Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘self-defense’

New Yorker on Stand Your Ground

A big piece by Mike Spies in the New Yorker on the history of Florida as a battlefield on gun issues asserts that 1) Florida enacted the nation’s first Stand Your Ground law in the early 2000s, and broadly hints that 2) the law resulted in a jury’s 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin.

Is that so? Though both points are often claimed, as we’ve pointed out in the past, neither stands up to scrutiny. As Peter Jamison of the Tampa Bay Times noted in this 2014 piece, the “truth is that Florida did not pioneer the controversial rules” abolishing duty-to-retreat in favor of Stand Your Ground; many states had long since done so through case law development. Much more on the legal background in Ilya Shapiro’s 2013 Senate testimony, which points, for example, to a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision from 1895. (Florida’s statute did introduce new procedural protections at the charge stage for defendants, which is a different matter.)

Meanwhile, Zimmerman’s acquittal came after his lawyers advanced a conventional self-defense theory as opposed to one rooted in Stand Your Ground.

The magazine’s celebrated fact-checking system does not seem to have functioned well in this case.

Filed under: , , ,

Bulletproof glass and the Pennsylvania constitution

Does the provision of Philadelphia’s Bill 170963 intended to curb the use of bulletproof glass in stores run afoul of language in the Pennsylvania constitution asserting “inherent and indefeasible” rights of “defending life” and “protecting property”? Our earlier post (and see update) mentioned that Eugene Volokh had written about the contours of a constitutional right to self-defense, and now the UCLA lawprof (at the newly un-paywalled site of his Conspiracy) has sketched a possible argument against the Philly Plexiglass measure along those lines.

Filed under: , ,

Update: Philly council approves shop Plexiglass crackdown

By a 14-3 vote, the Philadelphia city council has approved a bill one of whose objectives is to require “stop and go” convenience stores to take down Plexiglass (“bulletproof”) partitions between cashiers and customers [Max Marin, City and State PA; Nicole Darrah, Fox News] Store owners talk back on the glass ban [Adam Xu, Philadelphia Inquirer; Julie Shaw, Philadelphia Daily News (state legislator plans to file bill to protect workers); my earlier take here and at the New York Post]

Filed under: ,

Philadelphia may ban bulletproof glass in delis

Today the Philadelphia city council may vote on a bill to ban bulletproof glass at hundreds of small delis. My New York Post take: are they crazy?

“Have you ever been served food at a sit-down restaurant establishment through a solid barrier? That is not acceptable.” There’s an “indignity” to it, she adds, and it happens “only in certain neighborhoods.” Hence : “No more normalization of receiving food or drink through a prison-like solitary confinement window. What message does it send our children? What are we conditioning them for?”

Well, it sends several messages.

One is a moral that echoes down through the ages: Human beings threatened with violence have the right to protect themselves.

Another is that no matter how many of your neighbors may be personally liked and trusted, it takes only a few bad actors for you to live in a rough neighborhood. Acting as if it isn’t — or that police will always arrive in time to stop an assault — is playing pretend.

Predictably, some of the store managers say if their glass comes down they will start carrying guns to defend themselves….

Some sources: Philadelphia Inquirer coverage and editorial; Councilwoman Cindy Bass on Twitter; Joe Trinacria/Philly Mag; local WTXF and more, WPVI; draft ordinance; local commentary by Christopher Norris (sends a “damning message”: “The presence of bulletproof glass in corner stores promotes the dehumanization and distrust of the poor, while centering the privilege of its erector.”)

Note also UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh’s argument that a right of self-defense may be implicit in the U.S. Constitution as an unenumerated right, as it is explicit under many state constitutions.

Filed under: , ,

Crime and punishment roundup

  • Virginia “one of a minority of states that suspend driving privileges — in most cases, automatically — for failing to pay court costs and fines arising from offenses completely unrelated to driving.” [Washington Post editorial]
  • D.C. Circuit “Rules DOJ Discovery Blue Book Off-Limits … For Now” [Jonathan Blanks, Cato]
  • “The New York Times Knows Florida’s Self-Defense Law Is Bad but Can’t Figure Out Why” [Jacob Sullum]
  • “We often hear that almost no one goes to prison simply for using marijuana.” But add “near a school”… [David Henderson]
  • A forensics roundup from Radley Balko;
  • “When Everything Is a Crime: The Overregulation of Ordinary Life” [Harvey Silverglate conversation with Reason’s Nick Gillespie]

Filed under: , , , , ,

October 28 roundup

  • India monk: I’ll need eight months to respond to court summons because my religion requires me to get there on foot [BBC]
  • NYC’s inhospitable treatment of cat cafes leaves you wondering if dogs get a better shake [Nicole Gelinas, New York Post]
  • As VW litigation heats up, keep your eye on lawyers’ angling re: multi-district litigation, advises Ted Frank [Chamber-backed Legal NewsLine; Rob Green, Abnormal Use; yet more on multi-district litigation, John Beisner, Chamber ILR]
  • A public health study “builds upon Critical Race Theory” to criticize results of Stand Your Ground doctrine in Florida, but most of the cases it uses weren’t decided on basis of that doctrine [Andrew Branco, Legal Insurrection]
  • “Subway ‘Footlong’ Settlement: Lawyers Feed, Consumers Fast” [Judicial Hellholes, earlier, note also this on Subway’s affection for the term]
  • Not only did the free market not cause that $750 generic pill, it might be on the way to generating a $1 alternative [Bonnie Kristian/Rare, my earlier take] Still, it’s a little more complicated than that, as Alex Tabarrok explains;
  • Kathleen Kane saga: “Pennsylvania Attorney General Suspended from the Bar, Still Refuses to Quit” [Hans Bader, CEI]

Filed under: , , , , , , , ,

Maryland roundup

Filed under: , , , , , ,

Protecting minorities by empowering prosecutors?

In my new CNN.com piece I argue that we shouldn’t let anger over the Zimmerman acquittal shred the rights of criminal defendants: “awarding new powers to prosecutors will likely mean that more black people will end up behind bars.” [CNN](& Steele; thanks for Instalanche to Glenn Reynolds)

P.S. Some may wonder whether a toughening of hate crime laws might be an exception to the general rule that minorities have much to fear from a broadening of grounds for prosecution. Leaving aside whether the hate crime issue has any relation to the Martin/Zimmerman case (few lawyers believe Zimmerman could be found guilty of a hate crime, and when the FBI investigated him last summer it found no evidence of racial motivation; more on this from Michelle Meyer), per FBI statistics for 2011, blacks are actually overrepresented among persons charged with hate crimes, at 21 percent compared with 14 percent of general U.S. population.

Filed under: , , , , ,

“Dead robber’s widow sues shop clerk”

Albuquerque: “The wife of an armed robbery suspect shot dead by a shop clerk said the clerk was wrong, and now she has filed a civil lawsuit claiming wrongful death….’He [deceased robber Ramon Sedillo] does bear some fault, but it’s like a pie. You divide out the fault accordingly, and [store clerk Matthew] Beasley could have done something different,’ [Sedillo family lawyer Amavalise] Jaramillo said.” [KRQE]

Filed under: , ,

April 30 roundup

  • Because Washington knows best: “U.S. ban sought on cell phone use while driving” [Reuters, earlier here, here, here, etc.] More here; and LaHood spokesman says Reuters overstated his boss’s position.
  • Janice Brown’s Hettinga opinion: Lithwick can’t abide “starkly ideological” judging of this sort, except of course when she favors it [Root, earlier] At Yale law conclave, legal establishment works itself into hysterical froth over individual mandate case [Michael Greve] And David Bernstein again corrects some Left commentators regarding the standing of child labor under the pre-New Deal Constitution;
  • Latest antiquities battle: Feds, Sotheby’s fight over 1,000-year-old Khmer statue probably removed from Cambodia circa 1960s [VOA, Kent Davis]
  • Sebelius surprised by firestorm over religious (non-) exemption, hadn’t sought written opinions as to whether it was constitutional [Becket, Maguire] Obamanauts misread the views of many Catholics on health care mandate [Potemra, NRO]
  • “20 Years for Standing Her Ground Against a Violent Husband” [Jacob Sullum] How Trayvon Martin story moved through the press [Poynter] And Reuters’ profile of George Zimmerman is full of details one wishes reporters had brought out weeks ago;
  • Coaching accident fraud is bad enough, making off with client funds lends that extra squalid touch [NYLJ]
  • Kip Viscusi, “Does Product Liability Make Us Safer?” [Cato’s Regulation magazine, PDF]

Filed under: , , , , , , , ,