Why Florida’s “stand your ground” law could make filing charges against the shooter of Tayvon Martin more difficult

The law says that a person is justified in the use of deadly force if he or she reasonably believes such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or harm. 

Ray Suarez : This incident has brought new attention to Florida’s stand your ground law, which I understand had already had some controversy around it at the time that it was debated and passed…Is this getting a second look now?

Frances Robles, The Miami-Herald: We will see. I mean, people were real proud of that law when they passed it.

It’s been a real problem here. One of the things — one of the types of things that happens quite a bit is, for example, you’ll have a drug dealer shooting at another drug dealer, that other drug dealer shooting back, missing the first drug dealer, hitting the 3-year-old on the corner.

And then, when it comes time to file criminal charges, nobody gets in trouble, because drug dealer one didn’t kill the 3-year-old, and drug dealer two was legitimately defending himself. So this happens over and over again, where people are not getting — they’re either getting — not getting charged or they’re getting acquitted on cases where people are getting killed.

And everybody says, wait a second. Well, where is the justice here?

Full interview (including what neighbors thought of Zimmerman) and 911 calls here: