Lawmakers line up for prosecution, investigations of Zimmerman [View all]

[CatWoman]

UPDATE 9, 11:10 a.m. EDT, Tuesday, March 20: Grand jury convened; lawmakers line up for prosecution, investigations

The state attorney for Sanford, Florida, has announced he will convene a grand jury on April 10 to investigate Trayvon Martin's shooting, according to WESH-TV in Orlando. "I share in the desire of the family and the community to accurately collect and evaluate all the facts surrounding the tragic death of Trayvon Martin," prosecutor Norm Wolfinger said in a statement.

Meanwhile, two state legislators who sponsored Florida's "stand your ground" deadly-force law in 2005 called for George Zimmerman to be arrested for shooting Martin. "They got the goods on him. They need to prosecute whoever shot the kid," one of the lawmakers, Republican former Sen. Durell Peaden told the Miami Herald. "He has no protection under my law." His co-sponsor, current Rep. Dennis Baxley (R), told the paper: "There's nothing in this statute that authorizes you to pursue and confront people, particularly if law enforcement has told you to stay put. I don't see why this statute is being challenged in this case. That is to prevent you from being attacked by other people."

Even so, the Democratic state senator from the Miami district where Martin lived, Oscar Braynon, called for legislative hearings on the effectiveness of the "stand your ground" law. "The Legislature needs to take a look at Stand Your Ground," he told the Herald. "This is a perfect case of where it goes awry. This could only be the beginning of more problems down the road. It has unintended consequences. When the Legislature passed this in 2005, I don't think they planned for people who would go out and become vigilantes or be like some weird Batman who would go out and kill little kids like Trayvon."

http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/what-happened-trayvon-martin-explained#grandjury