Case Information: Omar Rodriguez v. State of Florida, No. 3D17-1633 (Florida Court of Appeal brief filed Sept. 20, 2017).
At Issue: Florida’s “shoot first” Stand Your Ground law allows a person to use deadly force in public in self-defense, even if the person is safely able to avoid a confrontation by retreating. Florida’s extreme version of this law gained notoriety in 2012 after an unarmed 17-year-old, Trayvon Martin, was killed by a shooter who followed Martin through his own neighborhood, then claimed he needed to shoot the teen in self-defense. In 2017, Florida’s legislature passed an even more extreme amendment to Stand Your Ground: a “burden-shifting” law that would require prosecutors to prove at a pretrial hearing that a criminal defendant who shot someone is not entitled to immunity from prosecution. This reverses the existing procedure, where defendants who use deadly force need to make an initial showing that Stand Your Ground applies to them. Fortunately, a trial court struck down the dangerous amendment as violating the separation-of-powers doctrine. Supporters of the amendment recently appealed that decision to Florida’s intermediate appellate court.
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