Under "Stand Your Ground" Trayvon Had The Right To Kill Zimmerman

[spin]

88. I think if Martin would have lived ...

his testimony would have convicted Zimmerman. Since he didn't there was enough reasonable doubt that the jury did find Zimmerman guilty.

That's the way our system is designed to work.

Blackstone's formulation

In criminal law, Blackstone's formulation (also known as Blackstone's ratio or the Blackstone ratio) is the principle that:

"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer",

...as expressed by the English jurist William Blackstone in his seminal work, Commentaries on the Laws of England, published in the 1760s.

Historically, the details of the ratio have varied, but the message that government and the courts must err on the side of innocence has remained constant.

*****snip****

Authoritarian personalities tend to take the opposite view; Bismarck is believed to have stated that "it is better that ten innocent men suffer than one guilty man escape."[1] Pol Pot[15] made similar remarks. Wolfgang Schäuble[16] referenced this principle while saying that it is not applicable to the context of preventing terrorist attacks. Former American Vice President Dick Cheney said that his support of American use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" (torture) against suspected terrorists was unchanged by the fact that 25% of CIA detainees subject to that treatment were later proven to be innocent, including one who died of hypothermia in CIA custody. "I'm more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that in fact were innocent." Asked whether the 25% margin was too high, Cheney responded, "I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective. . . . I'd do it again in a minute."[17]

Liberal columnist Ezra Klein supported California's SB 967 "Affirmative Consent" law with the same reasoning as Cheney's supported "enhanced interrogation techniques". While claiming the law was "terrible" and could be used to punish people who did not commit rape, Klein states "its overreach is precisely its value" and "ugly problems don't always have pretty solutions." [18]

Alexander Volokh cites an apparent questioning of the principle, with the tale of a Chinese professor who responds, "Better for whom?"[1]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone's_formulation#