There has been a lot written, including here, about Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, and the role it played in the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman.
Almost all of the criticisms of the law as applied to this case revolve around the allegation that the law creates a propensity for violence in persons invoking the law, a supposed license to kill.
This alleged license to kill is part of the attack by Color of Change on ALEC.
Such propensity, of course, requires that the shooter know the law exists. That apparently was the case in an unrelated shooting in Texas where the shooter repeatedly mentioned the law while on the phone with the police (he was convicted of murder and received an lengthy sentence).
On Hannity tonight, however, Zimmerman said that prior to the incident he never heard of the Stand Your Ground law.
It doesn’t change Zimmerman’s guilt or innocence in the shooting, but it does put a new twist on the public debate assuming Zimmerman is telling the truth that he had no prior knowledge of the Stand Your Ground law.
Zimmerman also added details of the night, which will be added in an update, along with video when available.
Update: Transcript is here.
Here’s the full sequence of segments. Portion about Stand Your Ground law starts at 3:20 of first video:
HANNITY: A lot of this case legally — and we are going to get to Mark in a few minutes here and ask him about a lot of legal aspects, because there are so many of them in this case — has to do with stand your ground. You have heard a lot about it. And I was just curious, prior to this night, this incident, had you even heard stand your ground? ZIMMERMAN: No, sir. HANNITY: You have never heard about it before? ZIMMERMAN: No.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/hannity/2012/07/18/exclusive-george-zimmerman-breaks-silence-hannity?page=1#ixzz212EVMCzO
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