Archive for March, 2017

Final day of controversial movie theater ‘Stand Your Ground’ hearing … – ABC Action News

DADE CITY, Fla. - Friday marked the final day in the highly-publicized stand your ground hearing involving former Tampa police captain Curtis Reeves and the man he shot and killed, Chad Oulson.

For two weeks we've heard testimony and witness accounts from the day of the shooting, January 13, 2014. Reeves and Oulson got into a fight over texting during movie previews. During the altercation, Reeves says he feared for his life and pulled out his .380 caliber pistol and fired a shot at Oulson. Oulson's wife Nicole had her hand on her husband's chest when the shot was fired. The bullet went through her hand and into her husband, killing him.

Reeves claims he shot Oulson in self-defense and is fighting to have the case dismissed under Florida's stand your ground law.

The state and defense each presented closing arguments when court resumed Friday morning at 9 a.m. Defense attorney Richard Escobar told the judge Thursday his closing arguments would last a couple of hours.

The 'Stand your Ground' hearingis in the hands of a judge now.

The judge says she will have a written order by next Friday before 3 PM.

"A 6'4'' individual standing, trying to come over that chair is terrifying," said Richard Escobar.

How popcorn and a cell phone escalated into a deadly movie theater shooting depends on who you ask?

"Curtis is dazed. Curtis is in fear. Curtis is terrified," said Escobar.

"Throw popcorn on me?! Bang!" said state prosecutor Glenn Martin.

"This behavior by Mr. Oulson is unexpected. It's uncontrolled. It's outrageous," said Escobar.

Was it self defense or something else?

"Retaliation. One word," said Martin.

Curtis Reeves' attorneys say even a simple battery on an elderly person in Florida is a felony, plenty to Stand his Ground.

The state says witnesses never even saw Oulson thrown his phone. They also argue Reeves aggravated a problem knowing he had a "great equalizer" in his pocket.

"There was no reason," said Martin for Reeves to have any more contact with Oulson.

Popcorn, a phone, a pistol---three reasons this hearing is so perplexing.

RELATED | Curtis Reeves takes the stand in 'stand your ground' hearing

WEEK 1 |Day-by-day breakdown from court

PHOTOS | "Stand your ground" hearing photo gallery

In court Thursday, the state played audio tapes from just after the shooting when Reeves was talking to detectives.

"As soon as I pulled the trigger I said, 'Oh shoot that was stupid. If I had to do it over again, it would have never happened'," said Reeves. "If I had to do it over again, it would never have happened. I wouldn't have moved. But you don't get do overs."

"An arm came up and I saw a flash of red and at first, I didn't know what it was. I heard a noise and then I could smell something and I thought oh my God, he shot him," said witness Jane Roy.

A judge must now decide if Florida's controversial stand your ground law is applicable in this case. If it's deemed valid, all charged against Reeves will be dropped and the case will be closed. But if the judge does not reasonably believe Reeves was in fear of death or great bodily injury, then this case will proceed to trial.

"I was defending myself. It don't make it any easier to accept but that's what I was doing," said Reeves.

Reeves is charged with second-degree murder and aggravated battery.

The judge will rule on the case no later than March 10.

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Final day of controversial movie theater 'Stand Your Ground' hearing ... - ABC Action News

Andrew Warren: ‘Stand your ground’ changes bad for law enforcement – SaintPetersBlog (blog)

The Florida Legislature is considering significant changes to the stand your ground law that will make our communities less safe and unnecessarily disrupt our criminal justice system while doing nothing to protect those who legally own guns.

The Legislature also has falsely suggested the proposed changes will have no financial impact. The proposed legislation fundamentally changes our jury system by requiring, for the first time in Florida legal history, that state prosecutors would have to disprove a legal defense to even begin prosecuting a case. The proposals quickly moving through this years legislative process threaten public safety and undermine the fair and equal criminal justice system that our community deserves.

In 2005, the Legislature enacted the nations first stand your ground law, which removed a persons duty to retreat before using force in self-defense of himself, another person, his home, or property. In legal terms, stand your ground expanded the scope of the long-standing defense of self-defense. Procedurally, a criminal defendant asserting stand your ground immunity must establish by a preponderance of evidence (more than 50 percent standard) at a pretrial hearing that he or she acted in self-defense.

Proponents of changing the law claim it restores the fundamental principle of justice that a citizen is innocent until proven guilty. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our Constitution guarantees the innocence of the accused until every element of the crime has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. As the state attorney for Hillsborough County, I wholeheartedly embrace our extremely high burden of proof to obtain a conviction. The proposed changes, however, create an unnecessary and technical legal hurdle in the law to force the state to disprove a defense which would often require proving a negative beyond a reasonable doubt, upending the constitutional standard and centuries-old common law.

The impact of these changes would be monumental. Under the legislation, SB 128, a defendant simply can make an unsworn, unverified representation to a court that he acted in self-defense. Then, before prosecution can even begin, the state would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did not act in self-defense. This would require essentially two trials. Supporters of the bill claim that it is limited to cases involving the use of firearms, but the scope of the changes encompasses all violent crime. Every murder. Every stabbing. Every beating and assault. And every domestic violence attack.

To implement these proposals, we will need more judges, more courtrooms, more prosecutors and more law enforcement officers. In Hillsborough County, this would impact more than 5,000 cases per year. If only half of those cases involve a claim of stand your ground immunity, the time and resources in my office alone amount to nearly $3 million annually.

The bill wastes taxpayer dollars by needlessly increasing the workload of prosecutors and law enforcement officers. Beyond the economic impact, the proposed changes undermine public safety by taking police officers off the street and forcing them into the courtroom, and by making it harder to prosecute violent crime. The changes will embolden violent criminals and prevent justice for victims. As written, the bill is anti-law enforcement and anti-law and order.

I stand ready and willing to work with supporters of these bills who seek sensible implementation of stand your ground immunity to protect responsible gun owners. At a minimum, the Legislature should require defendants to provide facts sworn under oath and reduce the standard to a preponderance of the evidence. The proposed legislation is not about guns or innocence; it is about public safety and the effective operation of our criminal justice system. I call on legislators, gun rights advocates, survivors of domestic violence and all stakeholders in our criminal justice system to work together toward sensible solutions instead of the wholesale, irresponsible changes found in these proposals.

___

Andrew Warren is state attorney for the 13th Judicial Circuit, which covers Hillsborough County.

[This op-ed was first published March 2 in the Tampa Bay Times, republished with permission.]

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Andrew Warren: 'Stand your ground' changes bad for law enforcement - SaintPetersBlog (blog)

Florida Supreme Court Rules the Second Amendment Doesn’t Protect Open Carry – Slate Magazine (blog)

Open carry in action.

Erich Schlegel/Getty Images

On Thursday, the Florida Supreme Court upheld a state law prohibiting the open carry of firearms in public, ruling that the Second Amendment does not protect the practice. The decision is yet another legal setback in gun advocates recent struggle to persuade the courts to strike down a wide range of firearms restrictions as unconstitutional. Like many other state and federal courts throughout the country, the Florida Supreme Court concluded that the Second Amendment cannot be read to bar states from regulating the manner in which firearms are kept and used.

Mark Joseph Stern is a writer for Slate. He covers the law and LGBTQ issues.

As the court noted at the outset, virtually any adult who has no physical impairment or felony record can carry a gun in public in Florida. The weapon, however, must be concealed. After getting arrested and charged for openly carrying a .38 caliber handgun while walking alongside U.S. Highway 1, Dale Lee Norman challenged this concealment requirement, arguing that the Second Amendment protects the right to openly carry firearms. He insisted that the Supreme Courts decisions in D.C. v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago, which created an individual right to keep a handgun in the home for self-defense, also grant him the right to walk around in public with his firearm in plain view.

To evaluate Normans claim, the court used the analysis deployed by virtually every federal circuit court to consider Second Amendment challenges. First, it asked whether the law burdens conduct protected by the Second Amendment based on a historical understanding of [its] scope, or whether it falls into a historically unprotected category of prohibitions. The court found that the law did not fall into a historically unprotected category and instead implicated the central component of the Second Amendmentthe right to self-defense.

The court then asked whether the open carry ban was so close to the core of this right as to prevent people from defending themselves. (Such laws, it asserted, are unconstitutional under Heller and McDonald.) Because Florida law regulates only how firearms are borne in public and still permits concealed carry as well as home defense, the court held that the open carry ban does not severely burden the right to self-defense.

Thus, the court found that the Florida law was not presumptively constitutional, and instead subjected it to intermediate scrutiny, asking whether it was substantially related to an important governmental objective. From there, the court easily concluded that the law passed constitutional muster. The states interest ensuring public safety by reducing firearm-related crime, the court wrote, is undoubtedly critically important. And the open carry ban substantially relates to this purpose because it helps to prevent deranged persons and criminals from grabbing an openly carried firearm and using it for malign purposes.

To my mind, this analysis is weak, as it overstates the scope of the Second Amendment from the start. The courts answer to the threshold questionwhether the open carry ban burdens historically protected Second Amendment conductis incorrect. There is no deeply rooted history of permissive open carry laws in the United States, and open carry bans should therefore be presumed to be constitutional. The dissenters, who believe open carry laws do have historical support, cite two antebellum state supreme court decisions affirming the right to openly carry in public. But as the majority noted, quoting an influential law review article, [t]he notion of a strong tradition of a right to carry outside of the home rests on a set of historical myths and a highly selective reading of the evidence. The only persuasive evidence for a strong tradition of permissive open carry is limited to the slave South.

Thats a critical caveat, because the tradition that supposedly establishes historical precedent for open carry was, in fact, part of the Southern slavery regime. White Southerners openly carried weapons to subdue, threaten, and punish rebellious or insubordinate slaves, and the law protected their right to do so as part of a legal system designed to suppress nonwhites. Obviously, this regime no longer exists; it was abolished by the 13th and 14th amendments. And in 2010s McDonald decision, the Supreme Court explained that the Reconstruction Congress wrote the 14th Amendment with the intent to apply the Second Amendment against the statesin an effort to protect newly freed slaves right to self-defense against violent white Southerners. It thus stands to reason that pre-14th Amendment case law meant to safeguard the subjugation of slaves has no place in the analysis of modern state gun regulations.

Had the Florida Supreme Court simply found, as a threshold matter, that the states open carry ban did not burden historically protected Second Amendment conduct, it couldve ended its inquiry there. Holding as much wouldve spared the majority from having to engage in a rather unconvincing intermediate scrutiny review. As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit recently noted, firearm restrictions that fall outside historical protections for the right to bear arms are presumptively constitutional. Open carry has no firm tradition in our legal history, outside of two antebellum decisions designed to perpetuate the slave regime; that should be enough to justify the legality of open carry bans.

Still, in spite of these flaws, Thursdays decision is undoubtedly a major defeat for gun rights activists. It arrives just weeks after a 4th Circuit decision holding that the Second Amendment does not protect assault weapons, and less than a year after the 9th Circuit found that there is no constitutional right to concealed carry, either. (That practice, too, has been widely banned since the nations founding.) Because the Supreme Court clearly has little appetite to expand Heller and McDonald, these decisions will probably stand as the last word on the subject for now. And gun safety advocates can rest easy knowing that whatever few legislative achievements they can eke out in this political environment are unlikely to be toppled by the judiciary.

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Florida Supreme Court Rules the Second Amendment Doesn't Protect Open Carry - Slate Magazine (blog)

Rep. Sean Roberts praises passage of Second Amendment protection bill – Guymondailyherald

State Rep. Sean Roberts praised the passage of House Bill 1803, which prohibits the expenditure of public monies to oppose rights protected by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The bill passed out of the House Public Safety Committee by a vote of 7-6.

The right to keep and bear arms is one of the most sacred to our citizenry, said Roberts, R-Hominy. With the state facing a deficit of over $850 million for the upcoming fiscal year, the practice of spending taxpayer dollars lobbying for gun control needs to end. Allowing the expenditure of public dollars to erode our rights protected in the constitution is an affront to our freedom.

Rep. Jeff Coody, R-Granfield, a supporter of the bill, said, I am thankful that we can move closer to the day when the constitutional rights of Oklahoma citizens will not be trampled on by unelected bureaucrats whose salaries and expenses are paid with the tax dollars of those citizens.

The bill is now eligible to be considered by the full House.

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Rep. Sean Roberts praises passage of Second Amendment protection bill - Guymondailyherald

Migrant crisis – Migrant crisis – Pictures – CBS News

Thousands trying to reach Western Europe are facing an ever increasing desperate situation as countries close their borders and are overwhelmed by the flow of migrants and refugees.

Here, a mounted policeman leads a group of migrants near Dobova, Slovenia, October 20, 2015.

Credit: Srdjan Zivulovic/Reuters

Doctors and paramedics take care of a child who was later taken to the hospital following a rescue operation when a boat with migrants sank while attempting to reach the Greek island of Lesbos from Turkey on October 28, 2015.

The Greek coast guard said it rescued 242 refugees and migrants off the eastern island of Lesbos on October 28, 2015, after the wooden boat they traveled in capsized.

Credit: Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images

A Greek Coast Guard helicopter flies over fishing boats trying to rescue refugees and migrants, after a boat carrying more than 200 people sunk while crossing part of the Aegean sea from Turkey, near the Greek island of Lesbos, October 28, 2015.

At least three migrants drowned and the Greek coastguard rescued 242 others when their wooden boat sank north of the island of Lesbos on Wednesday, authorities said. Four other boats sank the same day leaving at least 15 people dead, mainly children, in total.

Credit: Giorgos Moutafis/Reuters

A man holds three children wearing thermal blankets after their arrival in bad weather from Turkey on the Greek island of Lesbos , Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2015.

With winter fast approaching, the danger grows and more are taking risky journeys.

Credit: Santi Palacios/AP

Mohammed Hasan, an 18-month-old Syrian toddler, is seen onshore after he was rescued by a Turkish fisherman after a boat of migrants sunk a few miles off the coast of Turkey, October 21, 2015. The boy was reunited with his mother in Turkey after he was revived with CPR.

Nearly 50,000 people have made it to Greece's coast in a few short days, but dozens more have died at sea, including 14 in this incident.

Credit: CBS News

Migrants protect themselves from the rain as they make their way to Slovenia from Trnovec, Croatia, October 19, 2015.

Thousands of migrants crossed into Slovenia after Croatia closed its frontier, October 19, 2015. Hungary sealed its border with Croatia the previous week. Many refugees are now facing deteriorating conditions as winter approaches.

The Balkans faced a growing backlog of migrants, thousands building up on cold, wet borders after the closure of Hungary's southern frontier diverted them to Slovenia.

Credit: Srdjan Zivulovic/Reuters

A policeman holds the hand of a young girl as migrants are escorted through Dobova to a holding camp in Dobova, Slovenia, October 22, 2015.

Thousands of migrants marched across the border from Croatia into Slovenia as authorities intensify their efforts to attempt to cope with a human tide unseen in Europe since World War II.

Credit: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Croatian riot police officers control the access to a refugee camp as more migrants arrive from the Serbian border on September 22, 2015 in Opatovac, Croatia.

Croatia built a camp to control the flow of migrants to Hungary with a capacity of 4,000 people.

Credit: David Ramos, Getty Images

Hundreds of migrants who arrived on the second train of the day at Hegyeshalom on the Hungarian and Austrian border, walk the four kilometres (2.5 miles) into Austria on September 22, 2015.

Thousands of migrants arrived in Austria over the weekend with more en-route from Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia. Politicians from across the European Union are holding meetings on the refugee crisis September 23, to try and solve the crisis and the dispute of how to relocate 120,000 migrants across EU states.

Credit: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Migrants and refugees queue to register at a camp after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border near Gevgelija on September 22, 2015.

EU interior ministers were set to hold emergency talks to try and bridge deep divisions over Europe's worst migrant crisis since World War II, as pressure piles on member states to reach an agreement.

Credit: NikolayI Doychinov/AFP/Getty Images

A local man surveys a huge pile of deflated dinghies, tubes and life vests left by arriving refugees and migrants on the Greek island of Lesbos on September 18, 2015.

Credit: Yannis Behrakis/Reuters

Migrants desperately try and board a train heading for Zagreb from Tovarnik station on September 20, 2015 in Tovarnik, Croatia.

Croatia continues to send buses and trains north to its border with Hungary, as officials have estimated that around 20,000 migrants have entered since September 16.

Credit: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

The open-door policy of the Croatian government for migrants and refugees lasted just 24 hours. After an influx of an estimated 13,000 migrants and refugees in two days, the country said it could take no more, September 18, 2015.

A baby cries as migrants clamor to board a bus in Tovarnik, Croatia, September 17, 2015. Asylum seekers thwarted by a new Hungarian border fence and repelled by riot police poured into Croatia, spreading the strain.

Credit: Antonio Bronic/Reuters

Migrants protest at the Tovarnik railway station, Croatia September 18, 2015. Migrants continued to stream through fields from Serbia into the European Union on Friday, undeterred by Croatia's closure of almost all road crossings after an influx of more than 11,000. Helpless to stem the flow, Croatian police rounded them up at the Tovarnik on the Croatian side of the border, where several thousand had spent the night under open skies. Some kept traveling, and reached Slovenia overnight.

Credit: Antonio Bronic/Reuters

A migrant man remonstrates with security as he and other migrants try to force their way through police lines at Tovarnik station for a train to take them to Zagreb on September 17, 2015 in Tovarnik, Croatia. Migrants are crossing into Croatia from Serbia two days after Hungary sealed its border with Serbia, the majority of them want to reach Germany, amid divisions within the European Union over how to manage the ongoing crisis.

Credit: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Migrants force their way through police lines at Tovarnik station to board a train bound for Zagreb on September 17, 2015 in Tovarnik, Croatia. Migrants are diverting to Croatia from Serbia after Hungary closed its border with Serbia, with the majority of them trying to reach Germany amid divisions within the European Union over how to manage the ongoing crisis.

Credit: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Migrants wait near the train station in Tovarnik, Croatia, September 17, 2015. Amid chaotic scenes at its border with Serbia, Croatia said on Thursday it could not cope with a flood of migrants seeking a new route into the EU after Hungary kept them out by erecting a fence and using tear gas and water cannon against them.

Credit: Antonio Bronic/Reuters

Policemen direct migrants during a stampede to board a bus in Tovarnik, Croatia on September 17, 2015. Croatia said it could not take in any more migrants, amid chaotic scenes of riot police trying to control thousands who have streamed into the European Union country from Serbia.

Credit: Antonio Bronic/Reuters

A migrant taunts Hungarian riot police as they fire tear gas and water cannons on the Serbian side of the border, near Roszke, Hungary, September 16, 2015. The clash occurred after hundreds of migrants, stuck at the sealed border between Serbia and Hungary, protested and tried to break through.

Serbia condemned Hungary's use of water cannon and tear gas against migrants on their border, saying Hungary had "no right" to do so, the Serbian state news agency Tanjug reported.

Credit: Stoyan Nenov/Reuters

An injured migrant carries a child during clashes with Hungarian riot police at the border crossing with Serbia in Roszke, Hungary on September 16, 2015. Hungarian police fired tear gas and water cannons at protesting migrants demanding they be allowed to enter from Serbia on the second day of a border crackdown.

Credit: Karnok Csaba/Reuters

Migrants protest as Hungarian riot police fires tear gas and water cannons at the border crossing with Serbia in Roszke, Hungary, September 16, 2015.

Credit: Stoyan Nenov/Reuters

Hungarian riot policemen escort a migrant woman and a child in Roszke, Hungary on September 16, 2015.

Credit: Dado Ruvic/Reuters

Hungarian riot police watche from behind a fence as migrants protest on the Serbian side of the border, near Roszke, Hungary September 16, 2015.

Credit: Dado Ruvic/Reuters

A migrant is hit by a jet from a water cannon used by Hungarian riot police on the Serbian side of the border, near Roszke, Hungary September 16, 2015.

Hundreds of migrants protested the border closure and tried to break through the sealed border.

Credit: Marko Djurica/Reuters

Migrants and refugees demonstrate as Turkish police block the road at Esenler Bus Terminal in Istanbul, Turkey on September 16, 2015.

Credit: Ahmet Sik/Getty Images

Migrants and refugees demonstrate as Turkish police block the road at Esenler Bus Terminal in Istanbul, Turkey, September 16, 2015.

Credit: Ahmet Sik/Getty Images

A refugee stands looks through the fence at the Serbian border with Hungary near the town of Horgos on September 15, 2015.

Credit: Armend Nimani/AFP/Getty Images

Hungarian police officers stand in front of a fence on the Serbian side of the border after sealing it near the village of Horgos, Serbia, September 14, 2015, near the Hungarian migrant collection point in Roszke.

Hungarian police closed off the main crossing point for thousands of migrants and refugees entering from Serbia every day.

The number of migrants entering Hungary this year has risen above 200,000, police said September 14. Almost all of the migrants were seeking to travel onwards to western Europe, particularly Germany and Sweden.

Credit: Marko Djurica/Reuters

Police check the passports and papers of Syrian migrants at the border check point in the village of Szentgotthard, Hungary on September 14, 2015.

Two decades of frontier-free travel across Europe unravelled as countries re-established border controls in the face of an unprecedented influx of migrants, which broke the record for the most arrivals by land in a single day.

Credit: Srdjan Zivulovic/Reuters

A policeman guards migrants detained after crossing the border from Serbia near Asttohatolom, Hungary on September 15, 2015.

Hungary's right-wing government shut the main land route for migrants into the EU September 15, taking matters into its own hands to halt Europe's unprecedented influx of refugees while the bloc failed to agree a plan to distribute them.

Credit: Dado Ruvic/Reuters

Migrants queue to board buses bound for Vienna from Hegyshalom holding center on the Austrian border after Hungarian authorities closed the open railway track crossing in Hegyeshalom, Hungary, September 15, 2015.

Hungary implemented new laws to cope with the influx of migrants which became enforceable on the night of September 14. Since the beginning of 2015 the number of migrants using the so-called 'Balkans route' has exploded with migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey and then traveling on through Macedonia and Serbia before entering the EU via Hungary.

Credit: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

A railway wagon covered in barbed wire is placed at the Hungarian border with Serbia to stop migrants and refugees near the town of Horgos on September 15, 2015.

Hungarian police closed off the main crossing point for thousands of migrants and refugees entering from Serbia daily.

Credit: Armend Nimani/AFP/Getty Images

Migrants wait on the Serbian side of the border with Hungary in Roszke, September 15, 2015. Hungarian police detained 16 people claiming to be Syrian and Afghan migrants early in the day for illegally crossing the Serbian border fence, a police spokeswoman said, as tough new laws took effect to guard the southern frontier.

Credit: Bernadett Szabo/Reuters

Policemen fix registration bands on the wrists of migrant children at a train station near the border with Austria in Freilassing, Germany September 15, 2015.

A total of 4,537 asylum seekers reached Germany by train September 14 despite the imposition of new controls at the border with Austria, according to the federal police. The arrivals brought the number of asylum seekers who have entered Germany by train since the start of the month to 91,823, a police spokeswoman in Potsdam said.

Credit: Dominic Ebenbichler/Reuters

A refugee swims towards the shore after a dinghy carrying Syrian and Afghan refugees deflated some 100m away before reaching the Greek island of Lesbos, September 13, 2015.

An estimated 309,000 people have arrived by sea in Greece, the International Organization for Migration (IMO) said September 11, 2015. About half of those crossing the Mediterranean are Syrians fleeing civil war, according to the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR.

Credit: Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters

Migrants eat at a reception center after their arrival at the main railway station in Dortmund, Germany on September 13, 2015.

Germany re-imposed border controls on September 13 after Europe's most powerful nation acknowledged it could scarcely cope with thousands of asylum seekers arriving every day.

Credit: Ina Fassbender/Reuters

Migrants wait to board busses in Nickelsdorf, Austria on September 14, 2015.

Thousands of migrants walked unhindered across the border into Austria from Hungary on September 14, where the frontier was kept open despite Germany's sudden reintroduction of checks.

Credit: Leonhard Foeger/Reuters

Syrian refugee Asmaa wipes her tears as she waits for a train on the platform at the main railway station in Munich, September 13, 2015.

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