NH's Stand Your Ground Law Is Unsafe

Due to Florida's Stand Your Ground law, George Zimmerman got away with the murder of Trayvon Martin.

It has been noted that New Hampshire's Stand Your Ground law is different from Florida's because our law doesn't grant immunity to people who start fights and then try to shoot their ways out of them.  George Zimmerman, it's said, would not have been able to use a Stand Your Ground defense for his excuse if it had happened in New Hampshire, but that's far from clearly true.

What's one of the big disputes going on right now about the Zimmerman trial (even though it's already over)?  It's about who started it.

People who like lax gun laws latch onto Zimmerman's account about Trayvon Martin assaulting him.  The problem with that is there is no way to corroborate that version, and it needs corroboration beyond Zimmerman's say-so because he admitted through his lawyer that he lied to the judge about his assets during a bail hearing because he was concealing them in order to lower the bail.

So we don't know who threw the first punch.  Knowledge is impossible because the only living witness is a perjurer.

What's also unclear is the standard of threat required to justify the use of deadly force.  Zimmerman said he shot Martin because Martin was beating him so badly that he feared for his life, but his testimony is contradicted by the physical evidence.  We saw the photos.  They show some superficial scraping on the back of Zimmerman's head, and they show a slightly banged-up nose.  The injuries were not nearly life-threatening.  Beyond our own casual judgment of the scrapes and bumps derived from looking at photos, not even Zimmerman was very concerned about them.  He declined medical attention at the scene, and professional testimony in court described his abrasions as "insignificant."

Martin didn't have to die to save Zimmerman's life because Zimmerman's life was never seriously threatened.

How did it come about?

George Zimmerman saw Trayvon Martin walking down the street in his neighborhood and thought the worst of him without sufficient cause.  Zimmerman thought Martin was a thief.

However, Martin was not approaching houses and peering in the windows.  He was not trying their sashes.  He was not sneaking up to cars and trying the door handles.  No one has said Martin was doing those things.  All the testimony says is that he was just walking in a private neighborhood where he was an invited guest.

Many people live in gated communities in Florida.  There aren't so many of them around here in New Hampshire, but in Florida they're all over the place.  In each neighborhood, there can be a hundred residences, or more, with an average of 1.5 - 2.5 people per household.  And, because they're in Florida, many of the residents frequently have guests because Florida is a popular tourism destination.  It's not unusual to see unfamiliar people in the private neighborhoods down there because guests are so common, so it's unreasonable for Zimmerman to consider Martin suspicious just because he didn't recognize him when Martin wasn't doing anything else wrong.  Martin's unfamiliarity in the neighborhood, in and of itself, did not justify extra scrutiny.  Zimmerman judged him adversely for another reason.

Zimmerman then decided that he would follow Martin.  Perhaps he wanted to make sure that he could locate him when the police arrived.  However, Martin noticed that he was being followed, took alarm and turned to confront his pursuer.

How did the fight start?  No one knows.  What we know is that Zimmerman suspected Martin without probable cause and followed him.  We also know that Martin was upset about it.  But what was the initial act of physical  aggression?  There's no way to know.

It's my opinion that Zimmerman was the aggressor.  For Zimmerman to be following Martin so closely as to antagonize him is a hostile act.  To baselessly suspect him of thievery is antagonistic.  Did Martin throw the first punch?  Who knows?  Only Zimmerman knows, but he has a reason to lie, and experience has shown us that he will when it suits his purposes.

We know that Martin had good reason to be afraid that night because Zimmerman was armed and Martin is dead.  It can be just as easily alleged that Martin was "standing his ground" with his fists and winning the fight until Zimmerman whipped out a gun.  If Martin had been armed, too, or had been successful at taking Zimmerman's gun away, then he would be the one standing over Zimmerman's dead body and pleading self-defense.  The outcome of events proves that he would have been the one with the better excuse.

It's a very murky argument to prove who started the fight between Zimmerman and Martin and whose life needed defending more.  I think Zimmerman started it.  Many agree with me.  A lot of people believe Martin started it.  Because of confusion like this, New Hampshire's Stand Your Ground law is no protection to law-abiding citizens from the George Zimmermans of New Hampshire.  We're all less safe with Stand Your Ground, even with "you can't start it" qualifications, because the question of who started it is often confusing, as the Florida case proves.

Martin died needlessly and his killer walks a free man. With New Hampshire's new Stand Your Ground law, it can happen here, too.