Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Massad Ayoob on the Castle Doctrine and Stand Your Ground Laws
Notice how he conspicuously avoided any discussion of how we determine if the threat was what it was supposed to be when the criminal gets away or ends up dead. For Ayoob, and most of the gun-rights nuts, every gun owner is to be believed. I guess this is their extreme version of innocent until proven guilty. It's convenient for adding up the numbers and protecting each other, even when they do wrong.
Underlying this gun-rights extremism is the faulty premise that the gun owner's life is worth more than the other guy's. Can you shoot someone for looking at you sideways? Yes, absolutely, as long as afterwards you exaggerate just a tiny bit the look. This, of course, goes hand in hand with the famous advice about center of mass. Dead guys cannot tell us their side of things.
If you think that doesn't happen and if you think the increase in justifiable shootings has nothing to do with gun-rights fanatics like Ayoob preaching his bullshit, you'd be wrong, dead wrong.
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Mike, he gets into that right away. 1:35 he starts talking about "preponderance of reasonableness". It's not the law's job to say whether or not it was a good shoot. If it wasn't reasonable to the investigating officers, prosecutors, judges, and ultimately a jury of your peers- then the shooter rots in prison. That's the way it works with or without SYG.
ReplyDeleteHe did not talk about the fact that often the only one providing the evidence is the shooter himself, did he?
DeleteMaybe you meant "statement" instead of "evidence". The shooter provides a statement to what happened and the police collect evidence at the scene. If they don't match up, guess what happens?
DeleteAnd when the only witness is the shooter, is it really difficult for him to match his statement to the evidence? Is there concrete evidence to tell if the dead guy was really posing a threat or not?
Delete"Notice how he conspicuously avoided any discussion of how we determine if the threat was what it was supposed to be when the criminal gets away or ends up dead."
ReplyDeleteHe seemed to cover it pretty well to me. According to Mr. Ayoob's description, the defendant has to request a stand your ground hearing and the burden is on the defendant to prove by preponderance of evidence that it was a justifiable use of deadly force. I'm assuming that there is someone from the prosecutor's office to keep things honest.
As Ayoob states, do the math, if a defendant can prove to a judge that he acted properly, how would a prosecutor ever be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he acted criminally? And as he also mentions, criminals have been using the self defense argument (among others) for as long as there have been homicides.
The defendant? What defendant? The shooter who is the only one describing how things went will never be a defendant, even when he should be.
DeleteNone of you guys seem willing to admit that often that's exactly the situation.
Mr. Ayoob specifically mentioned that someone intending to request a stand your ground hearing doesn't prevent a prosecutor from filing charges against the person who used deadly force. Keep in mind that the defense can also be invoked when there hasn't been a death.
DeleteZimmerman had been charged before he decided not request a stand your ground hearing and just use a standard justifiable use of force defense in the trial.
Yeah, I heard the concern for evil and over-zealous prosecutors who try to wrongly accuse the shooter of a crime. But I didn't hear anything about the shooters who acted unnecessarily or prematurely. Ayoob and the rest of you pretend that never happens.
Delete