Florida stand your ground case conviction.

[Bob F]

[trader_4]

Sounds right to me. I saw the video, where the black guy's wife or gf was arguing with the guy, then the black guy came over and shoved him to the ground. But after that, he was about 6 feet away, moving away, turning away, when the white guy on the ground shot him. It was also at a convenience store, broad daylight, not 3AM in the hood. The black guy was clearly wrong to assault him, but the white guy had no justification for what he did either.

[Joe]

Lazy able-bodied welfare democrats park in handicap spots all the time. It's too bad we can't legally shoot them.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Yeah, I'd have liked to shoot the SOB too, but when the gun was pulled out he seemed to back away. Legally, you can't shoot if the person is retreating.

It was pointed out in the trial that he did have every right to pull out his gun but when the person did not advance he did not have the right to shoot. All this happened in seconds and I was wondering if the jury would make any allowance for that but no, they did not.

You can speculate, but if there was no gun the shooter may have had the crap kicked out of him, or even killed him. The "stand your ground" law is a good one if properly applied. It was in this case.

There is another case going to trial in Miami. Again, the incident was caught on video. Waste of taxpayer money to fight it. IMO, the guy was just a second aggressor.

[gfretwell]

I think all of the hysteria over stand your ground is just that hysterics. We are proving in court that it is a very limited defense.

[Rod Speed]

One trial and one jury verdict proves nothing.

[rbowman]

At least in this state the juries exhibit quite a bit of common sense.

[micky]

So A killed B in front of B's three children, including a 5-year old that he had been holding.

He hit him "because he had no idea if he was going back to his car to get a weapon". What a great reason.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Two wrong made another wrong. A was a self appointed keeper of the handicapped parking spot. he has complained to others parking there too. B was wrong in pushing him down. A shot B even though he did stop at the sight of the gun.

Now, those are facts, easy to see. You can speculate what may have happened had not gun been pulled out, but the law does not allow speculation.

As for the kids, there were not considered by either party. It is not right for the father to be beating up other people either.

Looks like there was plenty of time to just leave. There was no reason for the passenger to get out of the car.

[trader_4]

What's amazing is how despite all these incidents being in the news, with all the bad consequences, some people still go looking for trouble. The handicapped parking thing, for every person that looks like they really are handicapped and need it, I see 5 or more that visually at least, you can't see any disability. In those, I suspect that the majority, the handicap display that they have is probably for someone else, not them and they are illegally using it. For one thing, IDK of many diseases where you have no walking disability where they tell you not to walk. But I bet even the cops don't do anything about it. They would have to go ask the person to show their handicap papers and prove that they are the person tied to the display. I have a friend who lives part time in NC now, he's legitimately handicapped and he says down there people with no handicap display park in handicapped spots all the time, take up most or all of them and no one, ie the cops, does anything about it. Here in the NYC area they do enforce that at least.

So, I understand that guy in FL had a pet peave about those spots and people illegally using them. The woman was an inconsiderate ass to take one, especially if there were only a couple. I wonder if anyone ever found out why he was like that? But certainly in today's world to be going up to people and telling them they shouldn't be parking in a handicap space has some risk. And if you do, I guess that can still be OK, but the really big mistake is if the person flips you off, then you need to walk away and call the cops, not escalate into an argument.

A good example of a dope doing that was when I was at a pharmacy in Target. I was having an issue with the clerk behind the counter, I had told them something they were doing that I thought wasn't right and instead of simply acknowledging my feedback and saying she will report it to management, the clerk proceeded to start to argue with me, tell me I'm wrong. So, there is this woman who was next in line, and what does she do? She starts in with me, telling me that I'm wrong, it's not the clerk's fault, etc. Never mind that I never said it was the clerk's fault. Never mind that it's none of this woman's business. Never mind that you're supposed to stand back and not listen to confidential discussions at the pharmacy. So, I wound up in a shouting match with this idiot, with me telling her it's none of her business. And then what? After I was out of the pharmacy section, 5 mins later, she's back in my face, starting it all over again! I'm like, I can't believe your back here again, mind your own business. I had to keep yelling at her, get away from me, get out of my face. Then as I was leaving the store the moron was in the parking lot with her cell phone! I think she took a picture of me and called the cops. Unbelievable. But that's what's out there today. And then when one of these jerks meets another one, someone winds up dead.

[Ed Pawlowski]

There are plenty of abuses. In CT a few months back there was a crackdown. At a concert, handicapped parking was free. Police checked the ID and confiscated over 50 passes. The real owners had to go get them back. Grammy won't be so quick to lend out her pass.

I know a guy that had one in his 30s. People would see him get out of the car and sometimes give him a bunch of shit. He never said a word, just pulled up his pant leg to expose his prosthetic. Shut them up fast.

After hearing your testimony, I'd say "not Guilty" if you shot her. People just don't know when to shut up at times.

[gfretwell]

There have been several and in every case, if it was really murder, they got a conviction. Stand your Ground has not been a blanket excuse to shoot people. You still need to prove the threat was imminent. The standard may actually be tougher now since there is so much scrutiny.

[gfretwell]

As Bob and others have pointed out in the parking lot shooting the guy was backing up. If he had kept coming, that would have not even been prosecuted I imagine. He had already shown aggression but the threat stopped being imminent when he backed away. It is a reasonable standard.

[gfretwell]

The shooter still needed to see the weapon or have the guy come at him again to have a case. Only the cops are allowed to shot you based on what you might do. (wrong but accepted these days)

[gfretwell]

The law is pretty clear. If you don't have the tag or window hanger, you are not handicapped and I agree there is plenty of abuse by those who do have the window hanger. They tend to get hung up there whether the handicapped person is getting out of the car or even there in the first place. The tag is there all of the time and may outlive the person who got it. It does amaze people sometime that the handicapped spots are not always the closes to the door. They just need to be closest to the "accessible route". If the ramp is at the end of that sidewalk in front of the store, that is where the handicapped spots will be and that might be on the side of the building 100 feet from the door.

[gfretwell]

The guy I know with an artificial foot (mid calf down) refused to get the tag. He says he gets along fine.

[trader_4]

Oh my, we agree on a shooting case. What did you think about the Eric Garner death in NYC? They just fired the cop. He was not criminally charged. I thought that was the right decision too. I don't think they had a good criminal case against the cop, but he did violate police rules, he used a choke hold that he was trained was not to be used, there were several cops on top of the guy, he wasn't mostly restrained and the buy wound up dead, bringing discredit to the cops, lawsuits, etc. Sounds like firing him was the right decision to me. The only other aspect of that is there was a black female supervisor there and she lost a couple weeks of vacation pay. I don't know enough about the rest of that part, ie was she actually watching and aware of what he was doing, etc. But it raises questions about why he gets fired, while a supervisor, who should be even more responsible for doing things right, gets a slap on the wrist. Could it be because she's a black woman?

[trader_4]

Good example of the problem, how you really can't tell who is and who isn't handicapped. That sting at the concert sounds like it was an excellent idea.

The cops got me once 35 years ago. I has to be at an event at a hotel in north jersey for work. The parking lot was full, no sign of any alternate parking spaces, no signs telling you where you could go, no parking available on the street. There was a whole row of handicapped spaces, at least a dozen, none in use. So, I parked in the one farthest away from the entrance. While inside, the hotel made an announcement that the cops were on the way. I immediately went outside, but the cops were already there and they gave me a ticket anyway, even though there were only a couple cars and plenty of empty handicapped spaces. That made me mad. Even worse, it's a mandatory court appearance and the stupid court date was when I had to be in NYC for another event. I got to court and one skunk after another was going up to the prosecutor. Driving 90 in a 65? No problem, I;ll plead that down to 76mph. Running a red light? No problem, I'll plead that down to something with no points. Killed your mother? No problem, I'll plead that down. So, I go up to him with my $150 ticket and what does he say? I can't do anything about that.....

Even better, if anything did happen, I'd have the store video that clearly showed who got into the other's business, who kept trying to get away and who kept pursuing the other.

[trader_4]

That is what I suspect with many of these people I see. But the tag can't outlive the person, at least not for very long, at least here. It has to be renewed with proof from a physician every so many years. I think a lot of them are what you say, someone in the house has it, someone else drives the car and uses it without them. And they probably try to justify it in their own mind by reasoning that they are at the pharmacy or going to the supermarket for the handicapped person And once in that mode, then they just use it as they please.

That concert thing was a perfect place to crack down. Around here, I haven't seen any cops questioning anyone over it. One simple thing would be to make a photo of the person be part of the handicap sign. That might dissuade at least some abusers.

[micky]

One weekend a year the Garber Facility, I think it is, which is where the exhibits for the Air & Space Museum are prepared, has an open house. It's caddy-corner from Andrews Airforce Base southeast of DC. And unless you get there earlyl, it's very crowed with no place to park. And the girl I was with offered to use her mother's Handicapped Parking thing. She was very recently from the Soviet Union, and I told her, "We're not** at war with the government here. The Handicapped rules are for a good reason and we can't use the sign if we're not handicapped." So we had to walk a quarter or half mile, big deal. I don't know if my words had any effect on her. She was sweet and quite pretty, and liked hiking, but I couldn't understand much of what she said. Because of her accent.

**Of course now there are a lot of people at war with the government. I'm not one of them.

It turned out that the place was open 5 or 6 days a week all year. They didn't have volunteer docents the rest of the year, but they did have some explanatory signs. One of the things they were working on that day was the Enola Gay, which must be on display by now.

There's another branch of the museum a couple miles from Dulles Airport, especially for things too big for the one on the Mall. If you ever have time when changing planes there. Worth arranging your flights to do this. The museum is free, but the parking lot is expensive. ;-) So if you take a cab, it's free.