It seems that the verdict of a sworn jury in our criminal justice system means little to the haters, who are still screaming that George Zimmerman killed \u201can unarmed seventeen-year-old.\u201d\u00a0 Given that seventeen is old enough to enlist in the Marine Corps and to be tried as an adult \u2013 the Gainesville Sun <\/i>recently headlined that a \u201csixteen-year-old man\u201d was to be charged with murder in the selfsame Florida criminal justice system \u2013 the age issue doesn\u2019t hold a lot of water when seen through a clear glass.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnarmed?\u201d Actually, NO.\u00a0 The history of adjudicating deadly force actions shows that Trayvon Martin was \u201carmed\u201d two or three times over.<\/p>\n
First, the haters (like the prosecution) assiduously ignored George Zimmerman\u2019s statement that while Martin was \u201cground-and-pounding\u201d him, Martin saw Zimmerman\u2019s gun in its now exposed holster, told Zimmerman that he was going to die tonight, and reached for his victim\u2019s pistol.<\/p>\n
If I\u2019m your criminal attacker, you don\u2019t have to wait for me to shoot you before you can shoot me to defend your life, and you don\u2019t even need to wait until the gun is in my hand. If I announce my intent to murder you and reach for a gun, I\u2019m bought and paid for right there.\u00a0 And it doesn\u2019t matter whether the gun I\u2019m reaching for is in my holster, or yours. <\/i>That\u2019s why every year in America, when thugs try to grab a policeman\u2019s gun and are shot, the shootings are ruled justifiable.<\/p>\n
Even before Martin\u2019s reach for Zimmerman\u2019s still-holstered pistol, the circumstances that were proven to the satisfaction of the jury showed that Zimmerman was justified in shooting his attacker.\u00a0 Remember when defense attorney Don West said in the defense\u2019s opening statement that Martin was armed with the sidewalk?\u00a0 That sounded ludicrous to lay people, and I would have phrased it differently myself, but professionals understood exactly what he was talking about.<\/p>\n
The operative principle at law is called \u201cdisparity of force.\u201d It means that while your opponent(s) may not be armed with a deadly weapon per se, their physical advantage over you is so great that if their ostensibly unarmed assault continues, you are likely to die or suffer grave bodily harm. That disparity of force may take the form of a much larger and stronger assailant, a male attacking a female, force of numbers, able-bodied attacking the handicapped, skilled fighter attacking the unskilled, or \u2013 in this case \u2013 position of disadvantage.<\/p>\n
Position of disadvantage means that the opponent has full range and freedom of movement, and you don\u2019t.\u00a0 You\u2019re seat-belted behind your steering wheel while he rains punches onto your skull through the open window\u2026or you are down and helpless in a martial arts \u201cmount\u201d while your opponent pounds you at will.<\/p>\n
Finally, we have the clearly proven element of Martin smashing Zimmerman\u2019s head into the sidewalk. If I picked up a chunk of concrete or cement and tried to smash your skull with it, you would certainly realize that you were about to die or be horribly brain-damaged if you didn\u2019t stop me. It would be what the statutes call \u201ca deadly weapon, to wit a bludgeon.\u201d There just isn\u2019t a whole hell of a lot of difference between cement being smashed into head, and head being smashed into cement.<\/i><\/p>\n
Clearly, Trayvon Martin possessed the power to kill or cripple Zimmerman. That is why, under law, Zimmerman was justified in defending himself with a per se<\/i> deadly weapon.<\/p>\n
The jury got it. Too bad the haters didn\u2019t understand\u2026or didn\u2019t want to understand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It seems that the verdict of a sworn jury in our criminal justice system means little to the haters, who are still screaming that George Zimmerman killed \u201can unarmed seventeen-year-old.\u201d\u00a0 Given that seventeen is old enough to enlist in the Marine Corps and to be tried as an adult \u2013 the Gainesville Sun recently headlined […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2373","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-firearm-owners-civil-rights","8":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}