ground cases were african-americans. well then, dan a lot of those people would have been tried and put in jail for stopping a violent act. so then, dan, in your view, if that is the case what dennis is saying, then do you continue to be an opponent of stand your ground? stand your ground devalues life and gives defenses to people who ought not to get a defense. understand something. before the legislature passed stand your ground you could use lethal force if you reasonably thought you needed to. the only difference was that before you used lethal force, if you could receive from the scenario safely you were obliged to do that so you could always use force. you could always use deadly force if you needed to. but all the law said was that if you can retreat from a escalan e escalating situation, you are obliged to do that. in the zimmerman case, by the way, mr. zimmerman was a
avoid danger before using force. under current florida law, the jurors in the zimmerman case were told the defendant had, quote, no duty to retreat. had the right to stand his ground and could meet force with force. so i m joined now by dennis backsly who serves in the florida state house and was the sponsor of the stand your ground law in florida and dan gelger, a former state senator and prosecutor who led opposition to the bill before it was passed. good to see you both. dennis, do you agree with the jury s verdict? no, i don t. i trust the jury system wait a minute. yeah, dan first. okay. you want to start with dan. okay. i m sorry. go ahead. thank you. i think it s pretty clear that the jury was impacted by the stand your ground law because even though they didn t use the
pretrial procedure, very clearly the jury was given the stand your ground law. they went in to the jury room believing there might have been guilt in the case and then read the law that says no only no duty to retreat but no reasonableness exiting the situation so at the end of the day i think jurors said that they believed that the stand your ground law was something they relied on and given the stand your ground law which is the law in florida right now. dennis, how did you see the verdict? well, i didn t try to preempt. i believe in the jury system. i believe that prehad a trial and that we had to trust the verdict of that jury and i think it s inappropriate to second guess them. that acquittal should be the final say. on the other hand, there s no duty to retreat if you re pinned to the ground and the defense that they showed. that they went up in that position and he made a standard self defense you can make in any place in the country. had nothing to do withstand your