A Chatham County judge denied a “stand your ground” claim by the man accused of shooting a Black teenager who had approached his door in December 2022 while canvassing for U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock.
In a ruling on Monday, Superior Court Judge Penny Freesemann said there was not enough evidence to support that Jimmy Paiz, 44, acted in self-defense and reasonably felt threatened by the politically-active 15-year-old, who was trying to convince Savannah voters on Dec. 1, 2022, to turn out for Warnock’s tight runoff election against Herschel Walker.
At the hearing, attorneys for Paiz, a Honduran-American veteran and writer, showed security footage from the incident to claim that the 6-foot-tall teenager and canvasser, Javontae Vann, tried to use the doorknob to get into Paiz’s house and that Paiz felt reasonably threatened.
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