Stand Your Ground Laws: Ethics, Racial Impact, and Reform

Introduction

The 13th of July 2013 marked the peak of controversy surrounding Stand Your Ground laws — statutes that grant people the right to use lethal force in self-defense without any obligation to retreat, and which "have proliferated since the NRA successfully lobbied the Legislature to pass the first in 2005" (Mayors against Illegal Guns 2). On that day, a Florida court acquitted George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain, of all charges relating to the controversial killing of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old he had shot on the 26th of February the previous year. The jury held that, in accordance with Florida's expansive self-defense statute, Zimmerman had exercised his right by standing his ground and using force to meet force, and had therefore committed no unlawful act. The acquittal sent the public and civil society groups into a frenzy, prompting stakeholders in the 24 states that operate Stand Your Ground laws to embark on repealing or scaling back those statutes.

What stands out in Martin's case, and in others discussed throughout this paper, is that Stand Your Ground laws function more as an invitation to kill than as a protective measure. They impede justice and public safety, increase rates of justifiable homicide, and — most troublingly — cause minority groups to disproportionately bear the brunt of that increase.

Historical Background of Stand Your Ground Laws

The Duty to Retreat: Wible (124–125) notes that the duty to retreat, embedded in America's common law, provided the basis for all self-defense laws in existence today. It requires an individual under threat to retreat before justifiably killing their attacker (Mayors against Illegal Guns 3).

The Castle Doctrine: This was an exception to the duty to retreat. Under it, people were not required to retreat when threatened inside their own homes (Mayors against Illegal Guns 2).

Under these two principles of self-defense, Americans had the "legal right to 'stand their ground' and use non-deadly force to protect themselves from an attacker, as long as their use of force was reasonably necessary" (Mayors against Illegal Guns 3). The duty to retreat encouraged the use of measures other than lethal force; and while deadly force could be justified in certain circumstances, it was to be used only as a last resort (Wible 124).

Stand Your Ground laws effectively inverted these traditional self-defense principles, allowing people to make use of lethal force even in public spaces. Havis (120) points out that there have been numerous instances in which defendants raised claims of self-defense even when it was apparent that the death in question would not have occurred had the defendant safely left the area.

Stand Your Ground laws are often falsely labeled "Castle Doctrine provisions," but as Mayors against Illegal Guns (3–4) explain, the former go far beyond home defense. These laws are applicable anywhere, making them the rule rather than an exception to the Castle Doctrine. Today, it is common for confrontations in entertainment venues, playgrounds, or on highways to escalate into dangerous shootings; and it is equally common for those responsible for the resulting deaths to evade "prosecution and conviction by asserting that they acted in self-defense" (Mayors against Illegal Guns 3). Stand Your Ground rules, unlike the traditional self-defense principles, therefore raise serious ethical and justice-related concerns, as discussed in the sections that follow.

Ethical Issues Surrounding Stand Your Ground Laws

This section analyzes the ethical issues posed by Stand Your Ground law on the basis of the six components that differentiate it from traditional principles of self-defense. It is worth noting that the application of Stand Your Ground law differs from state to state, and that different states have adopted different combinations of its components. For purposes of clarity, this paper considers a state a Stand Your Ground jurisdiction "if its statute allows a person to use lethal force against another in any place he has the legal right to be — so long as he reasonably believed that he, or someone else, faced imminent death or great bodily harm" (Lee).

Allowing the Use of Deadly Force in Public Places

Stand Your Ground jurisdictions permit individuals to use lethal force even when the circumstances provide a safe opportunity to retreat, so long as they have a legal right to be at that location (Mayors against Illegal Guns 4). One might ask: what about bystanders who have nothing to do with the confrontation but also have a right to be at that place? As Lee notes, Stand Your Ground jurisdictions would, for instance, allow a driver attacked in a vehicle to shoot their attacker even when the more reasonable option of driving away is available.

Allowing the Use of Lethal Force in Defense of Property

Of the 24 Stand Your Ground states, nine allow individuals to kill in defense of property, even when the attack poses no physical danger (Mayors against Illegal Guns 4). Property defense falls into two categories: four states permit the use of lethal force to protect personal property — including money and cell phones — regardless of its value; six allow citizens to use deadly force to protect unoccupied premises from burglary, even when the shooter does not own the building or knows that no one is inside (Mayors against Illegal Guns 4). Contrary to the arguments advanced by proponents of Stand Your Ground laws, empirical research indicates that these laws do little to deter crime. A study by economists at Texas A&M University found no notable differences in rates of robbery and burglary between Stand Your Ground states and the rest of the country (Lee).

Creation of a Presumption that Shootings are Permissible and Just

Arizona and Texas are among the states in which shooting in self-defense is presumed lawful anywhere (Mayors against Illegal Guns 4). Ordinarily, a defendant is considered innocent until a prosecutor convinces a jury otherwise beyond a reasonable doubt (Havis 120). Under Stand Your Ground law, this presumption is reinforced to such a degree that authorities are forced to "take the shooter at his or her word, regardless of how unlikely and unsubstantiated the shooter's version of events may be" (Mayors against Illegal Guns 5). The situation is compounded when the victim dies and there are neither eyewitnesses nor recordings to corroborate or contradict the account (Havis 120; Mayors against Illegal Guns 5).

Criminal Immunity

Preventing Shooters' Arrests

The Trayvon Martin case provides a clear illustration of a situation in which law enforcers cannot arrest or even detain the individual accused of pulling the trigger when that person claims self-defense before contradicting evidence is obtained (Lee). For this reason, George Zimmerman spent the night of 26 February 2012 out of a police cell after shooting and killing an unarmed teenager, despite eyewitness reports (Wible 124). The challenge lies in evaluating the validity of such a claim — there are no clear-cut guidelines governing the handling of suspects who invoke self-defense, creating uncertainty and confusion, and ultimately "making police less likely to arrest and prosecutors less likely to prosecute shooters who claim self-defense" (Mayors against Illegal Guns 5).

Immunity Hearings

Eight Stand Your Ground states have statutes that shield a person from prosecution even after an arrest has been made (Mayors against Illegal Guns 5). This has been interpreted as a provision of criminal immunity entitling a Stand Your Ground suspect to a pretrial hearing, in which evidence is presented and a judge — rather than a jury — determines whether the suspect acted in self-defense (Mayors against Illegal Guns 5). Research indicates that these immunity hearings, in most cases, fail to achieve their stated purpose of protecting "law-abiding citizens from uncertainty while they wait for the government to prosecute them for shootings they claimed were for self-defense." Some shooters have reportedly waited more than a year for a decision (Mayors against Illegal Guns 5). The deeper problem, however, is that a case involving someone's death is left to be decided by a lone judge rather than by a jury, and the presumption that shootings are lawful is only reinforced further (Mayors against Illegal Guns 5).

The Prohibition of Civil Lawsuits

Typically, the justice system provides avenues through which injured parties can seek redress and compensation for damages or injuries caused by others (Lee). However, as Mayors against Illegal Guns (6–7) note, 19 of the 22 Stand Your Ground states substantially bar civil suits against Stand Your Ground shooters. Such restrictions take various forms: eleven states operate blanket immunity, prohibiting all civil suits including those filed by innocent bystanders; eight shield suspects only from suits brought by the victim (Mayors against Illegal Guns 6). More significantly, twelve states extend litigation costs and attorney's fees "to a shooter who prevails in a civil lawsuit, creating a strong disincentive for a shooting victim to pursue justice in the civil system" (Mayors against Illegal Guns 6).

Conclusion

Available evidence indicates that Stand Your Ground laws impact negatively on public safety and increase rates of homicide. Rather than serving as a protective measure, these laws function as a license to kill, and are, in this regard, an impediment to both justice and social well-being. The nation's legal system has repeatedly been criticized for enshrining racial disparity within its framework. The segregation and slavery policies of the 20th century, and more recently the stop-and-frisk technique associated with the war on drugs, have placed the country's legal system under scrutiny for all the wrong reasons. Stand Your Ground laws have no demonstrated effect on burglary or theft and therefore cannot be regarded as an effective crime-deterrence tool. There is a pressing need to correct the ethical and legal deficiencies of these statutes — failing which, society risks normalizing a culture in which taking a life is treated as an ordinary act of self-assertion.

Works Cited

Gardner, Thomas, and Terry Anderson. Criminal Law. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning, 2014. Print.

Havis, Devonya. Pursuing Trayvon Martin: Historical Contexts and Contemporary Manifestations of Racial Dynamics. Ed. George Yancy and Janine Jones. Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013. Print.

Lee, Suevon. "Five 'Stand Your Ground' Cases You Should Know About." ProPublica, 2012. Web.

Mayors against Illegal Guns. "Stand Your Ground Laws and Their Effect on Violent Crime and the Criminal Justice System." Mayors against Illegal Guns, 2013. Web. 8 May 2014.

Wible, Dan. Halftime in America: The Challenge Years — Fighting to Stop Progressive Tyranny in the United States. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2012. Print.