George Zimmerman, the admitted killer of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager in Sanford Florida will forego his right to a “Stand Your Ground” hearing next month, his legal team announced, Tuesday.
Under Florida’s Stand Your Ground law a defendant who claims self defense is entitled to a pretrial hearing before a judge to determine the validity of a self defense claim. If the judge finds the self defense claim valid the case is terminated and the defendant is absolved of guilt. If the judge does not absolve the defendant, he/she still has the to a self defense claim at trial.
While I believe, that as a matter of public policy Zimmerman should be tried before a jury, which will presumably hear the evidence of self defense, I am somewhat befuddled when I try to understand the defense strategy in waiving a hearing. If there was a hearing and a judge decided to dismiss the case all havoc may break loose. The case has achieved a fair amount of notoriety. It is seen as a case where the police and the District Attorney initially refused to charge the White killer of an unarmed African American teenager. The racial overtones are clear. It is likely that if a white judge dismissed the case on “stand your ground” grounds that riots would break out in major cities around the country. Faith in the American system of justice and due process will suffer another strike. Tremendous pressure would be put on Florida to abrogate the stand your ground statute.
But as a legal strategy it has advantages. It basically gives Zimmerman two bites at the apple. First he gets to argue self defense at a hearing before a judge and if he loses he gets a second opportunity before a jury. Its hard to figure out why Zimmerman would surrender one of his two bites. Perhaps he is afraid that if the case is dismissed by the judge that he will never be able to live down the fact that he killed Martin. There have been threats on his life already and he may be afraid that those threats will continue for the rest of his life if a judge, without a jury, dismisses the case.
Although he gave a statement to the police, Zimmerman may have some surprise testimony. If his lawyers do not think that the case will be thrown out at a stand your ground hearing, they may not want Zimmerman to testify before trial and expose his surprise testimony. Or perhaps they do not want to subject the surprise testimony to cross examination prior to trial. Certainly, if he testifies we can expect serious cross examination by the prosecutor. If under cross examination he is unable to tell the same story twice (once at the stand your ground hearing and once at the trial), he will lose his credibility before the jury.
It is certainly a big risk on the part of Zimmerman and his attorneys. We will have to wait and see what is up their sleeves. But you can be sure that there will be plenty of comments made after the trial regardless of whether he wins or loses regarding this move. If he wins, it will be interesting to hear the comments of his lead lawyer, Mark O’Mara.
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