Will someone please explain if stand your ground was used as a defense in the Zimmerman trial?

[Spazito]

22. My understanding of this is: The defense's case was...

based on the Florida statute entitled "Justifiable Use of Force", this statute is known as the Stand Your Ground law, there is NO statute with the title "Stand Your Ground". The section that was most pertinent to the defense's case was 776.013, Section 3, which states the following:

&quot 3) A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony."

This section was included in the jury instructions virtually verbatim, the only change was to relate it directly to Zimmerman:


"If George Zimmerman was not engaged in an unlawful activity and was attacked in any place where he had a right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he reasonably believed that it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony."

The confusion seems to lie with the right to have a pretrial immunity hearing based on the above Statute, Section 776.032, a hearing the defense decided against. Because the Zimmerman defense decided against the immunity hearing does not mean the defense's case was no longer based on the Justifiable Use of Force Statute aka the Stand Your Ground Laws, it only means they opted not to use Section 776.032 of it.

Here is the link to the Statute:

http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0700-0799/0776/0776.html

Here is the link to the jury instructions:

http://media.cmgdigital.com/shared/news/documents/2013/07/12/jury_instructions_1.pdf

Here is a link I found helpful in trying to sort this out in my mind:

http://www.criminaldefenseattorneytampa.com/PracticeAreas/DomesticViolenceBattery/StandYourGroundLaw.aspx

I hope this is helpful to you.