California's SYG Law (yes we have it here too)

[ProgressiveProfessor]

It came from the courts, not the legislature, but has been binding for quite some time.

It's also the rule in California, by court decree. For more than a century, the state's judges have declared that a person who reasonably believes he or she faces serious injury or death from an assailant does not have to back off - inside or outside the home - and instead can use whatever force is needed to eliminate the danger.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/15/BA2J1O3418.DTL




Can you hear me Major Hogwash?

[DanTex]

1. CA doesn't have the pre-trial immunity hearing...

The Florida law, however, contains a major pro-defense feature absent in California and other states: a pretrial, nonjury hearing in which a judge, after considering the evidence, decides whether it's more likely than not that the defendant acted in self-defense.

If so, the judge must dismiss the charges. In California, such factual disputes must be resolved by a jury.

In the Martin case, a judge will have to decide whether it was more likely than not that George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watchman who fatally shot the unarmed 17-year-old in a gated community in Sanford, Fla., on Feb. 26, reasonably believed he was in danger from Martin.

"That hearing is the big difference," said Marty Vranicar, assistant chief executive of the California District Attorneys Association and a former Los Angeles prosecutor. "A jury's going to be deciding that in California. ... I have often had more luck presenting my case to 12 fact-finders than to an individual bench officer."

[ProgressiveProfessor]

3. Indeed it does not...SYG is not the same everywhere

[geckosfeet]

2. Does not say anything about stalking then intimidating your target into defending themselves.

Then shooting them when they exercise their right to self-defense from a perceived threat.

That law needs to be revised so that you can shoot without being questioned. Kinda like Florida's law.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

4. FL law still has the reasonable man threshold and the burden of showing lethal force was justified

FL law requires that issue to be settled up front.

[Ecumenist]

5. That's funny. When I was a girl, I lived in LA county, (West Compton). One night, a

criminally insane sex offender got into our home through a from window that my "father" ( a abusive psychopath), had left open. My 2nd youngest brother was a newborn and my mother was up with him. She walked upon this nut who was standing over my father, (don't ask me what he planned to do). Anyway. My mother woke my father who chased the nut back through the window and took off after him to try to get him.
Earlier that night, he had entered, attacked and murdered a young girl down the street from us. Our home was the next he entered. My mother had phoned the police and when they got the home, my "father" had returned. The police advised them that if he chose to use his gun, make sure that it wasn't in any part of the body that would show that the creep had turned him back to him OR OUTSIDE the house. He actually said that if you shoot him on the porch, drag him into the house, if you can do so WITHOUT leaving a blood trail.

I don't know what this person is talking about. Trust me, if you live here in California and you shoot someone OUTSIDE of your home, (on the porch, for example), you've got a problem on your hands. Do you know how many people have been arrested because they did JUST that?

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. I live and teach in SoCal

The DA's here have a tremendous amount of discretion and some abuse it. It is one of the things that has made SYG and Castle Defense so popular.

[Ecumenist]

7. I'm still in California, just in the Capitol. We don't have a SYG, according to my BIL, the

criminal defense atty, sitting next to me. He says that the ALEC group have been trying to introduce SYG -type legislation here but that we DO NOT HAVE IT HERE.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

8. Its precedent not statute law

The article was pretty clear about its history and how it works. Its not a FL style law.