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The debate generated by Stand Your Ground
laws has received coverage on national and local news stations. Photo: Daniel Oines | Flicker CC. |
Stand Your Ground laws are designed to protect people in
their homes or on their property when they feel threatened with bodily harm or
believe that their lives are in danger.
The current application of stand your ground law has
diverged from the original intent of the law. Instead of being used exclusively
by people feeling at serious risk of injury, the law has been used by
defendants the original authors of the law probably didn’t intend for it to
benefit.
“People who have been shot in the back have been pronounced,
nevertheless, Stand Your Ground cases. Drug dealers in a fatal shootout,
they’ve been able to invoke Stand Your Ground. What this law needs to get back
to is self defense, where it is reasonably necessary and where someone has the
burden of avoiding killing someone if they possibly can,” explains Miami
attorney Kendal Coffey.
Stand Your Ground has changed the legal definition of
self-defense, since it eliminates the duty to retreat rule.
The first Stand Your Ground legislation was introduced in
Florida by then Governor Jeb Bush in 2005. It is now law in a total of 22
states.
Before legislation was passed, Florida courts recognized the
Castle Doctrine, which says that when a person is violently assaulted in their
home, they don’t have to retreat. The doctrine does require the occupant of the
house attest to a belief that some type of force was required to prevent death
or serious bodily harm. Stand Your Ground cannot be applied when evidence shows
that the defendant provoked the violence against himself.
Critics of the law argue that it promotes vigilantism and
gives people permission to turn normal conflicts into deadly arguments that
could often have been avoided if Stand Your Ground laws were not in place.
There is little consistency in the application of the Stand
Your Ground law in Florida. When George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, the
law shielded Zimmerman from prosecution for murder. Similar protections were
not awarded to Marrissa Alexander, who fired a single shot during an argument
with her husband. She fired after her husband had attacked her and threatened
to kill her. She also fired a warning shot. Her husband was not shot or killed
during the incident.
Alexander is an African-American woman. She was sentenced to
20 years in prison in 2012. "Certainly there is an uneven application of
this law, and arguably the application of a lot of laws. But because Stand Your
Ground laws are so subjective, they remove the core tenets of self-defense law,
and that has left more room for confusion about when and where self-defense
principles apply,” said Brina Milikowsky, chief strategy officer at Every Town
for Gun Safety, a gun control advocacy group.
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