree murder charge against Michael Dunn, a software developer, the state's ...
Facts: On October 3, 1974, Memphis Police Officers Hymon and Wright were dispatched to answer a “prowler inside call.” When the police arrived at the scene, a neighbor gestured to the house where she had heard glass breaking and that someone was breaking into the house. While one of the officer radioed that they were on the scene, the other officer went to the rear of the house hearing a door slam and saw someone run across the backyard. The suspect, Edward Garner stopped at a 6-feet-high fence at the edge of the yard and proceeded to climb the fence as the police officer called out “police, halt.” The police officer figured that if Garner made it over the fence he would get away and also “figured” that Garner was unarmed. Officer Hymon then shot him, hitting him in the back of the head. In using deadly force to prevent the escape of Garner, Hymon used the argument that actions were made under the authority of the Tennessee statute and pursuant to Police Department policy. Although the department’s policy was slightly more restrictive than the statute it still allowed the use of deadly force in cases of burglary. Garner’s fathers’ argument was made that his son was shot unconstitutionally because he was captured and shot possessing ten dollars that he had stolen and being unarmed showing no threat of danger to the officer. The incident was then reviewed by the Memphis Police Firearm’s Revie...
On the night of February 26, 2012 “George Zimmerman who was the coordinator for his Sanford neighborhood watch association is charged with second-degree murder in the death of a young boy. Trayvon Martin, an unarmed high school student from Miami, Florida. (Alvarez) The case began in a small city of Sanford as a routine homicide but soon evolved into a civil rights case, examining racial profiling. On the night of the attack Zimmerman was told not to get out of his car when he was following Trayvon. He described Trayvon as a “guy who looks up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something” Trayvon had his back to Zimmerman the whole time he was on the phone with the Dispatcher, from what the conversation was saying. When the dispatcher asked Zimmerman “is the guy white, black, or Hispanic? “Zimmerman says that he “looks” black, Zimmerman still has yet to see if Trayvon was black, white, or even Hispanic because Trayvon was walking the other direction. Later on in the conversation is when Zimmerman said “now he’s just staring at me”. That would have been the right time to mention the race of Trayvon. As the dispatcher was asking mo...
The case involved a neighborhood watchman, who happened to be on duty when he saw a young black man wearing a sweater jacket called a “hoodie”, walking through the neighborhood. George Zimmerman, the watchman, who was twenty-eight years old at the time, called authorities about a suspicious character walking around in his neighborhood. The authorities told him not to do anything; just continue with his rounds and not worry. Zimmerman, however, decided he would take matters into his own hands. He confronted the young man; they got into a brawl and Zimmerman pulled out a gun and shot and killed Martin. That premise will play a role in this paper as an argument as to why George Zimmerman should have been convicted of committing a crime. Even if the jury could not have reasons to convict him of the second degree murder of Trayvon Martin; they had other choices.
Criminals can come in many different shapes and sizes. For example, a criminal can be classified as being a murderer or a criminal could just simply have committed fraud in a business setting. There is a large diversity of criminals and it is the judge’s job to determine what is a fair punishment for a guilty verdict. Judge Ron Swanson, a federal judge for the Florida District Court of Appeal, deals with using cost-benefit analysis daily to determine what is fair for everyone involved. Before becoming a judge, Judge Swanson was a prosecutor coming out of law school in the University of Florida. As a prosecutor and a judge, Judge Swanson has always worked to bring justice for the victims, the defendant if he or she is innocent, and for the citizens
Throughout history there has been considerable tension between race and crimes committed. The court trial of Bernhard Goetz initiated debate on race and crime in the major cities, and the limitations of self-defense. Bernhard Goetz in 1984 shot five bullets in a New York City subway, seriously wounding four young black men. After turning himself into the police nine days later, the public now knew who was the shooter. Bernhard Goetz was entitled the “Subway Vigilante”. The subway shooting incident ideally exemplified the exasperation with the high crime rates of the 1980s. Due to the time period that this incident occurred, Bernhard Goetz was commended and reviled in the media surrounding the case, and the public’s standpoint. The subway shooting, and the court trial following the shooting, lead to the uprise of the fight against crime in major cities. Justice is difficult to define, and in controversial acquittal of Bernhard Goetz, justice in this sense, was not served.
Defendant Freddie Lee Hall filed a motion to declare Florida Statute 921.137 (Florida Statute) as contrary to Atkins v. Virginia (2002) and, thus, unconstitutional. Hall, convicted in 1981 for the murder of Karol Hurst, was initially sentenced to death in September 1982. For three years, he fought his sentence, filing “a motion to vacate, a petition for writ of habeas corpus and an application for a stay of execution, all of which were denied” . In 1986, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals heard his appeal and reversed part of the lower court’s ruling, a decision granted when the court found Hall “entitled to a hearing on the issues of his absence from the courtroom and whether he deliberately bypassed his ineffective assistance of counsel claim” .
RELATED MURDER TRIALS: Making A Murderer: The Case For And Against Steve Avery And Brendan Dassey
All in all, the man accused of murdering Trayvon Martin, was not found guilty and will undoubtedly be imprinted in America’s history. As a result of the verdict, many citizens were alarmed around the nation and has generated an immense amount of controversy. The three academic government reports I have used explained why crimes occur within certain neighborhoods and what can be used to prevent and deter individuals from committing the same type of offense.
In recent years American citizens have increasingly felt the need to protect themselves. This has led to laws being established in many states widely known as stand your ground laws. These laws allow citizens to take action if they feel their life is threatened or they are in potential harm, instead of retreating. Without doubt this has led to much controversy with individuals taking strong stances on both sides of the issue. Some feel it’s a necessity, while others take the opinion that it is unethical and needs to be repealed across all states. With many high profile cases such as the Treyvon Martin case, these laws have come under a lot of fire and scrutiny. Cynthia Tucker who is an African American visiting professor at the University of Georgia, experienced journalist and 2007 Pulitzer prize winner, has established her side of the issue in her article ‘Stand your Ground’ Laws Encourage Vigilantes. In her article Cynthia Tucker strongly takes the stance that Stand your ground laws should be repealed and lead gun totting vigilantes to spread bigotry and racial hate. The author of this article ineffectively demonstrates how ‘stand your ground’ laws have encouraged vigilantism due to her lack of evidence, biased opinions on the matter, and her poor claims related to the topic.
A study of race and jury trials in Florida published last year in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, found that “conviction rates for black and white defendants are similar when there is at least some representation of blacks in the jury pool.” But all-white juries are a very different story—they convict blacks 16% more often than they convict whites (2).
There are major problems with our criminal justice system. In the last one hundred years, there have been more than 75 documented cases of wrongful conviction of criminal homicide. According to a 1987 Stanford University survey, at least 23 Americans have been wrongly executed in the 20th century. For this very reason, the State of Illinois imposed a moratorium on the state?s death penalty in 2000 when it was discovered that 13 inmates on its Death Row were wrongly convicted. Anthony Porter, one of the 13, spent 15 years on Death Row and was within two days of being executed, before a group of Northwestern journalism students uncovered evidence that was used to prove his innocence.
...ed United States. U.S. Government Accounting Office. Capital Punishment. Washington: GPO, 1994 Cheatwood, Derral and Keith Harries. The Geography of Execution: The Capital Punishment Quagmire in America. Rowman, 1996 NAACP Legal Defense Fund . Death Row. New York: Hein, 1996 "Ex-Death Row Inmate Cleared of Charges." USA Today 11 Mar. 1999: 2A "Fatal Flaws: Innocence and the Death Penalty." Amnesty International. 10 Oct. 1999 23 Oct. 1999 Gest, Ted. "House Without a Blue Print." US News and World Report 8 Jul. 1996: 41 Stevens, Michelle. "Unfairness in Life and Death." Chicago Sun-Times 7 Feb. 1999: 23A American Bar Association. The Task Ahead: Reconciling Justice with Politics. 1997 United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Uniform Crime Report. Washington: GPO, 1994 Wickham, DeWayne. "Call for a Death Penalty Moratorium." USA Today 8 Feb. 1999: 17A ILKMURPHY
Excerpt From: Flip a Coin: Heads, Stand Your Ground is Good Law…Tails, Stand Your Ground is Bad Law
Your honor, we the jury are here today to give our decision on the punishment in the case before the court titled the state of Texas v. James Broadnax. Your honor, as you and everyone in the court room here today recalls, the defendant was charged of murdering two people in their mid-to-late twenties. For the record purposes sir, let the record show the two victims go by the names of Mr. Stephen Swan and Mr. Matthew Butler. Let the record also further indicate the defendant goes by the name of Mr. James Broadmax.
This case is about a 16-year-old kid from Miami named Trayvon Martin. On the night of February 26th, Trayvon walked from his father's house in a gated community to a nearby store. When walking back, he was spotted by George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old neighborhood watch volunteer. There have been a number of break-ins in the neighborhood over the last few weeks and Zimmerman thought that a young black man walking in the rain and wearing a hooded sweatshirt looked suspicious. Zimmerman then called 911 to report the person who "might be on drugs."