Blind Florida Man Gets Guns Back After Shooting Friend To Death

The judge said he didn’t want to do it, but was forced to under Florida’s stand your ground law, and so the sightless man got his Glock back.

The surreal hearing took place in the Seminole County Courthouse in Sanford—the city where Trayvon Martin was killed and his shooter set free under the same self-defense statute.

John Wayne Rogers had stood accused of premeditated first degree murder for shooting a “drinking buddy” in March 2012 “after a long drinking session,” according to the Orlando Sentinel. The killing was done “once in the chest with a .308 Remington assault rifle from a distance of 18 inches or less.”

But amid differing eyewitness accounts at his trial last month, a judge dismissed the jury and awarded Rogers immunity under Florida’s “stand your ground” law.

That led to Thursday’s hearing, in which Judge John Galluzo reluctantly admitted he’d have to give Rogers his rifle and a Glock 10 mm handgun. “I have to return property that was taken under the circumstance,” the judge said. “I have researched and haven’t found case law to say otherwise.”

By: Cheston Catalano

Cheston Catalano is a Kentucky-based journalist whose work has been featured in the Chattanooga Times Free Press and the Clarksville Leaf Chronicle. He is a long-time contributor to Liberaland.