Stand-your-ground immunity allowed a shooting to evade all judicial review

Evidence

George Zimmerman, a self-appointed community watch volunteer, acting on suspicion suggestive of racial profiling, pursued and killed an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin. Martin was returning home from a local store with candy and iced tea. Zimmerman left his car and continued to pursue Martin on foot even though the police dispatcher told him not to do so. In the ensuing altercation, Zimmerman shot and killed Martin. Zimmerman was set free without being charged with the shooting or any judicial review of it, because he claimed he was acting in self-defense. Zimmerman displaced the responsibility for killing to divine agency, expressing no regret over it because he was following “God’s plan.” — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1214

Categorization

• XREF: Zimmerman’s ‘God’s plan’ exoneration is a real-world instance of moral disengagement via displacement of responsibility, the very mechanism this book theorizes.
• FICTION: A community-watch volunteer who stalks someone with and without a dispatcher’s say-so, then reads law as divine warrant, is a vivid character sketch worth keeping.