INTERESTING TAKE ON FLORIDA STAND YOUR GROUND LAW

By Bob Walsh

Jewelry store robbers Lamar Alexander and Ronnie Hill in a hijacked UPS truck are pictured in a shootout with police after a high-speed chase from Coral Gables, Florida, ended when the vehicle got stuck in traffic on a highway near Miami  

 

There was a truly unfortunate police shoot-out in Miramar, Florida on December 5 in 2019.  There was a hijacking of a UPS truck after the armed robbery of a jewelry store.  Eventually 20 cops were involved along with two bad guys.  The bad guys shot first.  A total of 180 shots were fired by the cops.  The incident left four dead.  Two of the dead were the UPS driver and an uninvolved bystander, the other two were the bad guys, Lamar Alexander and Ronnie Hill.  After EXTENSIVE investigation and forensics work it was determined that one officer, Jose Mateo, fired the shots that killed both of the good guys.  There is a fair amount of decent quality surveillance footage of the incident.  

A total of four Miami-Dade officers, including that specific shooter, are facing manslaughter charges in the deaths of the two good guys.  Nobody is asserting that the police response to basic incident itself was unjustified.  The bad guys shot first.  It isn't real clear as far as I can tell why these four particular officers are being charged and not just the office who fired the fatal shots, or for that matter all 20 officers.

The prosecutors in Broward County are asserting that the cops response to being shot at was unreasonable under the circumstances and that, at the very least, former Officer Mateo should not be allowed to use the Stand Your Ground law in his defense.  The prosecution has 36 witnesses qued up in large part to present this idea.  The idea is that the cops were not standing their ground against the uninvolved good guys that the cops ended up killing.  Everybody seems to agree that the statue is a little fuzzy on this exact subject.     

The judge has yet to rule on the defense allegations.  If he rules that the officers are covered by the Stand Your Ground statute, the manslaughter charge will go away.  If not the case will proceed and a trial date will be set.