UPDATE: ABA Journal blaws links to our humble blog here.
Tomorrow: Hoolgian Penguins- not even the threat of minimum mandatories slow these artic toughs down.
SDOFB (DOM's Blog) has all the details on the investiture of Judge Adalberto Jordan's investiture as a United States Circuit Court Judge.
We digress a moment to ponder...what if George Herbert Walker Bush (who turned 88 Tuesday) was elected to a second term? Then the pending nomination of Federico Moreno to the 11th Circuit would most certainly have been acted on and Judge Moreno would have been a Circuit Court Judge in 1992. Would he have been the first Hispanic Judge on the US Supreme Court when Bush 43 took office?
"Of all the words of song and pen, the saddest are these: it might have been."
Mr. 8-5 (not "eighty five, but "eight" "five") is now a Miami Dolphin. Whoopee.
You don't see the Giants or the Steelers or the Ravens signing aging players who are more bark than bite. All those teams do is consistently win, year in, year out.
We knew no good would come out of the George Zimmerman case. Now there are hearings examining the immunity/stand your ground law. The police and prosecutors are using this opportunity to bemoan the fact that they are now actually losing (sob, gasp) cases because of the law. Interesting to note that the good ol' boy-Republican law and order types are now being pressed into conflict with the good ol'boy- Republican second amendment "you'll have to pry my gun out of my cold dead hands" types. And in many cases they're one in the same! Politics makes strange bedfellows, especially when you're sleeping with yourself.
File those immunity motions before the pendulum swings back the other way.
See you in court.
When you see something that is not right, not fair, find a way to get in the way and cause trouble. Congressman John Lewis
JUSTICE BUILDING BLOG
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19 comments:
Palm Beach Republican Judge Krista Marx asked the Republican Legislature to clarify this law. I guess what will be coming out of Appellate courts will not be good!
Shellie Zimmerman perjury charge.
http://www.scribd.com/jeweiner/d/96873221-Shellie-Zimmerman-Arrest-6-12-12
Wonder if the super-prosecutor is going to follow though on her threat to sue Harvard for Dershowitz's comments, too.
Come on Rump take off your defense attorney hat for a moment. Stand your ground is an awful law that, like Rick scott's voter purge, was a solution in search of a problem.
old law that one had to retreat before blasting someone outside their house is just common sense, just as the castle doctrine makes sense.
Onan was a figure in the old testament bible. Sorry to spill your secret rump. Like spilling your seed, eh?
I used to live in a country where the people believed that it was better that ten guilty men go free, rather than one guilty man be incarcerated. I don't know what happened to that country. I think all the citizens are just scared.
Just because a law has some unfortunate results, we don't dump the law. When an entire state has a knee jerk reaction and looks to change a law because the case is a media darling, bad things are sure to happen. SYG was perfectly good until this Martin/Zimmerman fiasco.
What is most amazing is that many of the people who are now calling for this law to be repealed, don't seem to care that the law in Florida still allows for state sanctioned killings. The law that allows for the ultimate injustice (killing innocent people) rolls right along. The feeling seems to be, that if one really heinous, guilty beyond all doubt person is executed, we are willing to put up with the occasional mistake of murdering an innocent.
Hear Hear 8:56.
I'm a defense attorney. As long as Stand Your Ground is the law in Florida I will argue vigorously for its application to my clients cases when such is arguable. But I'm also a citizen of this state, and this is decidedly NOT a good law. The previous self-defense law perfectly adequately covered any situation where you'd need to use force or deadly force in legitimate self-defense, SYG is just an invitation, in a state that didn't need one, to engage in cowboy behavior, distrust your fellow citizens, and shoot first and ask questions later.
8:56,
agree with pragraph 1 and 3.
Don't think SYG was perfectly good though. I think that theory behind it was possibly good, but is overbroad and left open to too much interpretaion allowing problems like zimmerman's case can come in.
And as for pararpah three, you contradict your statement in 2. Just because there are some unfortunate results (killing innocent people), you want the death penalty dumped? We don't dump the law.
Why no shout out for DOM's state court win. C'mon Rumphole.
No post on Schwartz suspension??
DOM was strutting out of the REGJB today
3:59
So basically you hated my comments! :-)
I guess my sarcasm did not come through well enough. When I said SYG was a perfectly good law, I meant to imply that it was good enough that until the media ran with the Martin/Zimmerman case, it was a non issue. Not even a blip on the radar. But when the media gets a hold of these things, all of a sudden people become concerned, and everyone now has an opinion, even those who have no idea what they are talking about.
I'm sure you know what I mean, because I'm sure as an attorney, some friend of yours probably asked you about it. Then when they started talking, you realized how completely uninformed they were.
With regards to my contradiction about the death penalty- you are 100% correct. I have no explanation for it. I did have a discussion with a neighbor about this three days ago. He came here from a European country with no death penalty. He said he supports it. When I asked him what he thought about the cases where innocent people have been killed, he did not deny that it happened. He just shrugged his shoulder and said it was such a small percentage of people that were wrongly executed. He honestly didn't care.
I've gone off on such a tangent that I no longer know what my own point is. I think what I'm trying to say is that things are screwy around here.
8:56 then 8:39 :
3:59 here,
Sorry, I didn't catch any sarcasm. thanks for clarifying
I agree with 2:39 that it is NOT a good law, but will defend a client vigorously as long as it is.
I hope your neighbor or his father or brother never gets wrongfully charged. Interesting. He probably doesn't care because nobody ever thinks it could happen to them, because they're good people and they know good people who would never do anything wrong. But the problem is that there are actually innocent people who get caught up in this system.
Now I don't know what MY point is.
But I agree: things are screwy around here.
I can't believe that people like 8:10 think that to avoid a murder rap you should have to turn your back to someone that is trying to kill you and run. Really? That just means you get shot, stabbed, etc in the back. SYG is far from perfect, but it's being perverted by the media over this case in Orlando. I'd hate to be the children of 8:10 and get mugged only to see daddy (or mommy) hightailing it for safer ground.
The SYG is an attempt to take the public streets back from thugs and gangs. This law allows me to go anywhere the law allows. And if threatened, I can protect myself. No one can say "why didn't you run, hide, something?"
The plain fact is that the law was passed to allow white people to shoot minorities, and use "but I was scared" as a justification. In a state where any one can own a gun, this law just may be a necessity.
And be warned, as long as this is the law, do not walk up to my car in traffic when you are pissed off. I am assuming you intend to do me harm, and I am going to shoot you. I have no intention of waiting till you hit me first.
I appreciate the rationale behind SYG, but it's simply not well written. SYG should provide a means for protecting oneself, not a hunting license.
As most prosecutors and cops expected, the law is having unintended consequences (ie. protecting those it shouldn't). At the very least, the law needs to be rewritten in a way to minimize the kind of crap we've seen in Miami (example: Judge Beth Bloom dismissed a case where the defendant CHASED A GUY FOR ONE BLOCK before stabbing him in the back and killing him. I can't imagine even the law's most ardent supporters agreeing with that one. Of course, one could argue that Beth simply misapplied the law). Additionally, the jury should be deciding self-defense issues, not judges.
BTDT
You have your facts wrong. The defendant stabbed the victim in the chest and the "victim" was a burglar who had just stolen items from the defendant and then attacked him. The defendant had every right to get his things back.
8:59............see http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/21/2706789/miami-judge-stabbing-in-the-back.html.
BTDT
So where do the "Gov't should mind its own damn business" fit in?
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