Although George Zimmerman's defense team did not request a Stand Your Ground hearing, one of the jurors told CNN's Anderson Cooper that the self-defense law was considered in their not-guilty verdict.
Florida first adopted the self-defense law that removed the duty to retreat in 2005, and local law enforcement immediately identified the trouble in providing citizens with a shoot-first-ask-questions-later right.
"Whether it's trick-or-treaters or kids playing in the yard of someone who doesn't want them there or some drunk guy stumbling into the wrong house," former Miami police chief John F. Timoney told the New York Times, "you're encouraging people to possibly use deadly physical force where it shouldn't be used."
In the eight years since, the law has been invoked to protect drug dealers and gang members from murder charges, and it's allowed personal disputes over lovers, possessions, and yes, trash bags, to escalate into bloody murder scenes without consequences.
"What in the hell is our state government doing passing a law encouraging our citizens to solve disputes with guns?," Arthur Hayhoe, executive director of the Florida Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, told the Tampa Bay Times. "This is the right-to-commit-murder law."
Click below for some of Florida's more shocking Stand Your Ground cases in which the shooter walked free:
