April in Arizona means the pool is ready for swimming and the backyard is ready for barbecues. We clean up the yard and invite a crowd of people over for pulled pork that was in the smoker all day. All the fixings are home made. Aluminum tubs are filled with ice and plenty of bottles of good microbrews. All kinds of people are invited.
I find Carter inside by himself staring at the television with the sound off. I see Trayvon Martin’s picture on the screen and I keep going into the kitchen to get refills of food items for the guests outside. Carter has been drinking and he gives me a dirty look. He stands by the dining room table peering through the pass-through into the kitchen watching me gather up food items. For a second our eyes meet and he starts.
“The day is coming,” he says.
I decide to stop and give Carter my full attention. I know he’s angry. He continues.
“The day is coming when people will come down your street with guns and ask you whether you’re a Christian and a conservative.”
I wait for more, but there is no more. He’s done. He’s seems satisfied. I head for the patio door and I call out to him.
“Come on outside and have some of this fresh cole slaw with the pulled pork. The potato salad is really good too. Jump in the pool. It’ll feel good. Come on now.”
And with that he follows.
I’m not one to unravel. I keep my head. Lately though, it seems everyone’s unhinged. It’s like we woke up one morning and found ourselves in a strange foreign land. It seems familiar enough. It’s a pretty good imitation of the way things used to be. But people can run around now with guns and shoot anyone they choose with absolute impunity. Everyone takes it for granted. It’s self defense, you know. They act as if it has always been this way. We hear about shadowy people who made laws that turned hundreds of years of English common law tradition upside down. Trayvon is not the first who was killed. We hear the word “bounty” and can’t say what it really means. Neo-Nazis are rumored to be patrolling the streets and a woman in another state where more people were killed exclaims, “God bless them. I wish they’d come here."
My dad would turn in his grave except that he was cremated and his ashes sit in an urn. His things are still in the room where I left them after his funeral. I hold the red white and blue flag, folded neatly into a triangle. I try to organize and put things away. The Purple Heart catches my attention and the diary.
“Shells falling.”
“More shelling at midnight.”
“Shelling again. The last one caused the most concern.”
Then there was a lapse of months before he wrote again. He was wounded, taken back to Paris, then England, and once again returned to his unit after recuperation. They had pushed into Germany and were approaching a railway station. There were many people there sleeping on the platform in the daytime. When they drew closer there was a smell. The next day, “Bodies all around.” I look at his familiar handwriting and it clouds over as a tear rolls down the side of my face. He never spoke of any of this.
Once again, I focus my mind on the law. There are four parts.
776.012 Use of force in defense of person.
A person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if he or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself. This is the statute that would be used in Zimmerman’s case.
776.013 Home protection; use of deadly force; presumption of fear of death or great bodily harm.
A person is presumed to have held a reasonable fear. Presumed. That word is important. A person is not even required to assert a reasonable fear or perceived threat because the law automatically presumes reasonable fear. This provision is only for self defense in “the castle.” Deadly force in self defense inside a home, dwelling or vehicle is given special consideration with a presumption of reasonable fear. This provision would not apply to Zimmerman. He wasn’t in his home or car. He was on foot outside.
776.031 Use of force in defense of others.
Doesn’t apply to the case at all.
776.032 Immunity from criminal prosecution and civil action for justifiable use of force
A person who uses force as permitted is immune from criminal prosecution and civil action. Zimmerman supposedly used force as permitted in 776.012. When you take a moment to really parse each word of 776.012 and you disbelieve that it applies to Zimmerman, immunity is literally a "Get Out of Jail Free" card for him. Without the presumption of fear, he does have to explain why he felt that deadly force was necessary. Immunity creates a complete bar to criminal prosecution and civil action and almost makes any story he decided to tell on the night of the murder an acceptable one. The immunity statute essentially requires law enforcement to make determinations without providing any guidelines on how. Law enforcement officers are not trained to conduct the legal analysis required by such determinations of immunity, and the statute provides absolutely no guidance. Once granted, there is no mechanism to withdraw immunity if it was improperly granted; in other words, if law enforcement decides a person is entitled to immunity, the statute does not provide a way for the prosecutor to review the case and withdraw that immunity, if warranted.
Why did they make it so easy for a killer? In signing the bill, Governor Jeb Bush expressed his support of it by stating “to have to retreat to put yourself in a very precarious position defies common sense.” Proponents of the law claim that a person should have the right to “stand like a man” to avoid the humiliation of retreating in the face of a fight. Yet this argument neglects a basic premise of civilized society: respect for life. The most self-evident truth, according to the signers of the Declaration of Independence, is that ”all men . . . are endowed . . . with certain unalienable Rights [including] Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The role of government, therefore, should be to protect life and not create laws jeopardizing the lives of others. This is a law that places lives in danger because a person is permitted to harm, or even kill, another before considering whether an actual threat exists
I worry. It is not at all clear that Zimmerman will ever be charged with anything. The State Attorney running the investigation is an elected official from Jacksonville. How can she make any decisions without considering her own political future in a jurisdiction that’s two-thirds white.
This isn’t the America that I grew up in. It isn’t the America that my dad fought for. He would say that himself if he was here. This law needs to be overturned. Whatever the outcome, we must remember that we owe it to Trayvon to repeal Stand Your Ground laws.
Much of the text I used here in reference to the Florida statutes came from a piece that was written by Elizabeth B. Megale, “Deadly Combinations: How Self-Defense Laws Pairing Immunity with a Presumption of Fear Allow Criminals to ‘Get Away with Murder.’” Professor Megale is an Assistant Professor of Law at Barry University School of Law,Orlando, Florida. This Article was presented at the New Scholars Workshop, Southeastern Association of Law Schools in 2009. It also appeared on the website of a local television station in Florida where a friend spotted it and passed it along to me. I consider Professor Megale’s critical analysis of Florida’s self-defense law to be objective and incisive. She wrote it several years ago and she knew then that there were many inconsistencies with the way the law was being applied. Although the piece is long, and not all of it is applicable to the Trayvon Martin case, it’s a worthwhile read.