I think there’s something that people should keep in mind. Our political vocabulary is chock-full of euphemisms. What used to be known, with brutal accuracy, as “the War Department” is now called “the Department of Defense”. The unmanageable agglomeration of government functions that includes the Border Patrol, the Customs Service, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, and many other components that were originally parts of the Treasury, the Department of Justice, the Department of Agriculture, and just about every other major government agency now has the Orwellian-sounding name “the Department of Homeland Security”.
We do not have a justice system. We have a legal system. We believe, in an article of faith as mystical as transubstantiation, that our legal system is the best way of administering justice. Maybe it is. Maybe justice is an accident (in Aristotelian terms) of the legal system. But it’s not a justice system and we shouldn’t expect justice from it.
The most we should expect from the legal system is that it follow the laws and after that just hope for the best.
Justice is in the eye of the beholder; attorneys on both sides of a dispute seek to wield justice as a sword and as a shield; and when all is done, one or both sides will decry the lack of it. But you’re right, the system only seeks to guarantee due process and the system has its own independent concerns.
In most jurisdictions, when you offer an affirmative defense to homicide, such as self-defense, it is the defendant’s burden of proof. In Florida, if you claim self-defense, it is up to the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt it wasn’t self-defense. Meanwhile, a black woman in Florida was given 20 years for firing a warning shot.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57433184/fla-mom-gets-20-years-for-firing-warning-shots/
Florida legislators got exactly what they wanted: a dead black kid. The blame is on them, and secondarily on the prosecutors for this fiasco, not on the jury.
If I haven’t made my views clear, I think that George Zimmerman is an idiot and probably continues to be dangerously so; I think the prosecutors are not just incompetent but probably guilty of misconduct in this case. I have my doubts about the judge as well.
I think that “stand your ground” laws are ill-considered. My experience as a self-defense teacher, martial artist, and (long ago) sometime street fighter tells me that retreating should be one’s first line of defense; more aggressive means should be used only when retreat is impossible, for you or for others.
I don’t know enough about Florida’s self-defense laws to comment intelligently.
I find those calling for “justice”, meaning George Zimmerman’s blood, are just as misguided as those defending him or Zimmerman himself. I also think that those who are assuming racism on Zimmerman’s part are guilty of the same thing they’re accusing Zimmerman of: racial profiling. He’s a white redneck because he looks white.
The legal system has done its work, at least in the criminal courts. It may not be perfect but it’s the best we’ve got.
I never saw Zimmerman as a redneck. But I think we both know the type. He’s a wanna-be tough guy, wanna-be cop.
I’ve taken a bit of martial arts — nothing like you’ve done — but I remember lesson number one when the instructor said, “I’m going to show you the first and best self-defense move.” He turned and ran away. This from a guy who, suffice to say, was way tougher than Zimmerman. (Or me.) Julia’s Tae Kwon Do teacher — little Korean guy apparently made entirely of stainless steel — used to emphasize the value of smiling. Smile more, fight less.
I don’t know if Zimmerman had a race thing or not. But the Florida legislature is another matter. When an outcome is this predictable you have to assume malicious intent or stupidity or some combination of the two.
@Zachriel, the vast majority of the states have the same rule as Florida, a plea of self-defense places the burden on the prosecution to disprove self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt. As far as Eugene Volokh is aware, only Ohio holds to the minority position that the defense must prove self-defense by a preponderance of the evidence. I know Illinois has the same basic self-defense rules as Florida as I’ve been following a particularly gruesome self-defense trial here. I’ve not seen much different in terms of laws applied in Florida that would be any different in Illinois.
Is there some reason Florida overcharges? Casey Anthony was another case. She and George Zimmerman would have been convicted of a lesser charges, and they would be doing time. It would have been between 5 and 10, but they would not be running the streets.
OK, one difference in Florida law is the six person jury for a murder case, which I should have remembered because the substance of Volokh’s comment I was referencing was a call to change that.
When I studied self-defense in school, the predominant paradigm was the “Burning Bed,” the wife that is abused physically and emotionally, and then one day shoots her husband. There were multiple real cases coming out of the 70s and 80s involving variations on women shooting their husbands while they slept, while in the room of their house, at the bar down the street, etc. In these contexts, self-defense had much more support from liberals, who argued that while the killing was morally wrong, it was also morally wrong to punish the wife through the criminal justice system. While some of these cases were resolved through some sort of insanity approach, the larger legal assessment appeared to be that the law would focus on whether the killer had a reasonable apprehension of death or serious bodily harm, in which case many of the various details would by and large be ignored because nobody under such an apprehension can be expected to act entirely rationally. If they are acting rationally, they will shoot the son-of-a-bitch wherever and whenever the law tells them to.
Dave:
We agree on all particulars here.
One small nit: We didn’t change the name of the War Department to the Defense Department. Prior to 1947, we had a War Department and a Navy Department. That year, we split the War Department, creating a Department of the Army and a Department of Air Force. In 1949, we subordinated the three service branches to a new Department of Defense.
@Tastybits,
I think I’m in the minority on this one, but the charges that went to the jury were about right given the evidence the prosecution had _if you interpreted it the way the prosecution did._ First, a self-defense plea admits the crime accused and Zimmerman admitted a purposeful killing. His statement was the best evidence of a crime that they had. Second-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter are general intent crimes. When the State sought some additional charges (child abuse and aggravated assault), those were also general intent crimes.
Most people seem to think some sort of charge based not upon intent, but recklessness or negligence, should have been brought, but Zimmerman didn’t provide any evidence of that. He didn’t say that he pulled his gun, warned the victim to step back and then the gun discharged accidentally or that the gun somehow went off during a fight (negligence). Eyewitnesses or physical evidence didn’t suggest that Martin was trying to disengage from the fight when Martin shot him in the back (recklessness). The state really had little evidence of the confrontation itself, but what it did claim to have was evidence from before the confrontation (character, movements, and telephone conversation) and afterwards (inconsistencies = lies = guilty conscience), which more go to his intentions.
@Tastybits, I’ll make it shorter; they charged what they did because that is what Zimmerman admitted to, if you don’t believe he was actually acting in self-defense. And they didn’t have hardly any other evidence.
@PD Shaw
The Criminal Code in Louisiana has probably changed, but years ago, negligent homicide would have fit. He would have been arrested for manslaughter and negligent homicide, and in New Orleans, a resisting arrest would be thrown in for good measure. In LA, negligent homicide is a catch-all.
@Tastybits,
One answer is that the initial charge had to guarantee prison time. I can’t imaging what would have happened if they had only charged Zimmerman with aggravated assault at the outset. I think thing would have been burning; it would have been worse than announcing “investigation continues.”
FWIW, a law professor wrote an article in the WSJ sometime in the last week saying that Florida, like New York, doesn’t have a negligent homicide crime for imperfect self-defense situations. He says self-defense is all or nothing. I doubt that’s correct. I think what he means is that the legislature has not specifically addressed the issue, but I’d say courts are always free to interpret a statute criminalizing negligent homicide based upon violations of duties that it finds supported by precedent or reason.