Tag Archives: Stand Your Ground law

national news

Zimmerman can't avoid brushes with law

George Zimmerman was acquitted of a crime after he shot Trayvon Martin to death three years ago.

You’d think he’d just fade away, get his life back in order, never to be seen or heard from again. Correct?

Nope. It’s been a rough ride for the one-time neighborhood vigilante.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/george-zimmerman-killed-trayvon-martin-3-years-ago-hes-become-no-stranger-to-the-law/ar-BBhZFi0

The case opened up a serious wound about how young black men are treated by those in authority. That debate is still raging.

Zimmerman has had several scrapes with the law. Some of them have involved weapons and aggravated assault.

It’s fair to ask: Are the incidents post-trial a result of the notoriety he got when he shot the young man in Florida or do they serve as a prologue to the sort of attention he garnered?

I am not prepared to answer that. I’m just asking.

But as an average American citizen who wasn’t too engaged in the shooting incident and the subsequent trial, I keep wishing Zimmerman would do what some of us expected him to do after the jury acquitted him.

I want him to disappear.

 

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Bad idea to boycott Florida

A California assemblyman has proposed a patently bad idea in response to a controversial trial verdict.

Democrat Chris Holden wants Californians to “boycott Florida” because a Sanford jury acquitted George Zimmerman in the case involving the February 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-florida-boycott-california-legislature-trayv-20130721,0,1560540.story

Can there be a more bizarre reaction to something so fundamental as a jury doing its job?

Holden says Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law deserves to be targeted by a boycott. That’s an interesting point, given – as the Los Angeles Times editorial board has noted – Zimmerman didn’t invoke the law in his defense.

I’m one of those who believes the jury might have gotten it wrong in acquitting Zimmerman. But to launch a boycott pitting states against each other in what the LA Times calls “an economic war between the states” is an overreaction in the extreme.

I also am one of those who tends to respect a jury’s decision – no matter if I think it’s the wrong one – and seeks reasonable remedies. Punishing business owners by invoking a blanket boycott – regardless of a business owner’s personal views on the “Stand Your Ground” law – is profoundly unreasonable.

Let’s keep debating the issues surrounding the Zimmerman trial, but let’s do so without hysterics.