From Tampa Bay.com:
Tavarious China Smith was not particularly lucky. A small-time drug dealer in Manatee County, Smith sold crack and marijuana not once, not twice, but three times to undercover cops.
But in one respect, Smith, 29, hit the jackpot.
On two occasions, more than two years apart, he committed homicides but was not charged thanks to provisions of Florida’s “stand your ground” law. Smith claimed self-defense in both cases and prosecutors agreed. He never faced a judge or jury for fatally shooting Nikita Williams, 18, in February 2008 in a drug-related incident or Breon Mitchell, Williams’ 23-year-old half-brother, in December 2010.
Smith’s only punishment stemmed from using a gun to kill Mitchell. Since he was by then a felon, convicted on drug charges, Smith wasn’t allowed to carry the Ruger .357 Magnum he used to shoot Mitchell outside a Palmetto nightclub in 2010. In January, a federal judge in Tampa sent Smith to prison after he pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm.
The state’s expanded self-defense laws have come under scrutiny since the fatal shooting in February in Sanford of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer. A task force appointed by the governor is reviewing whether the 2005 law is being applied correctly.
Prosecutors say it has too often been used to protect gang members and drug dealers in shoot-outs. Although it does not apply if the defendant is committing a crime, the law does not define criminal activity and courts have differed on their interpretations of the statute. As a Times database of nearly 200 “stand your ground” cases shows, simply being a felon in possession of a gun or a drug dealer has not prevented defendants from successfully invoking the law.
Arthur Brown is the assistant state attorney in Manatee County who reviewed both of Smith’s homicides and declined to prosecute Smith in the Mitchell case. He said both were clear-cut cases of self-defense and that provisions of the “stand your ground” law only strengthened Smith’s claims.
“I agree this was probably not the class of people lawmakers were trying to protect when they wrote this law,” Brown said. “But the law provides a larger umbrella than simply the homeowner that’s protecting his house.”