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

[anomiep]

28. And as a real life example

When I was 14, on New Year's Eve I was sitting on a very short wall that had a sidewalk in front of it, and a small hill, with sidewalk on the bottom of it, to the back of it. (the 'wall' was maybe high enough to make a good chair for a 14 year old "taller than most but not the tallest" kid, by the time I was 18 I was 6'2&quot . A friend of mine was sitting next to me and we were just talking about whatever 14 year old kids talk about.

There was another kid who lived in the same neighborhood, slightly younger than I was, who was basically a bully. That kid came at a full tilt run from the front (where the sidewalk is) and tackled me off the wall (toward the back, where the small hill was - the hill was maybe five or six feet higher then the sidewalk at the bottom).

My only thought when he tackled me was "land on top" ... and I did, when we hit the bottom of the hill I was on top, and I had somehow gotten him in a headlock as we rolled down the hill, and I am pretty sure he smacked his head on the sidewalk when we hit it, although I didn't intentionally try to make that happen. So after his initial provocation, and my defense, he couldn't really do anything to me.

Right there, in that instant of time where we hit the sidewalk at the bottom of the hill, it should be pretty clear I was not the aggressor and the force I used (putting him in a headlock, and landing on top) was provoked.

But in that same instant, I had a choice. He no longer had a choice, he'd done what he'd done and it resulted in his being in a position where he pretty clearly could not retreat or even hurt me anymore.

I could have pounded him in the face until his nose was bloody and his eyes were black and blue. I could have then kept going until I'd beaten him unconscious or worse. With him being unable to retreat from that, would my doing that have been justified? No, I don't think so, because he was literally not in a position where he could harm me at that point.

What I actually did was ask him: "If I let you go, are you going to leave me alone?". He said yes - and I let him go, he left, and he never tried to bully me again - ever.

When that occurred, I was not analyzing it the way I am analyzing it now, as 'well, I can do this and it wouldn't be justified under the law, or I could have done that and it would be justified". At that point, I had never even examined the law in respect to self defense. I just acted the way I acted based on who I was and how I'd been brought up. But it is a pretty good example of how a defender *could* turn what is a justified use of force into an unjustified use of force - if I had made a different decision, if I had chosen to beat him silly once I had full advantage and ability to, I would have put myself in the wrong, despite being in the right initially.