Archive | Self-Defense

It’s the Gabriel Mobley case, State v. Mobley (Fla. Ct. App. Jan. 2, 2014) (2-1 vote). Here’s the summary from the end of the majority opinion: The record — as corroborated by a video of the events — is that (1) Mobley found himself in the middle of a violent, unprovoked attack on a companion […]

Generally speaking, private employers may terminate their relationship with employees for any reason, or no reason at all — that’s the “employment at will” principle. There are two main legal constraints on this. The first is contractual, for instance some sort of union contract or tenure contract. The second is statutory, such as bans on […]

I’ve long been curious about the “duty to comply with negative demands,” an analog to the duty to retreat suggested by the Model Penal Code (based on the Restatement (First) of Torts) and implemented in Connecticut, Delaware, Guam, Hawaii, Maine, Nebraska, New Hampshire, and New Jersey. (Alabama and Pennsylvania had such a rule, but recently […]

An interesting Newsday column. A couple of excerpts: Could there have been a white Trayvon Martin? Ask the parents of Christopher Cervini, also 17 when he was killed in Rochester, N.Y., in 2009. The shooter, Roderick Scott, said he saw three boys breaking into a car, went out with his (legal) handgun to stop them, […]

People are talking about how common “stand your ground” states are compared to “duty to retreat” states, so I thought I’d do a bit of looking to see the current head count. First, let me explain what I mean by “duty to retreat,” which is something of a misnomer (though a very common one): Say […]

In a post Monday, I criticized the New York Times editorial that read, in relevant part, The jury reached its verdict after having been asked to consider Mr. Zimmerman’s actions in light of the now-notorious Stand Your Ground provision in Florida’s self-defense law. Under that law, versions of which are on the books in two […]

One recurring comment I’ve heard on the Zimmerman case is that Zimmerman was in the wrong for following Martin in the first place, and therefore couldn’t use deadly force when Martin reacted violently in response (perhaps in what Martin perceived was self-defense). This is an interesting and complicated question, which Prof. Alafair Burke (Huffington Post) […]

[NOTE: Having read the post-trial Anderson Cooper 360 interview of one of the jurors, I now think I’ve erred in one of the criticisms of the editorial (the one labeled 1 below); my apologies on this to the editorialists and to our readers. For more on the details, please see this follow-up post. For more […]

A commenter writes: It’s very troubling that someone can be acquitted on the basis of a self-defense claim without the defense having the burden of proof to claim self-defense. I agree that a 12-person jury would be a good change of the law, but another would be to bring Florida’s self-defense laws in line with […]