‘Stand your ground’: a get-out-of-jail-free card?

Florida’s “stand your ground” law has allowed drug dealers to avoid murder charges and gang members to walk free. It has stymied prosecutors and confused judges.

It has also served its intended purpose, exonerating dozens of people who were deemed to be legitimately acting in self-defense. Among them: a woman who was choked and beaten by an irate tenant and a man who was threatened in his driveway by a convicted felon.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/02/2830091/stand-your-ground-a-get-out-of.html#storylink=cpy
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Girlfriend: MacArthur causeway attacker was drugged — or cursed

On the Saturday morning before he would make headlines for chewing off a man’s face –– before he would come to be known tragically as the “Miami Zombie”–– Rudy Eugene held his Bible and kissed his girlfriend goodbye.

Eugene’s on-again, off-again girlfriend said he woke her up at 5:30 a.m. to say he was going to meet with a “homeboy.” She said she found it strange he was rummaging the closet so early in morning. He didn’t name the friend or say where he was going.

He planted a kiss on her lips and said, “I love you.”

Shortly after, he left the central Broward apartment he shared with her.

“I told him be safe and I love you too. When he walked out the door I closed it, locked it and went back to sleep,” said the girlfriend, who spoke to The Miami Herald on Wednesday but asked that her name not be disclosed. She said that she thought it unusual that he was leaving the house so early, but didn’t press him on it.

An hour after he left, Eugene called her cell phone. “He called me and told me his car broke down. He said, “I’ll be home, but I’m going to be a little late. Then he said, I’m going to call you right back.” That was the last time Eugene’s girlfriend heard from him.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/30/2824778/girlfriend-face-eating-man-was.html#storylink=cpy
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Prosecutors in George Zimmerman murder trial want some evidence sealed

Prosecutors handling the second-degree murder case against George Zimmerman filed a motion late Wednesday asking the judge to seal parts of the evidence.

Among the items Duval County Assistant State Attorney Bernardo de la Rionda wants kept from the public: the results of a test police conducted on Zimmerman the day after he killed Trayvon Martin. The results have already been provided to the court under seal, de la Rionda said.

“Any testing performed and findings in this case have not gained such reliability and scientific recognition as to warrant its admissibility,” he wrote.

De la Rionda did not specify what the test was, but in an interview last week Zimmerman’s father told The Miami Herald that his son had passed a “voice stress test.”

“It’s like a lie detector, but more reliable,” Robert Zimmerman said. “I told him, ‘If you are comfortable and have been truthful, go and do it. If at any time you are uncomfortable, just say: ‘Am I afree to leave?’ So he did it.”

De la Rionda also wants to seal two CDs of audio interviews with a witness identified as “W9.” She is the same person who called police anonymously just two days after the killing to say Zimmerman and his family were racists.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/23/2814613/prosecutors-in-george-zimmerman.html#storylink=cpy
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Several George Zimmerman witnesses change their accounts

Evidence released last week in the second-degree-murder case against George Zimmerman shows four key witnesses made major changes in what they say they saw and heard the night he fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford.

Three changed their stories in ways that may damage Zimmerman. A fourth abandoned her initial story, that she saw one person chasing another. Now, she says, she saw a single figure running.

They were reinterviewed in mid-March, after Sanford police handed the case off to State Attorney Norm Wolfinger. The case changed hands again when Gov. Rick Scott passed it on to a special prosecutor. Zimmerman was arrested April 11 on a charge of second-degree murder.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/os-george-zimmerman-key-witnesses-20120522,0,6857190.story?page=1

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Miami-Dade chief medical examiner takes stand in Aventura murder trial

Miami-Dade’s chief medical examiner took 18 months to finish his probe into the death of Eleonora “Lina” Kaufman, found crumpled on the floor of her Aventura home with strange markings on her neck.

On Monday, Dr. Bruce Hyma told jurors he stood by his delayed ruling – homicide by “mechanical asphyxia” – which came after interviews with paramedics who attended to Kaufman and a litany of tests on her blood and organs.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/21/2810831/miami-dade-chief-medical-examiner.html#storylink=cpy
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Desmond Hatchett: Man With 30 Kids Requests Child-Support Break

A 33-year-old Knoxville, Tenn. man with 30 children appeared in court this week to ask the state for child-support help, Memphis news station WREG reported Wednesday.

Desmond Hatchett has fathered 30 children — which is believed to be the record in Knox county, according to the Los Angeles Times — with 11 different women. His youngest children are toddlers and his oldest is 14.

Hatchett reportedly asked the court to give him a break on his payments, claiming that he’s struggling to make ends meet with his minimum-wage job. Currently, the state requires him to divide 50 percent of his earnings among the 11 women, some of whom receive as little as $1.49 a month, WREG reports.

How did Hatchett come to father so many children? “I had four kids in the same year. Twice,” he told Volunteer TV in 2009. He also told a local news station that year that he was “done” having kids (he had only 21 at the time).

Hatchett isn’t the only serial father to make headlines. NFL player Antonio Cromartie, 28, famously fathered 10 children by eight women in six states.

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Law officers release evidence in Trayvon Martin homicide

A trove of evidence collected for George Zimmerman’s highly anticipated second-degree murder trial was made public Thursday, including an autopsy report documenting Trayvon Martin’s single gunshot in the chest.

Special prosecutor Angela B. Corey, the state attorney for Duval, Clay and Nassau counties, created a special website for media to access 67 CDs’ worth of information collected in the wake of Trayvon’s death.

The documents include reports from five Sanford police investigators and recorded statements from 23 witnesses. One witness, records show, was interviewed five times.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/17/2804442/law-officers-set-to-release-evidence.html#storylink=cpy
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31 arrested in South Florida sex-predator sting

Authorities say Shawn Gray, an attorney and lieutenant commander with the U.S. Coast Guard Judge Advocate General Corps, drove from his home in Miami to Sarasota recently to meet an 8-year-old girl he had met in a chat room.

But when Gray arrived in Sarasota County, to a house where he thought the child would be home alone, he was instead greeted by Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office deputies who arrested him.

“He had hoped to have sex with an 8-year-old girl,” Sarasota County Sheriff Tom Knight said of Gray, who was charged with use of a computer and traveling to seduce, solicit or entice a child to commit sex acts.

Gray is being charged with a second-degree felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison, said Chief Assistant State Attorney Ed Brodsky.

Gray was one of 31 nabbed in a six-day sting called Operation Intercept, an attempt to protect Manatee and Sarasota counties’ children from online predators, Knight said Monday during a news conference at the sheriff’s office in downtown Sarasota.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/15/2800163/31-arrested-in-south-florida-sex.html#storylink=cpy
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