Standing Your Ground While Armed

Early in the dark and rainy Sunday evening of February 26, 2012, Trayvon Martin, a tall, slim 17-year-old African-American boy, walked from the home of his father’s fiancée in Sanford, FL, a suburb of Orlando, to buy a can of ice tea and a package of Skittles candy from a 7-Eleven.  Martin, who lived with his mother in Miami, was visiting his father during a ten-day suspension from high school after traces of marijuana were found in his book bag.

On his way back from the 7-Eleven, Martin was observed by a neighborhood watch coordinator named George Zimmerman, a hefty white man in his latter 20s whose mother was Peruvian.  Zimmerman thought Martin looked suspicious and called 911 from his SUV.

The neighborhood in question was a gated community called Retreat at Twin Lakes which had a problem with burglaries.  The previous fall, at Zimmerman’s request, a representative of the Sanford Police had met with a couple of dozen Twin Lakes residents to set up a neighborhood watch.  Their role, the representative told them, was to be the eyes and ears of the police, not vigilantes, and they should avoid confrontations and call the police from the safety of their homes or cars.

The residents designated Zimmerman as their watch coordinator.  Zimmerman, who worked as an analyst at a mortgage firm, watched the Twin Lakes neighborhood in the evening.

Despite some history of violence, Zimmerman had obtained a permit to carry a concealed handgun, which is easy to get in Florida.  Although neighborhood watchers don’t possess police powers and supposedly don’t carry weapons, on the evening of February 26th Zimmerman was carrying a concealed 9 millimeter handgun.

When he called 911, Zimmerman told the police dispatcher of his suspicions about the person he described as a black teenager and then commented, “These assholes, they always get away.”  (At minute 1:38 of the first of eight edited tapes later released by the police)  The dispatcher (at 2:23) asked if Zimmerman was following the teenager, and when Zimmerman said he was, the dispatcher said that the police don’t need you to do that.  But Zimmerman, who had gotten out of his SUV, continued to do that.

Meanwhile, according to a girlfriend with whom Martin was conversing through a headset connected to a cell phone in his pocket, Martin mentioned someone was following him.  She told him to run, but he wouldn’t.

Shortly thereafter, before the police arrived, Zimmerman and Martin met up.  According to Zimmerman, he had lost sight of Martin and was returning to his SUV when Martin came up behind him and accosted him.  They got into an argument and then Martin decked him with one punch, jumped on top of him and started banging his head on the walkway.

Zimmerman was calling for help, according to one eyewitness, who told Martin (presumably) to stop and then went into his home to call 911.  Before he reached his phone, he heard at least one gun shot.  “And then, when I got upstairs and looked down, the guy who was on the top beating up the other guy, was the one laying in the grass, and I believe he was dead at that point.”

Another eyewitness, a teenage boy who was walking his dog, told the 911 operator that he saw a man in a red shirt (Zimmerman) on the ground who was screaming and needed help.  Later, chasing his dog, he heard a gunshot and then the screaming stopped.

By that time, several residents were calling 911.  When the police arrived, Zimmerman admitted that he killed Martin but claimed self-defense.  The police made a cursory investigation, found no reason to doubt Zimmerman and released him without charges.  Over the course of the next month, protests over the police inaction and the killing grew rapidly throughout the country and even abroad.

But the Sanford police inaction was consistent with how the courts interpret Florida’s law on the justifiable use of force, which is to free assailants claiming self-defense unless they determine that there is probable cause that the use of force was unlawful.  In a case in Miami a month after Martin was killed, the judge dismissed a murder case against a young man who had chased down and stabbed a suspected burglar on the grounds that his claim of self-defense was credible.

In 2005 Florida enacted a Stand Your Ground law promoted by the National Rifle Association (NRA), which exists to promote the sale of firearms.  A key section provides in part that “a person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if:

“(1) He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony;” [emphasis added]

In the years since enactment, justifiable homicide cases have tripled.  Florida is on its way to becoming a new state-wide O.K. Corral reality show.  Who or what is to blame?

In the senseless and tragic death of Trayvon Martin, however the conflicting stories are resolved, George Zimmerman is to blame.  He became a vigilante—a person who is not a member of law enforcement but who pursues and punishes persons suspected of lawbreaking—in pursuit of an innocent man whom he killed with a concealed weapon.

In the larger context, the real culprits are Florida’s Stand Your Ground law and the state’s policy of encouraging its residents to arm themselves and carry concealed weapons.  In concert they elevate every angry confrontation into a potentially lethal one.