if in these four minutes that are unaccounted for, if in those four minutes unaccounted for trayvon martin was, in fact, having fisticuffs with george zimmerman, why is that not his absolute right to self-defense as an american citizen. he is being followed by a stranger who is not a law enforcement officer who is armed, who is willing to kill them. by the way, can i say the castle doctrine where stand your ground emanates from states if you re in your castle, your car or property, 60 yards from his castle, according to castle doctrine if he shot george zimmerman in theory he would have stand your ground place. he s in a place he s allowed to be, stand your ground law, a place he has no duty to flee from. he didn t have a duty to flee from george zimmerman. if he shot and killed him, theoretically he would have a stand your ground case. it doesn t work for black
thing boils down to the stand your ground rule where you have a man who can take a concealed gun, initiate a confrontation, and then if he starts to lose can shoot his opponent dead. in the end they didn t actually use stand your ground as their defense though they could have done, but self-defense is almost the same thing, and it does seem i keep coming back to this. it seems quite extraordinary that you can shoot an unarmed teenager dead, and you don t even get arrested that night. as you pointed out, this is not a stand your ground case. right. and i m against a stand your ground case. good for you, good. the castle doctrine which is what most of america uses, this would be the same analysis that s done across the country. they would do the exact same thing. basically they would look at perception of the individual. if you got up in the middle of the night and shot somebody coming through the window of your home and it turned out to be a 17-year-old neighbor who your d
attacked in any place where he had a right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force, if he reasonably believed it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony. now, in the stand your ground law in the florida statute t says similar language, lisa. a person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has the right to be has no duty to retreat. it s literally word for word here what i have here in the jury instructions and the stand your ground law, which we know became a hot part of this story in the beginning and even resulted in a task force in florida looking at and ultimately keeping that law in place. isn t that interesting how the pendulum has swung back and forth about stand your ground s applicability to this case? initially this case got a lot of attention a
patrick, what are we talking about in terms of getting a verdict? i think they re going to deliberate obviously tonight. they have the jury instructions. tomorrow. i would not be shocked if it comes out on sunday. they can work through the weekend. it is their decision. i wouldn t be surprised if it came out early monday morning. i agree with seema. you got to take second-degree murder off the table. there s an intent element there. frankly, the prosecution focused really on the manslaughter charge. it s really about self-defense. that s why the theme of the prosecution s closing argument, which i wish john guy gave the opening and closing the whole time, by the way, but this is not a stand your ground case. this is a stay in your car case. he was very compelling in making that point and really bringing it home at the end there. paul, what about this question of what we were talking about before, whether it s not guilty and whether the
believes this expert and what he is saying is true, trayvon martin, this 17-year-old unarmed kid was shot while begging for his life. this is not a self-defense case. it s not a stand your ground case. it s murder. give me the bottom line, lisa, on what we ve heard so far in these hearings. where does it come down to you as one that has certainly done a lot of legal analysis. if i may put aside my legal hat for a moment, just hearing these screams, this boy saying stop, i m begging you, and knowing that these are the final moments of his life is so powerful. it s powerful to me just hearing it through the television screen. i think this is going to be tremendously compelling in court for the jury. well, tomorrow morning they will resume the hearing to see if this stuff is admissible. this is very, very important,