FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Dec. 13 (UPI) -- A Florida man has successfully used the state's "Stand Your Ground" law to block his prosecution on a first-degree murder charge and has been acquitted.
Nour Badi Jarkas, 54, of Plantation was facing trial for the January 2009 shooting death of his estranged wife's boyfriend, John Concannon.
But Broward County Circuit Judge Ilona Holmes acquitted him Monday, ruling Jarkas was an invited guest in his wife's home and felt threatened during a confrontation with the victim, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported.
The Stand Your Ground law, passed in 2005, is intended to keep certain self-defense cases from going to a jury, the newspaper reported.
In Holmes' ruling she wrote "nothing was presented … to rebut the reasonableness of the fear that [Jarkas] testified that he had in being confronted by a 5-foot-11, 280-pound, tattooed man who was angry and who lunged at him."
An assistant medical examiner who conducted the autopsy said Concannon was shot four times and that he might have been lunging at Jarkas when shot, as Jarkas testified.
Holmes said she relied on the testimony of Jarkas and the medical examiner in issuing her ruling.
It was the first successful use of the Stand Your Ground law in Broward County, the Sun Sentinel reported.
