Should person use self defense if suspect keeps banging victims head but no weapon? ( Archived) (34)

your question not so clear...not for me

In Florida is illegal to shoot warning shots, is better to kill

the trespasser than to fired a warning shot crazy law

Prettyprescious has put her finger on the big rule while traveling armed. "a person should never instigate a situation."

The only clear exceptions are when you wear a badge and this is the territory you have authority in. That gives you a duty to interfere or obstruct certain activities.

Moving away from that clear universal concept, we encounter different cultures and different laws in different places. In some, but by no means all, you have the right to interfere if you see a major crime happening in front of you. In some places, but again not all, you have a legal right to accost and challenge intruders or misbehavior in a place you own or reside at, and in some jurisdictions this is extended down to your employees or guests. In other jurisdictions you are required to retreat or flee, even if armed.

Frankly, I think that is a stupid which not only encourages crime, but also potentially can trigger a 'predator chasing prey' instinct in the criminal. Like it or not, we ARE animals and we do carry some hardwiring in our brains passed down from remote ancestors. Predators will always chase things running away or trying to escape. So a law requiring you to imitate a prey can in some cases virtually guarantee a pursuit and an attack.

The Martin case is a weird one. The man who fired a shot (Zimmerman) while being beaten saw no clear wrong occurring. In the US there does exist a quasi endorsed group called Neighborhood Watch which does patrol residential neighborhoods. All homeowners in Zimmerman's neighborhood belonged to a Homeowner's Association (HOA). Some HOAs do indeed belong to the Neighborhood Watch group. Somehow the media interpreted Zimmerman's belonging to a HOA and patrolling his neighborhood and accosting folks on the street with his being a Neighborhood Watch group and put out he was there as a Neighborhood Watch person. Nothing could be further from the truth. Neighborhood Watch has rules against weapons, rules against disregarding police dept. instructions, and even rules about when you talk to a stranger. More importantly Neighborhood Watch is a pay to join organization and no one from that HOA had ever attempted to join them.

So what we have is a lawfully armed man, Zimmerman, traveling the street in his neighborhood who sees a youth he does not know short cutting across lawns and therefore suspects the youth may be one of a local group that has been doing petty crimes in the area. Zimmerman calls the police dept. on his cell phone and tells them what he sees. Up to this point Zimmerman's actions are legal everywhere.

Then it gets weird. The police dispatcher tells him the police are on the way and Zimmerman should disengage. Zimmerman refuses. Did Zimmerman disregard the instruction of a police officer/constable?

No. In this particular case the dispatcher was not a police officer (constable). This is not unusual. Many towns hire teenagers out of High School or retirees or whoever as dispatchers. Outside of television and Hollywood land only a few are bloated enough in budget to routinely put a trained and sworn police officer on telephone duty. Sure sometimes if an officer has a medical condition of temporary nature he/she may be assigned to dispatch, but usually in many places in America the dispatcher is a civilian with no police power.

So then Zimmerman exits his car and accosts the youth and it all goes downhill from there.

Remember the wise rule. "a person should never instigate a situation" Zimmerman escaped the murder charge because Florida has a law that says if you are attacked in a place where you have a right to be, then you need not retreat. No one in Florida's Legislature had anticipated Zimmerman. The law was written with people in their home or place of business in mind. It was applicable to you being attacked while walking down the street, so due to the wording of it, both Zimmerman and Martin had no obligation to retreat. Martin started to win the fight, and worse from Zimmerman's view, according to Zimmerman, saw and went for Zimmerman's pistol. No witnesses, so maybe. That meant Zimmerman had to be the first to grab the gun's grip. Then because his head was being smashed against the pavement and that can be lethal, use the pistol.

It turned out the dead teenager had recently arrived in the neighborhood to live with one parent and was returning from a trip to the convenience store where he had bought candy. He also was talking on his cell phone to his girlfriend about some weird looking guy following him when the conversation ended (possibly when Zimmerman got out of his car).

And we here in the USA believe in............trolls! LOL