"Presumed Innocent" legislation in Florida Stand-Your-Ground ruled "Unconstitutional"

It's supposed to be a bedrock principle of our legal system that in a criminal case the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty ("beyond a reasonable doubt").
Still is, or it least it is again in self defense trials, in Florida and in all other states but one.

Perhaps the legislators thought that a law calling for the burden of proof of innocence to fall on the defendant is contrary to the American legal system, and so they attempted to correct that.
They didn't even try to address it. The law in question was about procedures to establish or deny immunity from prosecution in a preliminary hearing under the provisions of a law that was not addressed and that still stands.
 
It sounds like the decision was based on a question of who gets to set burden of proof rules, the Florida Supreme Court or the Florida legislature and that the merits of the law itself weren't commented upon. Is this correct?
 
It sounds like the decision was based on a question of who gets to set burden of proof rules, the Florida Supreme Court or the Florida legislature and that the merits of the law itself weren't commented upon. Is this correct?
As it pertains to a preliminary hearing to rule on the question of immunity from prosecution, yes.
 
It can often be instructive to look at how different news outlets treat the same story. We have a link to a Fax News story in the OP.

On the other hand, here is how The Wall Street Journal described Judge Hirsch's ruling in Rutherford:
...A Florida judge ruled Monday that lawmakers’ changes to the state’s controversial “stand your ground” self-defense law violate the state’s constitution....
...
...

...In his ruling Monday, Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch in Miami found that the Legislature overstepped its authority in making the alterations. He said that because the changes were procedural rather than substantive, they could only be made by the Florida Supreme Court, which spelled out how pretrial “stand your ground” hearings should occur in a 2015 decision....

The WSJ is still too sketchy to help someone really understand the law involved in the ruling. But insofar as it clarifies that the constitutional issue is a matter of the state constitution, not the U. S. Constitution, and that the pivotal issue involves the distinction between substantive law and matters of procedure, it is more accurate.
 
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