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South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com
Stand Your Ground applies to school bus fight, appeals court rules
By Rafael Olmeda,
A middle school student who got into a fistfight with a girl on a Broward County school bus should have been allowed to use the Stand Your Ground law to defend his actions, an appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The
4th District Court of Appeal criticized Broward Circuit Judge Elijah
Williams for failing to allow the boy, identified in court records only
as T.P., to rely on the law when he was accused of battery. The boy was
convicted and sentenced as a juvenile.
Williams had ruled that
the Stand Your Ground law did not apply because the boy was not
protecting his home or vehicle, but Appeals Court Judge Martha Warner
wrote that the self-defense law applies because the boy had the right to
be on the school bus. The appeals court overturned the conviction and
ordered Williams to consider the boy was within his rights under Stand
Your Ground.
Details about the time, date and the location of the
incident were not disclosed in the court's written decision, and efforts
to reach the prosecutor and assistant public defender on the case were
unsuccessful Wednesday.
According to Warner's description of the
incident, T.P. and the girl, identified as A.F., were on the same bus
headed home from middle school when the fight broke out. Warner cited
testimony from the school bus driver, who said the girl grabbed the
boy's jacket, punched him and pulled him down on a seat before the boy
fought back.
The girl testified that the boy's attack on her was unprovoked and that she fought him onto his seat.
The
appeals court did not rule on who was telling the truth, and the boy is
still facing one count of battery, said Carey Haughwout, a Palm Beach
assistant public defender whose office handled the appeal.
Under
the Stand Your Ground law, a person is allowed to meet force with force
if he is someplace he has the right to be and if using force is
necessary to prevent death or bodily harm.
"[T.P.] was not engaged
in an unlawful activity, and he had the right to be on the bus going
home from school," Warner wrote. "Whether he was faced with 'force' from
A.F. and whether he reasonably believed that such force was necessary
to prevent harm to himself were factual matters for the trial court to
determine."
Williams must decide whether the girl started the fight and whether the boy responded within his rights under the law.
No date has been set for the boy's next hearing.
