Minotaur
Governor
Many still seem unaware that SYG was in the Jury Instructions and impacted the verdict. In and effort to set the record straight on SYG and the Zimmerman trial, just so we are all on the same page, where SYG impacted the trial hopefully this clears it up. If you get your hands on the Jury Instruction you can see where SYG cancels out Manslaughter. Additionally, though the 2 jurors who have spoken have not been asked that targeted question, reading both descriptions of Manslaughter and SYG should answer it for you. Manslaughter looks at what you did prior to the killing, SYG only looks at the fight or moment of fear. Bottom line the jury could not even consider manslaughter enough to get past SYG. None of this matters now except that in Florida this still exists and other states have the same issue where they mimic Florida's Amendment and if it is placed in Jury Instructions in your state you probably need to understand this:
"Jurors discussed Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground self-defense law before rendering their not-guilty verdict in George Zimmerman’s trial, one of the jurors told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
The jurors struggled with the law and the jury instructions, said the juror, who spoke anonymously and was identified only by her court ID, B37.
“The law became very confusing. It became very confusing,” she told Cooper Monday night. “We had stuff thrown at us. We had the second-degree murder charge, the manslaughter charge, then we had self defense, Stand Your Ground.”
Juror B37 mentioned Stand Your Ground a second time of her own accord, saying the jury ultimately made its not-guilty verdict Saturday night based on the evidence and “because of the heat of the moment and the Stand Your Ground.”
Still, the degree to which Stand Your Ground led to the not-guilty verdict is unclear and in dispute. Cooper never asked B37."
Don't get hung up on that last paragraph as it is not a cancel element it is just what they are not asking. I highlighted it as it is important to note that everything said prior to that points to an answer in Paragraph #2. This is not written in cement as what is missing is no one asked that question but it does represent the complexity of all of this and why a jury may have their hands tied even trying to understand what these conflicts mean during deliberations.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/16/3502481/juror-we-talked-stand-your-ground.html
"Jurors discussed Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground self-defense law before rendering their not-guilty verdict in George Zimmerman’s trial, one of the jurors told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
The jurors struggled with the law and the jury instructions, said the juror, who spoke anonymously and was identified only by her court ID, B37.
“The law became very confusing. It became very confusing,” she told Cooper Monday night. “We had stuff thrown at us. We had the second-degree murder charge, the manslaughter charge, then we had self defense, Stand Your Ground.”
Juror B37 mentioned Stand Your Ground a second time of her own accord, saying the jury ultimately made its not-guilty verdict Saturday night based on the evidence and “because of the heat of the moment and the Stand Your Ground.”
Still, the degree to which Stand Your Ground led to the not-guilty verdict is unclear and in dispute. Cooper never asked B37."
Don't get hung up on that last paragraph as it is not a cancel element it is just what they are not asking. I highlighted it as it is important to note that everything said prior to that points to an answer in Paragraph #2. This is not written in cement as what is missing is no one asked that question but it does represent the complexity of all of this and why a jury may have their hands tied even trying to understand what these conflicts mean during deliberations.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/16/3502481/juror-we-talked-stand-your-ground.html
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