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The Iowa House has approved a sweeping gun bill that includes a stand-your-ground provision and allows citizens to sue local governments that impose weapons restrictions

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) The Iowa House on Tuesday approved a sweeping gun bill that would include a stand-your-ground provision and allow citizens to sue local governments that impose weapons restrictions.

The Republican-controlled chamber voted 58-39 mostly along party lines. The bill now heads to the GOP-majority Senate, where it has support.

The legislation would make several changes to Iowa's gun laws, and is the culmination of years of failed attempts from Republicans to amend current rules. The party controls both legislative chambers and the governor's office for the first time in nearly 20 years, and this legislative session marks their first real window to make major revisions.

"It's been a long time coming for this bill," said Rep. Matt Windschitl, R-Missouri Valley, shortly before the vote. "There's still work to be done. I'm still open to input from anybody out there that has concerns with it."

The stand-your-ground provision has been part of those concerns. It would allow a person to use deadly force anywhere if he or she believes such force was necessary to avoid injury or risk to one's life or safety. It allows a person to be wrong about an estimation of danger.

That's problematic, said Rep. Ras Smith, D-Waterloo. The black lawmaker at one point during floor debate put on a hoodie, a reference to the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin. The 17-year-old Martin was wearing similar clothing when he was shot and killed in Florida by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer. Zimmerman ultimately didn't use that state's stand-your-ground law as defense, though its consideration garnered attention. Zimmerman was later acquitted of charges related to the shooting.

The circumstances surrounding the shooting Martin was black and unarmed led to protests and a national debate about race relations.

"The idea that you can be wrong in your estimation of a threat, but as long as you have good reason, is terrifying for some of us," Smith said.

Another proposal in the bill would allow a citizen to sue a local government for enacting ordinances that regulate gun-free zones if the person argues that he or she is adversely affected. Republicans have pointed out that existing law already prohibits such ordinances, but it hasn't stopped communities from enacting policies over the years. Some Democrats said the new provision impacts local control.

"Each of our counties and cities are different," said Rep. Mary Mascher, D-Iowa City. "We have different values and beliefs regarding gun ownership and gun safety. Our local government bodies should have the right to determine what is best for their citizens and community."

At least one Republican agreed. Rep. Dave Heaton of Mount Pleasant noted that in 1986, the mayor of his community was gunned down by a resident during a city council meeting. Two other council members were wounded in the shooting.

"Afterwards, we banned weapons from our city council chamber," he said. "And this bill challenges the right of that city council to ban weapons from the city council chamber. My town will never forget what happened."

There are several other changes in the bill. It would allow children under age 14 to use handguns with parental supervision and allow concealed weapons on the Capitol grounds. Some initial proposals to allow guns on college campuses and lifetime firearm permits were scrapped.

Around 50 gun rights activists gathered at the Capitol Tuesday to lobby for the legislation, and a handful stuck around for the chamber debate. Kurt Liske, vice president of the Iowa Firearms Coalition, told supporters the legislation was the "biggest pro-Second Amendment bill in state history."

"At no point will we take a bigger step forward in protecting and enhancing your Second Amendment rights than we will when we sign this piece of legislation into law," he said. "This really, truly is historic."

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See the article here:
Iowa House OKs gun bill with stand-your-ground provision - East Oregonian (subscription)

THURSDAY, MARCH 2, 2017, 9:21 A.M.

In this Sept. 13, 2016, file photo, George Zimmerman looks at the jury as he testifies in a Seminole County courtroom in Orlando, Fla. (Red Huber / Associated Press)

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. Floridas stand your ground law, a source of contention for years, could soon provide even more protection to people who invoke it. Some lawmakers want to make prosecutors prove a defendant wasnt acting in self-defense before proceeding to trial.

Florida has been a leader in giving citizens immunity in cases of self-defense, with its stand your ground law serving as an emotional point of debate after several high-profile shooting deaths, including that of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin.

While at least 22 states have similar laws that say people can use force even deadly force to defend themselves from threats, Florida could soon be alone shifting the burden of proof to prosecutors.

Republican Sen. Rob Bradley says his bill isnt a novel concept.

We have a tradition in our criminal justice system that the burden of proof is with the government from the beginning of the case to the end, he said.

Floridas Supreme Court has ruled that the burden of proof is on defendants during self-defense immunity hearings. Thats the practice around the country. According to a legislative staff analysis of Bradleys bill, only four states mention burden of proof in their stand your ground laws Alabama, Colorado, Georgia and South Carolina and all place the burden on defendants.

Bradleys bill died last year but now its chances are improving: Its ready for a full Senate vote when the session begins next week, and one of two House committees assigned to hear it has approved it.

Democrats are opposing the bill, but have little leverage to stop it in a legislature dominated by Republicans and with a Republican governor.

The bill has received passionate opposition from people who feel the existing law has already been abused and will be invoked even more by people seeking to avoid responsibility for violent crimes.

Stand your ground is not just about guns: The defense can be invoked after any act of violence aimed at self-protection, whether its punching, stabbing, shooting or striking someone with an object.

Neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmermans fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin isnt the only case thats part of the debate in Florida.

Lucy McBaths 17-year-old son Jordan Davis was fatally shot by Michael Dunn during an argument over loud music outside a Jacksonville convenience store. And in the Tampa Bay area, retired police officer Curtis Reeves is claiming self-defense in a stand your ground pretrial hearing after fatally shooting Chad Oulson in a dispute over a cellphone at a movie theater.

Both Zimmerman and Dunn claimed self-defense at trial and stand your ground was included in their juries instructions. Zimmerman was acquitted and Dunn was eventually convicted of murder.

McBath believes the way the law currently reads is why Dunns first jury couldnt reach a decision, and says expanding stand your ground protections would make it harder to keep people safe from gun violence.

Testifying against the bill at a Senate committee meeting, McBath said the current law already encourages citizens to shoot first and ask questions later.

This legislation would effectively require defendants who raise stand your ground defenses to be convicted twice, she said. Having lived through this grueling experience first-hand with two trials for my sons murder, I can attest to the anguish and the pain that this process elicits. We should not make it harder for family members to achieve the justice that they deserve.

Marissa Alexander, in contrast, supports Bradleys bill. She unsuccessfully tried a stand your ground defense and was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2012 for firing a gun near her estranged husband. She called it a warning shot to protect herself from abuse. Her conviction was thrown out on appeal and she was freed after reaching a plea deal in 2014.

I feel like you go into that kind of situation guilty until proven innocent, she said. She hopes Florida will start another trend if it passes.

Florida kind of sets the tone and other states follow, she said.

Read more:
Florida could flip burden of proving 'stand your ground' - The Spokesman-Review

Mary Burkett, Washington County Republican Party 7:04 a.m. MT March 3, 2017

Mary Burkett(Photo: Jud Burkett / The Spectrum & Daily News)Buy Photo

Police are given discretion as to which cases they will pursue. They make choices about the severity and intent of a crime.

Prosecutors have discretion about which cases they will take to trial, whether to plea bargain and which offenses are most worth going to trial.

Juries, according to the law, have discretion. In many cases, jurors do not know it.

HB332 (Criminal Procedure Revisions) is before the Utah State Legislature and addresses ensuring that judges instruct juries about their discretion. Take a few minutes to read the summary (le.utah.gov), the first few and last paragraphs of the bill. It is designed to ensure that juries are fully informed of their options when deciding a verdict, including jury nullification.

Most of us dont know that jury nullification is a valid option. Simply put, someone can break a law and show in court that the law is unjust. The jury can then return a not guilty verdict. This is where juries have discretion.

Womens March, media fuel divisive movement

Its a remarkable idea. As the Libertas Institute explains, Juries serve as one component of a much larger justice system a final checkpoint to help ensure, as far as possible, that innocent individuals are not wrongfully convicted or that well-intentioned laws do not create an injustice by being unfairly applied to a particular person or circumstance.

However, there are judges and lawyers who do not like the idea of jury nullification so they withhold this vital information from the jury. Its much easier to control an ignorant jury. HB332 will stop this withholding of information.

There are high-profile cases in which juries have likely gone rogue.

The O.J. Simpson jury may very well have practiced nullification by finding the defendant not guilty even though they thought he had committed two murders but because the investigating detectives were seen as racists, they were justified to find him not guilty.

Other legal experts have called the George Zimmerman verdict in the Trayvon Martin case a classic example of jury nullification.

In 2009, Doug Darrell was charged with cultivating marijuana for distribution in New Hampshire. He said that the marijuana was being grown for personal use and religious purposes. His attorney actually had to ask the judge to tell the jury they had the right to nullify and they did.

Circumstances surrounding most jury nullification cases include unjust laws, unjust sentencing guidelines, victimless crimes and particulars of a single case, including mitigating factors.

Jury nullification is neither a Democrat or Republican issue, although many Libertarians have taken it up as a cause.

The bigger point is simple. And very important. When there are injustices, juries, a group of regular Americans pulled from voter rolls, can right wrongs. Its one of the many ways that the Founders showed their faith in their fellow citizens.

Its an optimistic view of the future, so contrary to the view liberals hold toward their fellow Americans. Where liberals treat their fellow Americans like victims, constantly trying to allow the government to interfere with their lives, with the intent of fixing things citizens are better served to fix themselves, our Founders and today, conservatives, have high hopes and expectations for the American people. We have faith in our fellow citizens, as demonstrated by the idea of jury nullification.

A few of the great resources online to learn more include Fully Informed Jury Association, Cop Block, Truth in Justice and the Libertas Institute.

Mary Burkett is a member of the Washington County Republican Party.

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Legislature should ensure juries know their options - St. George Daily Spectrum

If ever a guy reinvented himself, it was George Smith, whose funeral service is Thursday.

Growing up in a blue-collar, factory-working family on Ashley Street near the Fairgrounds, he was befriended by then-University of Dayton basketball coach Tom Blackburn, who ran Madden Golf Course in the summers.

Smith worked in the pro shop, did other jobs around the West Dayton course and, along the way, learned not only how to play golf, but how to hustle.

Blackburn had a lot of stories how hed bring George along to some of his golf games, Don Donoher, who followed Blackburn as Flyers coach and was Smiths pal for some 65 years, said with a laugh. George was his ringer.

Smiths golf was so good at Stivers High School that hed end up in the schools Athletic Hall of Fame and get a scholarship to Ohio State.

He lettered three years for the Buckeyes, was the team captain and, as a senior, led OSU to a 22-stroke victory for the Big Ten title.

By the time he graduated, Smith was considered one of the best amateur golfers in the nation, a fact he underscored at the Ohio Amateur championship in 1954 when he was the medalist of the 36-hole qualifier, topping the likes of Arnold Palmer, who had won the tournament the year before when he was stationed in Ohio with the Coast Guard and then had gone on to Wake Forest, and Jack Nicklaus, then a highly-touted prep player at Upper Arlington High outside Columbus.

But then came the match play and, well, the partying from the night before took old Smith down, laughed Donoher. George said his first tee time happened to coincide with just about the time he got in and he missed his first match.

Soon after that Smith suffered a devastating blow that would have forever ended the party for someone with less of a backbone.

Donohers wife-to-be, Sonia, had graduated with George at Stivers and she introduced her high school pal and her beau, who would become great friends.

We were both in ROTC and after college I ended up in Germany and George went to Fort Sill (Oklahoma), Donoher said. Thats where he contacted polio just weeks before the Salk vaccine was released.

Smith lost the ability to walk on his own and from then on was relegated to crutches and cumbersome leg braces and mostly a wheel chair.

He still had that competitive edge and he soon found another sport in which he could channel it. He had been introduced to thoroughbred racing by his college golf coach, Bob Kepler, who was from Dayton and loved to go to the track, and then was further immersed in racing by one of his polio doctors.

He bought his first race horse with George Zimmerman (in 1956), Donoher said. It was called Pineapples. He didnt like the name, he inherited that, but he sure did like the sport.

In 1970 Smith and his friend, local dentist Dr. Wilbur Johnston, bought 110 acres on Nutt Road in Centerville and formed Woodburn Farm.

It would become one of the most prominent thoroughbred farms in the Midwest, producing numerous stakes winners, state champions and graded stakes winners horses like Spoken Fur, Extended Applause, which ran fourth in the Breeders Cup, and Sweet Audrey, which won the Fall City Handicap in Louisville. Soon horses Smith and Johnston owned or bred were ending up in the Winners Circle in places like Hialeah Park, Gulfstream, Churchill Downs, Saratoga, Arlington Park and, of course, nearby River Downs.

Through it all George just kept plugging along, Donoher said:

He lived to be 84 and Ill tell you 84 and polio just dont go together. People marveled at his longevity. But he never complained. Never . He was as tough as nails, right to the end.

That end came last week when he was headed with longtime pal and former UD basketball player Terry Bockhorn and Terrys son to the Miami Valley Raceway in Lebanon. He suffered what Terry believes was a massive heart attack.

Smiths memorial service is at 11 a.m. at St. Georges Episcopal Church (5520 Far Hills Ave.).

The family George is survived by Norma, his wife of 54 years, daughters Audrey Nichols and Amy Sauk and son Austin Kep Smith (another son, Grantland, died in 1999) and five grandchildren will receive friends an hour before the service.

In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made in Smiths memory to Old Friends Farm, a thoroughbred retirement home at 1841 Paynes Depot Road, Georgetown, Ky., 40324.

Loved the sport

Terry Bockhorn remembered the first time he met George:

I was with my brother Arlen (Bucky) and we went to the old Park Row (supper club) after a UD game. We met George and Mick (Don Donoher) there and they said they were going to River Downs the next day.

I said, You guys mind if I tag along?

That was over 40 years ago and Terry tagged along with George ever since.

They used to go to South Florida in the winter when Smith had horses running there, and then they would frequent tracks all over the Midwest.

In the mid-1970s, Smith served as president of the Ohio Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Association and he later was a governors appointee on the Thoroughbred Advisory Racing Board.

One of his most noteworthy feats was pulling together the competing thoroughbred and harness industries in Ohio to help bring simulcast racing to the state.

He said he was coming back from Turfway Park in Kentucky where he had watched a simulcast of one of his horses running in Florida and happened to pass the old Lebanon Raceway where he said there were about two cars in the parking lot.

I thought, Why are we dumping all our money in Kentucky? We should have simulcasting at tracks up here.

He met with Lebanon racing kingpin Corwin Nixon and his partner, Lou Carlo, and hammered out a plan they both could live with and then presented it to the Ohio legislature.

A skeptical Carlo told him if he could pull that off hed build him a special room to watch races at the Lebanon track.

The proposal passed and sure enough Lebanon soon had the George Smith VIP room.

It was like a glorified closet, but it was carpeted, had air conditioning, a refrigerator, a desk, a TV and betting machine.

It became a sort of clubhouse for watching the races for Smith and his pals, including Donoher, Bockhorn, Dr. James Gabel, the longtime vet of note and a former Ohio racing commissioner and horse owner, and Jim Morgan, the Stivers and University of Louisville basketball standout, who gave up the NBA to coach at Stebbins High and became the winningest stakes trainer in Ohio thoroughbred history.

Along the way Smith named horses for some of them and others in the community. Donher had Mickey Baskets and Gabel got Commissioner Gabe. Longtime Dayton Daily News sports columnist Si Burick has a horse by the same name and also Simon Punster.

A little over a decade ago Smith named a grey colt later gelded Tom Archdeacon and he had a few nice wins, including the 2007 Awad Stakes at Arlington Park.

Smith said he named the horse for me because he knew I loved the sport. It was the same for the other guys.

And, most of all, it was the same for him.

He loved the sport as much as anyone Ive ever known, Morgan said Wednesday from Florida. He had a great passion for it. George just loved being around racing.

Bockhorn agreed:

That last day we were headed to the track. Like always, he was looking forward to it. George was a gamer right to the end.

More here:
Tom Archdeacon: Celebrating George Smith, local racing legend - MyDaytonDailyNews

A few words on the innocence of Trayvon Martin.

The very idea will outrage certain people. Experience says the notion of Trayvon Martin being innocent will offend them deeply.

But they can get over it. Or not.

Because it is five years now since Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin's unarmed son died, five years since he was killed in Sanford, Fla. by a neighborhood watchman who dubbed him, on sight, a "f------ punk" and one of "these a--holes." Five years. And there are things that need saying. His divorced parents say much of it in "Rest in Power," their new book about the tragedy.

"My son had been intensely alive!" writes Martin. "My son had been a life force, a teenager who had hopes and dreams and so much love. But in death, he became a figure we could only see through the dark mirror of evidence and testimony, a cursed single night when our son and all that life inside him was reduced to a stranger, a black kid in a hoodie, a young man in the shadows. A suspect."

George Zimmerman was the first to make that reduction when he stalked Trayvon through a gated community despite a police dispatcher advising him to stay with his car. Then the police did it, testing the shooting victim for drugs and alcohol while telling his killer to "go home and get some rest." Then the jury did it when they set Zimmerman free.

Much of America did it, too. One reader wrote -- without a shred of evidence -- that Trayvon was "casing" houses when he was shot. This was a boy walking back from 7-Eleven to watch a basketball game at his father's girlfriend's house.

Another person, upset that family photos made Trayvon look too young and, well ... innocent, forwarded a chain email showing a tough-looking man, with beard and mustache, tats on his hands and face, insisting, "This is the real Trayvon." It was actually the real Jayceon "The Game" Taylor, a then-32-year-old rapper. Supplied with a death scene image of Trayvon -- darker skin than Taylor, younger, slimmer, no facial hair, no visible tats -- the woman was unmoved. "They're both Trayvon," she insisted.

Because Trayvon could not, at all costs, be innocent. The very idea was a threat.

So people embraced absurdities. Like a 140-pound boy jumping a man 12 years older and 50 pounds heavier. Like the boy hitting the man 25 or 30 times and bashing his head against concrete, though Zimmerman's "injuries" amounted to a bloody nose and scratches on the back of his head that needed no stitches. Like Trayvon, shot point blank in the heart, dying like a villain in some 1950s Western, groaning, "You got me."

They seized upon his suspension from school. For them, it proved not that he was an ordinary boy who needed -- and was receiving -- the guidance of two loving parents. No, it proved he was not, could never be, innocent. Trayvon was no angel, they would announce triumphantly.

But why did he have to be? And why was there no similar requirement of the killer, who had been arrested once for scuffling with a police officer and had been the subject of a domestic violence restraining order? The answer is too obvious for speaking.

Five years ago, a black boy was shot for nothing. And many Americans made him a blank screen upon which they projected their racialized stereotypes and fears. They could not allow him to be a harmless child walking home. No, they needed his guilt. They knew what it proved if Trayvon Martin was innocent.

Namely, that America was anything but.

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald;lpitts@miamiherald.com.

Read more:
Pitts: Five years after his death, a few words about Trayvon - Baltimore Sun