Here's Florida’s Next Trayvon Martin Case

[onenote]

118. Wrongo. I've asked you multiple times to back up your claim of what it means to "avoid conflict"

You haven't because you can't. You can't because you are mistaken about the law. The duty is not simply to avoid conflict it is to retreat from a situation in which one faces imminent death or great bodily harm by retreating to avoid the conflict from manifesting itself in actual violence.

You don't have to retreat where you don't face imminent death or bodily harm. Not in any state in the country. Not ever.

I've given you an example a couple of times that you are too cowardly to address. I'll give you another chance. Victim owes defendant money. Victim tells defendant he can't pay him because he's broke. Defendant gets a call from a friend telling him that victim is at a bar drunken as a skunk, buying drinks for the house and laughing about how he screwed defendant. Outraged, defendant rushes to bar. Upon arrival, he finds victim and demand his money. Victim tells defendant to get lost. Defendant does not retreant and repeats his demand for repayment. Victim pulls out gun. The bar is crowded and there is no way for defendant to retreat with complete safety to himself and others in the bar should victim open fire. So defendant grabs knife and stabs victim before victim has chance to shoot. In the aftermath it turns out that the gun was empty -- no bullets.

In every state in the union, at any time in history, the defendant has a valid claim of self defense. But you claim that in a "NORMAL" case, the defendant wouldn't be allowed to claim self defense because he didn't "avoid conflict" as he could have by not going to the bar to confront a belligerent drunk in the first place or by leaving when the drunk (having not yet pulled a gun) told defendant to get out.

If that's the "NORMAL" case, you should have no problem producing not just one, but dozens of case backing up your position. After all, self defense has been part of US criminal law forever.

The case of the woman (Marissa Alexander) actually proves my point, not yours. She couldn't claim self defense, even in a SYG state because when she left (which she didn't have to do) she removed the imminent threat and thus she became the aggressor. Get it? In both a SYG state and a non-SYG state, in order to justifiably use force, you have to be facing an "imminent" threat. She didn't face such a thing when she went and armed herself. In my example above, if the defendant, having had his confrontation with the victim, had left the bar and then came back and shot the victim, it wouldn't have been self defense any longer because at the time he shot the victim the victim was not posing what a reasonable person could conclude was a reasonable threat to the defendant. The victim was simply sitting in a bar buying drinks, insulting the defendant, and spending money.

Thanks for playing.