Case may show limits of ‘stand your ground’

Man accused of beating a peeping Tom to death

FORT LAUDERDALE – Officers found Asaad Akar unconscious and bloodied in a lawn. Victor Vickery told police he confronted Akar for peeping through his girlfriend’s window while the couple was in bed and that Akar started a fight — prompting him to defend himself.

Vickery’s account is under scrutiny now that he has been charged with manslaughter by the State Attorney’s Office.

Although Florida has “stand your ground” laws on the books — which allow for the use of deadly force in self defense in some instances — legal experts familiar with the case believe Vickery’s claim to such statutes will be questionable at best.

Their arguments shed light into the limitations of Florida self-defense law and provide something of a warning to homeowners who may have to make their own decision about whether to confront a peeping Tom in the future.

Shahabudeen Khan, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University, said that before stand your ground laws were passed in the state in 2005, a person had a duty to retreat from a potentially hostile or deadly situation before resorting to deadly force to save their life.

However, stand your ground laws effectively removed the duty to retreat and allows people to use deadly force if they believed it is necessary to keep them from dying or becoming seriously harmed.

That is a big if when it comes to Vickery, according to Khan. “The question that will have to be resolved is whether he

felt threatened or he felt his girlfriend was threatened,” he said.

Khan and other legal experts agreed that Akar’s simply peeping through the window on July 2, 2018, wouldn’t be enough to justify Vickery’s alleged use of deadly force under stand your ground statutes. Akar was not armed with a weapon and the police reports don’t suggest he was breaking into the home that night or had plans to.

Therefore, according to Khan and others, the self-defense argument would rest on what happened after Vickery made the decision to jump out of the bed, run outside naked and confront Akar.

In a voluntary statement to police after the incident, Vickery said Akar lunged at him outside and initiated a fight.

He also said that at one point, Akar got on top of him and began to choke him. Vickery characterized himself as “afraid for his safety” in the statement.

“If all those statements turn out to be true, then he might be able to claim stand your ground,” Khan said. “But if he started the attack, that becomes more questionable.”

Khan said the fact that police say there are conflicting statements about what happened that night between Vickery and his girlfriend, Samantha Hobi, is already a red flag.

In a voluntary statement to police after the incident, Hobi said she had made several reports over the years about somebody entering her property and peering through the windows.

She said that after Vickery ran outside, she followed him and saw Akar choking Vickery. She also said that she hit Akar with a shovel on the back “once, or twice,” according to police.

However, 20 days later, Hobi appeared at the police station with a lawyer to provide a followup statement at her own request. In the new version of events, she said she didn’t hit Akar with a shovel or touch him at all. She said Vickery told her to tell police she had used the shovel.

In a 911 call, Hobi can be heard saying, “Tori stop. Tori that’s enough,” according to an investigator who worked the case. “Tori” is a nickname Hobi used to refer to Vickery.

A spokeswoman for the State Attorney’s Office said the incident was the subject of an ongoing investigation. “Prosecutors filed the case when they were satisfied that they had all the information they needed to make the appropriate charging decision.”

Vickery is currently being held on $100,000 bond in the Broward Main Jail and has yet to make a plea.

Tamara Rice Lave, a professor of law at the University of Miami, said that if Vickery pleads not guilty and attempts to use stand your ground as his defense, he will be in for a tough road.

Lave read from the Florida justifiable use of force statute, which says that for deadly force to be acceptable you must believe that it is “necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm” or to “prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony.”

“I see nothing that speaks to that,” Lave said.

Lave said that if the case goes to trial, it will largely revolve around what happened when Vickery and Akar met face to face outside. The truth of which is complicated for many reasons.

The account occurred late at night. Akar died from his injuries after the incident and was never able to provide his version events. It is unclear if the prosecution has video footage in their possession or accounts from other witnesses. As of now, it seems likely that the only two witnesses to the incident available will be Hobi and Vickery.

As a result, Lave said she believes the trial will ultimately be a credibility contest.

And right now, she said, Vickery’s credibility has already taken a hit with the allegation by Hobi that he asked her to provide a different version of events to police in her original statement. A version that Lave believes would justify Vickery’s claims of self-defense.

Lave said that in addition to Vickery’s criminal history and his domestic issues with Hobi being strikes against him, there is also Fort Lauderdale police’s accusation that Vickery beat and ultimately killed Akar with his bare hands and feet.

“Do you understand how hard it is to beat someone to death?” Lave said. “It is a brutal, difficult and violent way to kill somebody.”

Lave said that oftentimes stand your ground cases, such as the recent conviction of Michael Drejka for murdering a man in a Clearwater parking lot, involve shooting a gun — a method of murder that occurs in a matter of moments and may suggest more room for error.

Killing someone with your bare hands, she said, “reflects more of a depraved nature.”