After reading multiple reports with the "Stand your ground" law I have issues with it. This law needs to at the least be ammended............taking lives like this seems senseless imo.
Witnesses dispute Trevor Dooley's 'Stand Your Ground' claim in Valrico shooting - Tampa Bay Times
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Miami judge decides fatal stabbing was self-defense - Miami-Dade - MiamiHerald.com
Witnesses dispute Trevor Dooley's 'Stand Your Ground' claim in Valrico shooting - Tampa Bay Times
TAMPA — Trevor Dooley's attorney portrayed him Wednesday as a 69-year-old man with fused discs in his neck who feared for his life when set upon by his 41-year-old neighbor, six inches taller and 70 pounds heavier.
Dooley is protected by Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, his attorney argued, firing in self-defense when the most mundane of neighbor disputes turned violent.
It began on a Sunday afternoon, Sept. 26, 2010, beside a Valrico basketball court when Dooley's neighbor, David James, tried to prevent him from shooing away a skateboarder. It ended with James taking a bullet through his heart in front of his 8-year-old daughter.
In a day of anguished testimony, eyewitnesses who included the 14-year-old skateboarder consistently described Dooley as the aggressor who cursed his neighbor and flashed a pistol before a fatal struggle for the gun.
The testimony offered a preview of Dooley's trial on a first-degree manslaughter charge scheduled for January if a judge doesn't dismiss the case based on his Stand Your Ground defense.
In a 911 call played Wednesday for Hillsborough Circuit Judge Ashley Moody, the skateboarder blamed himself. "It was my fault," Spencer Arthur cried to a dispatcher. "He (Dooley) got mad at me because I was skateboarding. I didn't know what the rules are. I don't live there."
But testimony showed that the boy — besides James' stunned 8-year-old daughter — was the least confrontational people on the basketball court that day.
Arthur, now 15, said he was visiting friends in the Twin Lakes neighborhood. He took his skateboard to the park and asked permission to practice trick moves from James, who was shooting hoops with his daughter. The only others in the park were a couple playing tennis.
But the boy then heard a voice from across the street. It was Dooley, outside his garage, shouting that he should get off the court, that there was a no-skateboarding sign. The boy stopped.
He heard James call out to Dooley, "Show me the sign."
Michael Scott Whitt, practicing tennis serves nearby with his wife, Michelle, stopped to watch.
They testified that Dooley briefly went into his garage, then started across the street with a dark object sticking out of his waistband. They said James threw his hands up and said, "Oh, come on."
Dooley and James argued over letting the boy skate until Dooley lifted his shirt and said, "F--- you," the Whitts testified.
They said Dooley turned and started home, but James caught up with him. "Mr. James said, 'Don't flash a weapon,' something like that," Michelle Whitt testified.
Then, she said, Dooley pulled out the gun and James grabbed his hand. The men struggled, they fell to the ground, and James ended up on his knees as Dooley lay on his side. They still wrestled for the gun.
The gun fired.
"Mr. James looked up at us," Michelle Whitt testified. "He said, 'Call 911. I've been shot.' Then he fell over."
He was shot through the heart. A medical examiner said he probably died within seconds.
Michael Whitt called 911 at the same time the boy did. On his call, Whitt cried out, "Oh my God. All this over a skateboard."
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Miami judge decides fatal stabbing was self-defense - Miami-Dade - MiamiHerald.com
As critics assail Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law in the wake of the killing of an unarmed Miami Gardens teen in Sanford, a Miami-Dade judge on Wednesday cited the law in tossing out the case of a man who chased down a suspected burglar and stabbed him to death.
Greyston Garcia was charged with second-degree murder in the slaying of Pedro Roteta, 26, whom he chased for more than a block before stabbing the man.
The case illustrates the difficulty police and prosecutors statewide have experienced since the 2005 law eliminated a citizen’s duty to retreat in the face of danger, putting the burden on a judge, not a jury, to decide whether the accused is immune from prosecution.
In Sanford, police have cited the Stand Your Ground law in their decision not to arrest a neighborhood watch volunteer in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, 17. A Seminole County grand jury will decide on whether the man who shot Trayvon, George Zimmerman, 28, should face homicide charges.
Miami police Sgt. Ervens Ford, who supervised the Garcia case, was floored when told Wednesday of the judge’s decision. Ford called the law and the decision by Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Beth Bloom a “travesty of justice.”
“How can it be Stand Your Ground?” said Ford, a longtime homicide investigator who on his off-day on Monday plans to attend a rally in the Trayvon case in Sanford with his two teenage sons. “It’s on [surveillance] video! You can see him stabbing the victim . . .”
Bloom granted Garcia, 25, immunity under the 2005 law after she decided that his testimony about self-defense was credible. The judge did not issue a written ruling, but is expected to do so in the next few days.
The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office is likely to appeal the judge’s ruling. Garcia’s defense attorney could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
The 2005 law eliminated a citizen’s duty to retreat when attacked, leading critics to say the statute fosters vigilante justice and allows criminals to get away with murder on a claim of self-defense.
The law also bestowed immunity from prosecution and civil suits on people who are deemed to have acted in self-defense. The Florida Supreme Court has said that the question of whether the immunity applies in each case should be decided by a judge, not a jury.
“Self-defense should be decided by a jury,” Miami-Dade Chief Assistant State Attorney Kathleen Hoague, who trains prosecutors on the law, said after Wednesday’s ruling. “To us, that’s the flaw in the law.”
The incident took place on Jan. 25, when Roteta and another youth were behind Garcia’s apartment at 201 SW 18th Ct. According to police, Roteta was stealing Garcia’s truck radio.
Garcia, alerted by a roommate, grabbed a large knife and ran downstairs. He chased Roteta, then stabbed him in a confrontation that lasted less than a minute, according to court documents.
The stabbing was caught on video. Roteta was carrying a bag filled with three stolen radios, but no weapon other than a pocketknife, which was unopened in his pocket and which police said he never brandished.
After initially denying involvement in the man’s death, Garcia admitted to homicide detectives that he attacked Roteta even though “he actually never saw a weapon.”
Garcia claimed Roteta made a move that he interpreted as a move to stab him — so he struck first.
Prosecutors and police have argued since the Stand Your Ground law passed that it would give vigilantes free rein to strike first and ask questions later.
In the Garcia case, prosecutors argued that the law did not apply because the truck was not “occupied” and the suspected burglar had run away.
Once Roteta ran off, prosecutor Jennie Conklin wrote in a motion, Garcia “no longer needed to use deadly force to protect his home or unoccupied vehicle
Read more here: Miami judge decides fatal stabbing was self-defense - Miami-Dade - MiamiHerald.com
