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Floridas controversial stand your ground law continues to make headlines. but what does it mean? We break it down for you.GINNY BEAGAN/TCPALM Wochit

Gov. Ron DeSantis has been asked to appoint a special prosecutor in the 2016 case of a man whose family says was shot dead when he mistakenly knockedat the wrong door of a south Fort Myers condo.

The request was made by attorney Mark OMara, best known as the defense attorney forGeorge Zimmerman, who was acquitted on murder charges in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin more than six years ago.

O'Mara represents Sandy Modell,the father of Ryan Modell, who was fatally shot by Steve Taylor in March 2016 at the Emerson Square condominium complex where both lived.

More: Death of 32-year-old justified under Stand Your Ground, no charges for shooter

O'Mara wrote a similarletter to former Gov. Rick Scott in 2017 asking for the case to bereviewed by an independent state attorneyand presented to a grand jury. That effort went nowhere.

This undated photo made available by the Modell family, shows Ryan Modell, right, as he visits Paris with his father Sandy Modell. Sandy Modell is asking Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to reopen the investigation into his son's 2016 shooting death during an altercation at Ryan's south Lee County condominium complex. Local prosecutors declined to charge the shooter, Steve Taylor, citing the state's "stand your ground" law, a decision Sandy Modell wants reversed.(Photo: Modell family via Associated Press)

Modell remains adamant that his son was murdered andcant understand why Taylor hasnt been arrested.

"Taylor was back in the house. Safe behind a door. He was told to stay in the house," Modell said. "What this guy did, he waited four to five minutes. He stewed."

Modell described that as '"reengagement." He also said Taylor had to go outside and find his son, which he described as pursuit. And when he encountered the younger man, Modell said Taylor pointed the laser-sight and 10mm handgun equipped with a flashlight at his son, which he called felony assault.

"Any of those three elements negates 'stand your ground' as a defense," Modell said.

What is Florida's Stand Your Ground law?: A Miami law professor explains

The original reason for the request lies in a2017 decision by the state attorney's office in deciding not tobringcharges against Taylor.

The state attorneys office said Taylor, a tractor equipment salesman who served on a tank during the first Gulf War, was justified under Floridas Stand Your Ground law to kill Modell because he feared for his life.

The law was made infamous after George Zimmerman was acquitted of murder charges in the 2012 death of 17-year-old Martin in Sanford.

In both the Martin and Modell slayings, prosecutors cited the same law in deciding, at least initially, not to prosecute. The law says people who justifiably believe they face death or great bodily harm can use deadly force without first retreating, but they cannot be the confrontation instigator.

Sandy Modell talks about the March 20, 2016, shooting at the gated Emerson Square community in south Lee County that claimed his son Ryan's life.(Photo: Michael Braun/The News-Press)

Family members of Martin, and now Modell, claim the shooters were the instigators and therefore werent entitled to use the law. Ultimately, OMara didnt use the law as a defense in the Zimmerman case, but it was cited by police who waited 44 days to arrest him.

More: Lee County father looking for answers in son's shooting death

According to the state attorneys office, Modell, 32, was a well-developed, well-nourished man who stood at 6-foot-1 and weighed 224 pounds. Modell and Taylor lived in the complex in identical buildings, each in units numbered 102.

That Taylor shot Ryan Modell on the early morning of March 20, 2016, is undisputed. He claimed in police reports that he was protecting his home and his wife.

The Florida man who fatally shot Markeis McGlockton during a dispute over a handicapped parking spot was found guilty of manslaughter. USA TODAY

Ryan Modell had been at the condo complexpool with friends about 2:30 a.m. celebrating a newly accepted job and a friend's birthdaywhen he headed back to the apartment he was sharing with his girlfriend,Kristin Ann Westlund. He mistook one apartment for another and tried opening the door, his father and girlfriend confirmed. That's when Taylor allegedly confronted him and shot him.

Modellsaid he believes the decision was political, that now-retired State Attorney SteveRussell and his then chief deputyAmira Fox, who successfully ran to replace him in 2018, wanted to give the National Rifle Association a stand your ground victory and didnt want to risk losing a high-profile case before the election.

Foxs office and Taylors current and former attorneys, Matthew Toll and Robert Harris, declined to comment.

This is a six-month review of the most-read crime stories in Lee County on news-press.com from March 2019 to August 2019. Fort Myers News-Press

However, in aprevious statement, Samantha Syoen, communications director for the state attorney's office, said: "We made our decision and found it was an appropriate Stand Your Ground application and will have no further prosecutorial action."

OMara argues that the law does not apply becauseTaylor should not have gone outside with his gun and pursued Modell after the younger man walked away from his door.

You are not allowed to put yourself in a position where you have to shoot, said OMara, who wants Taylor charged with second-degree murder.

DeSantis office said the Republican governor is examining the request to appoint a special prosecutor to reopen the case.

More: What is Florida's 'stand your ground' law? Here are five questions (and answers) to explain

Modell, who saidthe state attorneys should have given the case to a grand jury if they couldn't make up their minds,is hoping the governor will review the facts and see the need for a special prosecutor.

"I believe in the governor's integrity and intellect," he said. "I think he will do the right thing."

But, Modell said that no matter what happens it will be small comfort.

Modellsaid his son drank too much that night and should have been charged with disorderly conduct, but not executed.

My son is dead because some hothead with a gun had to play a big shot for his wife, he said.

Connect with breaking news reporter Michael Braun:MichaelBraunNP (Facebook),@MichaelBraunNP (Twitter) or mbraun@news-press.com.

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Father of man killed in 'Stand Your Ground' case in south Fort Myers asks Gov. Ron DeSantis to review case - News-Press

Wesley Lowery will leave the Washington Post for the new CBS News program 60 in 6, according to an announcement sent to Post employees Tuesday. The reporter, who shared a Pulitzer Prize for a Post series on police shootings, has blazed a bright trail at The Post since arriving from the Boston Globe in 2014, the announcement reads.

Indeed. Lowery has been making waves in journalism since he was a student at Ohio University, where he managed to interview George Zimmerman at a time when he was mostly avoiding the media. At subsequent stints at the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe, Lowery showed a talent for being in the thick of things, reporting on the Boston Marathon bombings and the manhunt that followed, as well as onAaron Hernandez.

Lowery was working for the Post when he was arrested in Ferguson, Missouri, alongside HuffPost reporter Ryan J. Reilly in 2014. He later wrote a bestselling book about Ferguson called They Cant Kill Us All that AMC developed into a series. He rubbed some in the newsroom the wrong way early on with his large following andactive social media presence, which he has of late scaled back, most recently to tweet in support of suspendedPostreporter Felicia Sonmez.

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Wesley Lowery Will Leave the Washington Post - Washingtonian

When Melissa Harris-Perry questioned whether a divided nation could build Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s vision of a beloved community, she told the Kent State University audience that she didnt have an answer.

Instead, the Maya Angelou Presidential Chair at Wake Forest University, television host, author and political commentator said this:"My goal is to raise the question to provide a framework for how you think about that question and then we, collectively will over time decide what the answer is."

On Friday, Harris-Perry was the keynote speaker of the universitys annual Martin Luther King Jr. celebration, which started on Monday with a day of service, followed by Wednesdays conversation with Women of Color Collective and founder of Lifted in Love founder Cleotea Mack and a Friday morning symposium on race, access and learning.

Her speech also came on the heels of the universitys announcement of several awards including the Diversity Trailblazer Award (Alfreda Brown, Kent State vice president for diversity, equity and inclusion), Beverly J. Warren Unity Award for Diversity (Fashion Schools NYC Studio), and the Rozell Duncan Student Diversity Award (Ph.D. candidate Pacifique Niyonzima and Latinx in Theatre). President Todd Diacon also announced that the Trailblazer award will now be known as the Alfreda Brown Award. The award and the renaming were both a surprise for Brown.

"Youve heard of Dr. Kings philosophy of servant leadership. A lot like to pretend theyre service leaders but if they tell you they are, then theyre definitely not. Heres how I know: when the award is announced and its obvious to everyone else in the room and Dr. Browns reaction wasWhat? It got me, and then to know that the award will be named for you, because we are so invisible in our institutions," Harris-Perry said.

In answering Kings question, Harris-Perry first broke down the question, starting with"Are we a divided nation?" According to the research she cited, yes. There is a division in trust between citizens and the nation and between Republicans and Democrats and there is a racial and economic divide, she said.

"Part of what happens when were divided by class, race, and partisanship and I didnt even touch on residency or citizenship or speaking English as a first language or being born in a body that matches our identity is that it can feel so overwhelming that it feels unprecedented. Its not."

She highlighted the shock some felt after the 2016 presidential election, despite the fact that George Zimmerman was acquitted for killing Trayvon Martin, and the outrage some expressed after families were separated at the border, despite Americas history of separating enslaved peoples families at birth. She also emphasized kindergartener Ruby Bridges being escorted by federal marshals into the all-white William Frantz elementary School in 1960, Elizabeth Eckford of the Little Rock Nine walking by herself into Little Rock Central High School in 1957 as adults screamed at her, and the 1965 murders of Southern Christian Leadership Conference member the Rev. James Reeb and Civil Rights activist Viola Liuzzo.

"What I know is you have to reject the lie that this is the first time. Its rude to people that lived at a harder moment. It can be a really bad time, a really tough and divided time, an existential time, but dont feel sorry for yourself," Harris-Perry said.

"One of the things that will help us over our divide is for us to remember all of the bad guys are not on one side and all the good guys are not on the other side. We are complicit and engaged in plenty of evil all together. This is what the letter from the Birmingham Jail was. It was not a letter to his enemies. It was to his friends, a letter to the clergy, and it was there that [King] told us Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. So what is this beloved community, this thing that is not about affectionate love but really some intense love? It is first about recognition and to even be seen accurately because when you sayBeloved Community, it is often ugly."

She said it is also about robust and impolite disagreements and knowing that there are consequences for those disagreements, and about democratic optimism that is both informed and aspirational, and added that creating that beloved community must be done with courage, curiosity, creativity and a collective effort. In discussing the collective effort, Harris-Perry cited double dutch jump roping, noting that it requires at least three people who must all work together and get on rhythm and most often has an audience.

"If you try to build a beloved community, the consequences are real.We like to think of King as though the movement was nonviolent. Not only was it not nonviolent, the purpose was to provoke violence. You can tell me everything about Birmingham. You know why? Because it was violent. But if I say, Tell me about Albany, you dont know. Albany failed because there was no violence. Dr. King was nonviolent in his tactics in order to produce the violence that demonstrated the evil of inequality. It didnt work without violence. No violence, no beloved community. It was forged in violence. They murdered Dr. King, James Reeb, Viola, four little girls in their Sunday school. The movement was bloody, brutal, violent, and it revealed who we were so that we could potentially, maybe, in some way, find a way to double dutch together."

Reporter Krista S. Kano can be reached at 330-541-9416, kkano@recordpub.comor on Twitter @KristaKanoRCedu.

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Harris-Perry featured as keynote speaker at KSUs Martin Luther King celebration - Record-Courier

When author Tochi Onyebuchi closed the cover of Robert Jordans third book in The Wheel of Time series, the last scene of The Dragon Reborn still played before his eyes like a vision. As a high school student delving into epic fantasies for the first time, Onyebuchi said it felt like an out of body experience to be holding the book in front of his face on his living room floor, but feel so viscerally transported somewhere else. In quick succession, he had thought, Wow, Im still here. Wow, somebody did this to me. Wow, I can be the person who makes somebody else feel this feeling.

Onyebuchiwhose fourth book Riot Baby is out nowwas born to Nigerian immigrant parents in Northampton, Massachusetts before the family moved to Connecticut during his childhood. The neighborhoods, schools, and churches Onyebuchi grew up in were predominantly white. In retrospect, Onyebuchi understands that he experienced the world differently than most of his peers. And it wouldnt be until he enrolled in law school that he got woke about the sharp contrasts between the lives of black and white Americans.

After Onyebuchis Robert Jordan-inspired epiphany, science fiction and fantasy completely enveloped his reading and writing. Throughout high school, college, film school, and law school, he wrote nearly 100,000 words every year, meaning he churned out more than a dozen 400-page books before getting his first book deal in 2017. (All of which he tried to sell, even when he was still a teenager.)

The 1990s X-Men comics factored heavily into Onyebuchis reading at the time. Long before the age of trade paperback compendiums, he hustled to buy the individual issues of Uncanny X-Men and X-Factor. He found himself drawn to character of Magneto, the villain turned antihero, whose origin story as a Holocaust survivor and mistreated mutant made him believe that ordinary humans couldnt coexist peacefully with mutants. At the time, Onyebuchi couldnt quite articulate why he was attracted to a character who was at odds with the archetypal heroes.

Prior to X-Men, most of the stories he consumed emphasized the hero, reconciliation, and vanquishing an individual enemy. Despite this, Onyebuchi said, I thought [Magneto] was right, and I couldnt untangle that. I didnt learn about race theory at school. I didnt pick up on this metaphor for the civil rights movement. The hero Charles Xavier insists that mutants and humans can achieve a peaceful co-existence, but Magneto points out that humans never hesitate to discriminate against and kill mutants. This was the first time that Onyebuchi saw that dynamic exposed. The X-Men were created by Jewish authors Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and while the theme of disenfranchisement can apply to many marginalized communities, theres a strong parallel of Xavier and Magento to Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X when it comes down to the disagreement about whether peaceful protests yield any results.

One of the first news stories Onyebuchi recalls being consciously aware of is the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers. Watching that camcorder video footage on TV with his parents, followed by the subsequent uprisings, made a strong impression on him. Fast forward to 2015 when Onyebuchi graduated law school: the non-indictment of George Zimmerman for shooting Trayvon Martin brought on a new generation of uprisings with the Black Lives Matter movement. Camcorder evidence evolved into cell phone footage, Facebook Live, and Twitter. The Laquan McDonald dash cam footage was so widely disseminated into our digital living rooms, Onyebuchi said.

Onyebuchi recalls his anger at the time. Nothing sizeable was changing to prevent this from happening again. When Tamir Rice happened, we were begging to just give us a trial. We werent even asking for an indictment or to throw [Timothy Loehmann] in jail. We just wanted the trial. It got me thinking, What does it do to a person when thats what youre begging for? Again, the character of Magneto spoke to Onyebuchi. What if somebody came along who had power to literally burn it all down? Not to change laws, or policy, but to reduce the police station to ash? That was how Riot Baby was born.

Riot Baby tells the story of Ella and Kev, siblings who are engulfed by systemic racism from South Central to Harlem. The novel opens with a young Ella trying to make sense of the violence brewing in her neighborhood in reaction to someone named Rodney King. Her mother gives birth to Kev amid the worst of the chaos. The book jumps through time in four different parts so readers see how their lives unfold. Kev falls prey to a crooked criminal justice system that arrests him for simply being black. Ella, on the other hand, has superpowers that she doesnt fully understand. She can see the future, explode rats, manifest balls of energy, levitate objects, and teleport herself. How do you give a godlike character drama and conflict? Onyebuchi asked. You give them something theyre not able to protect. Despite the immensurable power Ella holds, she cant protect Kev from his fate. But thats just the beginning.

Onyebuchi brings elements of a photo-realistic past, present, and near future to the world in Riot Baby, with just a dash of superpowers. While many of the historical events portrayed are nearly carbon copies of our own, telling this story through the lens of speculative fiction provides, an inherently powerful set of tools, Onyebuchi said. Theres so much you can do there. You can operate as reality and metaphor at the same time. A first contact story is about aliens, but its really about colonialism. X-Men is about laser beam eyes and moving things with minds, but its also about civil rights and separatism.

At the same time, Onyebuchi wanted to eliminate the risk that his message in Riot Baby could get buried under allegory or dismissed outright. Had Onyebuchi not told Ella and Kevs story in a contemporary setting, he predicted readers might conclude, This is just about a girl who can fly. Its not about what incarceration and structural racism can do to a person. Oftentimes white readers of sci-fi and fantasy will overlook the allegories for racism (or the authors own racial prejudices), and claim the story is simply about spaceships or elves. These readers view books as precious objects that shouldnt be evaluated critically, and they might shrug off valid concerns by accusing other readers of trying to be social justice warriors.

Of course, these divides extend beyond readers, too. Between the summer of 2013 and fall of 2014, the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown sent shock waves through America, and Onyebuchi realized that a significant chunk of his Facebook friends perceived America to be a different universe than he perceived America to be. People showed sides of themselves that he didnt know were there. As a student at Columbia Law, this only heightened his realization that there was no majestic neutrality of the Supreme Court, no colorblindness of the law, no impartiality of legal institutions.

Kevs story is as much about one persons struggle to escape a false sentence as it is about what a slippery slope the criminal justice system is. Even when youre innocent, the odds are intentionally stacked against people of color. Onyebuchi triumphs in exposing these facts in gripping narrative form.

Equally engrossing, are Onyebuchis evaluations of nascent technologies like algorithms and microchips, which dont take much fictionalizing to see how theyre the next phase of institutionalized racism. Like the TV show Black Mirror, Riot Baby shows you the logical conclusion of the current problems of technology. Coders inject their blind spots into their coding, so its like their DNA, in a certain respect, Onyebuchi said. If largely straight white men are writing the code implemented by police departments or hospitals, its going to reflect their worldview and priorities. We need to find ways of holding these builders accountable.

Tech companies already dont have the financial incentives to change their platforms when people of color are harassed off sites like Facebook and Twitter. So in the meantime, we need to put the breaks on algorithms in future policing as much as possible. Onyebuchi said, I dont have words how apocalyptic that is. Coming a prolific speculative fiction author, thats really saying something.

Tochi Onyebuchi will be in conversation with Ken Liu and Elizabeth Bear to discuss "Riot Baby" at Brookline Booksmith on Friday January 24th at 7pm.

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How X-Men And Black Lives Matter Shaped Tochi Onyebuchis Riot Baby - WBUR

George Zimmerman, the Sanford, Florida, neighborhood watch volunteer who was acquitted of the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012, and his lawyer have filed a $100 million lawsuit against prosecutors, Martin's family, their attorney and a book publisher over allegations that one of the trial's key witnesses was "an imposter."

Zimmerman's civil attorney Larry Klayman filed the multi-million lawsuit in Polk County Circuit Court in Florida.

Klayman alleges in the 36-page lawsuit, where Zimmerman is the sole plaintiff, that Martin's parents Sybrina Ford and Tracy Martin as well as their attorney Ben Crump falsely inserted Rachel Jeantel into the case after the Sanford Police Department closed the investigation in March 2012 as "self-defense."

In this April 3, 2019, file photo, Sybrina Fulton participates in a panel at the National Action Network Convention in New York.

The lawsuit claims then 18-year-old Jeantel was "an imposter and fake witness" and the catalyst to get Zimmerman arrested and charged with the murder of Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman was cleared of all charges after the weeks-long televised trial.

"Defendants, each and every one of them, as individuals and through their employment and agencies, have worked in concert to deprive Zimmerman of his constitutional and other related legal rights," according to the lawsuit.

Trayvon Martin was walking back to his father's house on Feb. 26, 2012, after purchasing Skittles and a beverage from a nearby 7-Eleven. The now 36-year-old Zimmerman, who is half white and Hispanic, testified at the murder trial that he was suspicious of 17-year-old Martin, who was walking in the Twin Lakes community wearing a hoodie and talking on a cellphone. Trayvon Martin was unarmed.

Jeantel testified during the June 2013 trial that she was on the phone with Trayvon Martin and he "complained" that "a man looked creepy" was watching him.

In this March 23, 2012, file photo, Jayve Montgomery holds up an electronic picture of Trayvon Martin on an iPad during a march and rally in Chicago in support of the 17-year-old's family.

Klayman, who founded the nonprofit watchdog organization Judicial Watch, alleges that Jeantel's half-sister Brittany Diamond Eugene was actually on the phone with Martin during the deadly encounter and later "coached" Jeantel on how to testify, according to the lawsuit. He said these allegations partly stem from newly discovered evidence in the upcoming film "The Trayvon Hoax: Unmasking the Witness Fraud that Divided America" from director Joel Gilbert.

Eugene's lawyer, Rod Vereen, vehemently denies the claims that she acted in concert to coerce Jeantel to act as a stand-in witness.

She doesnt know Trayvon Martin. She doesnt know Rachel Jeantel. Shes not the half-sister. She knows nothing about this case at all. She didnt write any letters. She didnt do anything, Vereen told ABC News.

Crump responded to the lawsuit in a statement, saying, "This tale defies all logic, and its time to close the door on these baseless imaginings. This plaintiff continues to display a callous disregard for everyone but himself, revictimizing individuals whose lives were shattered by his own misguided actions. He would have us believe that he is the innocent victim of a deep conspiracy, despite the complete lack of any credible evidence to support his outlandish claims."

He added, I have every confidence that this unfounded and reckless lawsuit will be revealed for what it is another failed attempt to defend the indefensible and a shameless attempt to profit off the lives and grief of others."

Vereen is warning Klayman to retract the lawsuit within the state's allotted time frame of 21 days or face further legal actions.

"Hes going to find himself being disbarred. The Florida Bar doesnt take too well to frivolous lawsuits that throws peoples lives into disarray," said Vereen. "I would urge that lawyer to do his due diligence and take our pleadings seriously because there will be no backtracking or crawfishing once we file."

Tracy Martin attends the Trayvon Martin 4th Annual Day Of Remembrance and Peace Walk in Miami Gardens, Fla., Feb. 6, 2016.

George Zimmerman waits for his defense counsel to arrive in Seminole circuit court, on the 11th day of his murder trial in the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin, June 24, 2013 in Sanford, Fla.

Other named defendants in the lawsuit include Eugene, current and former Florida prosecutors Bernie de la Rionda, John Guy, Angela Corey, The State of Florida and Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE). Klayman alleges that all parties "either have known about or should have known about the witness fraud, obstructed justice, or lied repeatedly under oath in order to cover up their knowledge of the witness fraud."

HarperCollins Publishers LLC was also named as a defendant for publishing Crump's book in October 2019 with defamatory claims against Zimmerman, according to the lawsuit.

FDLE has not been served the lawsuit, a spokesperson told ABC News. Request for comment from the other defendants were not immediately returned.

The Florida Bar criticized Klayman for posting the lawsuit on his website without redacting the addresses of the defendants and other charges, according to the complaint obtained by ABC News. Klayman has not returned ABC News' request for comment.

George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who sparked a national uproar by shooting Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager to death, is pictured in this Seminole County, Florida, Sheriff's Office booking photograph taken on April 11, 2012.

Since Zimmerman's acquittal, he has attempted to sell the gun he used to kill Trayvon Martin, sold confederate artwork to raise money for a supposed "Muslim free gun store" and pleaded no contest for threatening and harassing a private investigator who reached out to him to see if he would participate in a film about the 2012 shooting.

Trayvon Martin's mother, Sybrina Fulton, became a prominent member of the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of her sons death and has said that her sons memory lives on as part of the movement along with that of several unarmed black people who were killed by law enforcement.

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George Zimmerman files $100M lawsuit against Trayvon Martin's ...