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Posted by Andrew Branca on August 25, 2013 44 Comments
The much ballyhooed efforts to repeal the Stand Your Ground law in Florida have suffered an ignominious and well-deserved death. An enormous and bi-partisan majority of Florida legislators —72%– this week overwhelmingly declined to hold a special session for the purpose of even debating the...

Posted by Andrew Branca on August 22, 2013 20 Comments
Shellie Zimmerman, wife of George Zimmerman, was scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday, for a hearing on perjury charges brought against her in connection with her husband’s recent murder trial. This hearing has been postponed. In place of the trial, a status conference on...

Posted by Andrew Branca on August 19, 2013 72 Comments
Via Amanda Turkel at Huffington Post comes news that The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has released a video “reenactment” of the shooting of Trayvon Martin in order to encourage people to oppose “Stand Your Ground Laws”: The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has released a...

Posted by Andrew Branca on August 18, 2013 36 Comments
We’ll be covering the second degree murder trial of Merritt Landry, who was charged with second degree attempted murder for his shooting 14-year-old Marshall Coulter (described as a “professional thief” by his brother in news reports). Coulter had scaled a spiked metal fence to enter...

Posted by Andrew Branca on August 11, 2013 58 Comments
Just when you thought the Zimmerman case couldn’t get any crazier, here we go. An amicus curiae brief has been filed in support of a motion to re-try George Zimmerman for second-degree murder. The full brief is embedded at the bottom of this post.  (“Amicus curiae”...

Posted by Andrew Branca on August 07, 2013 64 Comments
It is perhaps inevitable that comparisons will be drawn between the  recently completed murder/self-defense trial of George Zimmerman in Florida and the just beginning travails of self-defense shooter Merritt Landry in New Orleans. Indeed, I’ve already begun to do so myself (see “Zimmerman Redux: The...

Posted by Andrew Branca on July 31, 2013 37 Comments
Of the 50 states in the US, 49 of them require the State to disprove a defendant’s claim of self-defense, beyond a reasonable doubt. Ohio, on the other hand, requires that the defendant prove self-defense by a preponderance of the evidence. Why is Ohio Such...

Posted by Andrew Branca on July 26, 2013 122 Comments
As happens with gratifying frequency, one of the Legal Insurrection commenters today made a great contribution to yesterday’s thread, “When Is Evidence of Your Attacker’s Character Admissible In Court?” This particular comment was posted by “Edgehopper” (I could tell you his real name, but then...

Posted by Andrew Branca on July 25, 2013 94 Comments
During the Zimmerman trial there was considerable consternation among much of the public that the trial judge, Debra Nelson, had excluded certain evidence about Trayvon Martin’s past, including his apparent drug use, illegal firearms dealing, passion for “street fighting”, among other pleasant character traits. Now...

Posted by Andrew Branca on July 24, 2013 209 Comments
Hungry for another claimed example of a deadly Stand-Your-Ground defensive encounter, the mainstream media has seized upon the gas-station shooting death of a black man by a rifle-armed woman, also black, this past Sunday in Houston. Video of the encounter was captured by the gas...

Posted by Andrew Branca on July 20, 2013 85 Comments
As the racialist wing of our body politic suffers through the Kubler-Ross seven stages of grief at the “Not Guilty” verdict in the Zimmerman trial, we find that they are currently transitioning from the “Anger” to “Bargaining” stage. How do we know? Because all they...

Posted by Andrew Branca on July 19, 2013 54 Comments
Now that the Zimmerman criminal trial has concluded, much attention has focused on the prospects for Zimmerman seeking protection under Florida’s self-defense immunity statute from any possible civil action against him. Florida’s statute 776.032, is among the broader self-defense immunity statutes, in that it possesses...

Posted by Andrew Branca on July 18, 2013 112 Comments
In 2005 the Florida legislator enacted statute 776.032. “Immunity from criminal prosecution and civil action for justifiable use of force.” This immunity statute is often erroneously referred to as Florida’s Stand-Your-Ground (SYG) law, even by lawyers, judges, and law professors who ought to know better...

Posted by Andrew Branca on July 16, 2013 71 Comments
Well, that’s it. George Zimmerman has his legal victory. Late in the night on Saturday, July 13, 2013, George officially survived a brutal and malicious legal assault backed by the full power of a State government intent on hanging a life sentence on an innocent man...
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