the problem with your argument is that the people in your camp have had george zimmerman tried and convicted since the day of the event. when the racial motivation was proved to be untrue - due to your liberal media distorting the facts - you then tried to prove zimmerman had no injuries.
now that it is clear he did have injuries, you want to attack the SYG law.
frankly, it think it is best not to convict people in the court of public opinion. that isn't just.
what people of your persuasion and a complicit media have done to george zimmerman and his family is nothing short of lynching.
if i understand you correctly, you are ok with out-of-state groups that are supportive of 'interfering' in the wisconsin recall, but not out-of-state groups that are opposed to the recall effort ?
if the people of wisconsin are so against walker and his policies, why has (educational) union membership in the state fallen almost 50% since walker enacted his right to work changes ? surely if they disagree with walker they would be even stronger union supporters and encourage others to join ?
Dear Anonymous:
Perhaps you have not read the autopsy report, but we have. Trayvon Martin was killed by a single gun shot wound to his heart shot from a gun at an "intermediate distance." The man who killed him and who admitted he fired that shot is George Zimmerman. Martin was unarmed; he possessed only the clothes on his back, Skittles, tea, and his phone.
Those are the facts.
The question for the jury is whether Zimmerman will be convicted for shooting this unarmed young man to death, given how the law was changed to make it harder to convict. That is the very question the writer posed. And we have previously documented how the law has been cited to prevent other shooters of unarmed men from even facing a trial before a jury where the defendant has to establish a claim of self-defense, versus the grant of legal immunity provided by the law ALEC backed as a national model.
You have been deeply misled by the NRA or other propaganda if you believe that without this law you have no right of self-defense if you or your wife's life is in danger. Contrary to the claims made in defense of the SYG laws, in every state Americans have long had a right of self defense, to use deadly force to protect themselves against deadly force. That is the real "castle doctrine" that has been part of U.S. law for more than two centuries.
What the SYG model bill changed was whether you have to prove to a jury of your peers that your actions in self-defense were justified based on the facts you faced; what the bill does is attempt to relieve the shooter of that burden of proof by granting him legal immunity, to prevent a case from getting to a jury or to make it harder for the prosecutor to overcome such a legal presumption and for a jury to convict. Often murder charges and self defense claims involve just two witnesses: two people, one living and one dead.
If your loved one were the victim of such a shooting and the shooter claimed self-defense, wouldn't you want the case to be heard by a jury with the ability to consider whether the killer's actions were justified based on the facts? But the SYG law has been cited to give legal immunity to killers and prevent cases from getting to a jury, based on the assertions of the shooter--who is not under oath and has strong incentives to lie about about the circumstances of the killing. In the Zimmerman case, the SYG law was initially cited to prevent the case from being fully investigated and to try to prevent a jury from hearing the evidence and rendering a judgment, guilty or not guilty.
So, what's sad is both that good people have been given disinformation by proponents of ALEC's SYG laws that leads to misunderstanding what the law does and also that the SYG law has been used to prevent the American jury system from doing its job of impartially evaluating whether the use of deadly force was justified, versus just taking the shooter's word that it was.
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