Rehashing the Zimmerman case in the present one is simply not that useful because of the rather odd fact pattern in that case. The current proliferation of internet connected surveillance cameras that allow police access has rendered the neighborhood watch concept less important and now neighborhoods are grouping together to buy license plate reading cameras that are accessible to the police. Just like stores got out of the apprehending shoplifters due to litigation threats, neighborhoods are now using similar technology instead of the risks of personal confrontation. That is now best left to the police for better or worse by almost every large retailer.
In the present case, the THR consensus appears to be that any verbal correction of public misbehavior by others should be avoided as the potential to incite "conflict". The popcorn guy got into it with the guy using a cellphone during a movie if I recollect properly, this present dispute started with an apparently illegal squatting on a disabled parking space, and a recent Texas case dealt with a dispute in an alley between neighbors over a discarded mattress in the trash.
https://heavy.com/news/2018/09/aaron-howard-murder-video/
https://www.star-telegram.com/news/...RQHMh-Vizq9ypj0wy6ITv8-SxGSpStRDC3BxhHJbnexAE
In a similar vein, I recall one distinguished veteran near my hometown who got into it with a neighbor over a placement of a drainage pipe along property lines which escalated into a deadly shooting as well between two guys in the seventies and the distinguished veteran spent his remaining life in prison over a manslaughter charge.
For whatever reason, the outcomes in some of these escalations seems related to what Rory Miller calls the monkey dance where an outsized male desire to dominate in an initial verbal conflict spirals into violence. The honor culture deems any "disrespect" to one's self or especially to others associated with one's self as something worth fighting about. However, the risk is as always that an escalation to deadly force can and does happen when violence is threatened or occurs. When one is dealing with strangers, many of which may live violent lives, a prudent person would be well advised strategically to avoid conflict and resort to security, the police, or other dispute mechanisms rather than risk an escalation. At worst, just walk away from such a dispute and live to another day.
To some degree we have focused on the defendant here and his actions in a legal vein rather than the ill-fated move by the deceased to escalate (moving from verbal conflict to physical violence). Tactically, this is a rather stupid move to pull on a stranger when the option is to get in the car and leave or yell at the woman to roll up the windows and call for security. Robbers for example, often work in groups, where one distracts the attentions of the victims so that the others can get the victims at a disadvantage. The physically assaulted guy could also take the physical action as a challenge and shoot as that is the great equalizer between persons regardless of physique and strength.
The convicted defendant on the other hand had lost a fight and made the wrong decision in the few seconds allotted to him when he pulled the trigger. Whether he did not process the information correctly or fired because he was humiliated and wanted revenge, either way, the jury felt his actions were unreasonable as the threat to him was over. Like Zimmerman's long videotaped interview led to Zimmerman not being called to the stand, the defense lawyer may have felt that the defendant's long interviews with the police would put the defendant at risk on the stand in that the defendant might contradict himself with prior statements to the police. But, the risk in that using a justification defense is that the jury might see the defendant as unwilling to defend to them his reasons.
What implications are there for Stand Your Ground laws if we leave aside the Zimmerman case? The origination of the Stand Your Ground doctrine comes from injustices where someone was convicted who could not retreat (in perfect safety) from a conflict. Americans placed a lesser value on societal order compared with individual rights than did and do the British. The idea of keeping the King's peace at the expense of individual rights is less compatible with American law and its development and now even the castle doctrine in Britain has shrank to little allowance for people to resist intruders even in their own house. The doctrine is still there in Britain but has so many caveats and exceptions that it creates legal jeopardy for a person acting in their own self defense in their own home.
Thus, a number of jurisdictions revisited the common law doctrine of retreat including the U.S. Supreme Court in several cases around the 1900's to make a break with the British tradition. The doctrine of retreat was used by zealous prosecutors to convict people who did not flee their homes, could not outrun a bullet, etc. because a jury with sympathetic victims could decide that because post hoc, the person could have retreated based on all the facts, they should have decided the same as the jury. Thus, courts in some states via caselaw, Georgia for example, and legislatures in others, Florida and Georgia come to mind, felt that justice would be improved by reducing the discretion that judges and prosecutors via codifying Stand Your Ground in statutory law so that prosecutors and judges could not create an absolute requirement to retreat under all circumstances for defendants before using self defense.
I agree with the Stand Your Ground law because it is not a bar to prosecuting someone for making an unreasonable decision but makes it more difficult for the prosecution and/or a jury to impose an absolute requirement of retreat in every encounter. Unfortunately, just like any other justification defense, it may result in some decisions where a person goes free when some in society feel is an injustice while others see it as a righteous use of force. Absent SYG, you will get people convicted for acting as reasonably as they could but they failed to calculate in seconds to the prosecution and jury's satisfaction whether or not they should retreat. Look up the Harold Fish case in AZ for example which triggered a change in Arizona law. There are a significant number of people that believe shooting someone unarmed itself is unreasonable in almost all circumstances and if you carry a firearm then you are an unreasonable bloodthirsty gun nut because they saw Death Wish on the tv one time. Despite constant admonitions not do do so, too many people try to apply their own standards instead of a legal one on juries and a prosecutor wanting a win will do their best to seat these folks on a jury. Something like an absolute duty to retreat is one of those unjust standards.
However, everything has a consequence and for some folks, the SYG laws cause some folks to ignore other tenets of self defense law which is an aggressor in a situation cannot claim the mantle of righteousness in a self defense situation. A misplaced sense of justice where someone sees an obvious wrong to them and then try to correct the injustice personally can lead to a very bad place including death and incarceration. In essence, that is why we have the court system and law enforcement to act to resolve disputes as their superior strength and numbers make it difficult to claim honor in fighting them. But, to some extent, it is clear that this system has its drawbacks as well, failing to act assertively in some cases, and creating injustices in others. When the system of justice becomes mocked as corrupt and inefficient, then the risk is the return to vigilantism and mob justice where no recourse to the law exists--e.g. anarchy.
Some folks in this thread have more or less argued for the return of the retreat requirement but must be willing to accept that under that doctrine, there will and have been injustices done to individual defendants who made a split second judgment that they could not retreat in perfect safety. Some have argued for more or less the right to confront verbal assaults with physical violence as self defense for others. However, both situations will also result in some deaths and injuries along with injustices in court. There is no perfect solution in law or court decisions that work for every situation that one might encounter in life. The best that one can do is understand the statutory and court interpretations of those statutes and try to avoid conflict whenever one can. If one is unsure of either, then seek reputable training and even those believing themselves to be sure might want the training because your life and liberty is at stake in such a conflict. Foremost, remember a soft answer turneth away wrath--don't get sucked into the monkey dance.