I know I'm going to get flamed for this because it contains factual information that runs contrary to what many people are saying in this time of national outrage, but I feel that accurate information is important, so I am reposting a thread that I originally posted on facebook:
The media loves a good controversy, so much so, that they'll make one up, if there isn't an actual controversy. Activist organizations want results, so much so that they'll willfully misinform their members to get them to act in the way that they want. There's no better example than the recent faux controversy over Florida's Stand Your Ground law. You can google stand your ground florida and find hundreds of articles, all getting the facts wrong. I've spent hours trying to find an accurate article and can't find one. No wonder everyone is misinformed, from one of my favorite musicians, Stevie Wonder, to one of my favorite comedians, John Oliver of the Daily Show. I know the law, I've done the research, and I'm here to debunk the bullshit, if anyone cares about facts anymore. Below the squiggle, I will debunk 5 myths about Stand Your Ground. Check it out!
Myth # 1: Stand Your Ground means that you can shoot people if you believe they are a threat to your life.
Fact: No. That is basic self-defense, in all 50 states and every country in the world that has an advanced legal system, not Stand Your Ground. Remember that the belief that force is necessary to protect yourself must be reasonable and the amount of force used must be reasonable. Reasonableness is determined by a jury.
Stand Your Ground simply means that you don't have to retreat, if possible, before using deadly force. If a state does not have Stand Your Ground, then in that state you have a duty to retreat, before using deadly force, if you can do so safely. If your state has Stand Your Ground, you don't have to run away, even if you can run away. Deadly force does not mean in legalese what it means in common parlance. What is considered deadly force can be very non-deadly, such as breaking someone's nose - anything likely to cause serious bodily injury. So, it's not limited to guns, it can be just about any weapon you can imagine or your bare hands. If you are in a non Stand Your Ground state you can be put in prison for defending yourself, if you had the option of running away.
Whether Stand Your Ground is a good policy or not is certainly debatable. I have heard some very good arguments against it, but have come down on the other side, for reasons I will expound at the end. But, before getting into a debate, you should know what you are debating. Many of the arguments I've heard against Stand Your Ground were actually arguments against basic self-defense, not Stand Your Ground. Basic self-defense is really so well settled and universally accepted that it should be beyond debate at this point, in my opinion.
Myth #2: Stand Your Ground is only the law in Florida and a handful of other red states.
Fact: Stand Your Ground is the law in 38 states. Those states are: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
The other 12 states also have some version of Stand Your Ground, but it is limited in some states to when you are in your home, in other states to your home or vehicle, in other states home, vehicle, and workplace, and in other states it includes other peoples' homes as well.
Not every one of these states passed a law called "Stand Your Ground." Some states, like California (I am a California criminal defense attorney), have Stand Your Ground based on case law handed down by the courts over decades and centuries. Other states, also including California, have Stand Your Ground codified into their justifiable homicide statutes. Some passed it by voter initiative and others passed it through legislative acts. But, 38 states have no duty to retreat from any place where you have a right to be. The other 12 have no duty to retreat in certain places.
Myth #3: Zimmerman got off because of Stand Your Ground.
Fact: Stand Your Ground was not really relevant to Zimmerman's defense, because according to his defense, he had no ability to safely retreat. According to his defense, Trayvon Martin jumped him and got on top of him and started banging his head on the curb. According to his defense, there was no opportunity to run away. So, his verdict would have been the same with or without Stand Your Ground.
In fact, Zimmerman had an opportunity, under Florida's Stand Your Ground law, to have a pre-trial hearing wherein the judge would rule whether the Stand Your Ground law should prevent his case from going to trial. Zimmerman's defense did not ask for a Stand Your Ground hearing, so the case went to trial and he was acquitted based on simple self-defense.
It's true that Stand Your Ground came up at the trial. The prosecution introduced a witness testifying that he had taught Zimmerman about Stand Your Ground in a law class. This opened the door for the defense to grill the witness about what Stand Your Ground does and doesn't allow. The judge did issue the standard self-defense jury instruction, including the portion on Stand Your Ground.
The juror who gave an interview to Anderson Cooper did imply that Stand Your Ground was a factor: "JUROR: Right. Well, because of the heat of the moment and the stand your ground. He had a right to defend himself. If he felt threatened that his life was going to be taken away from him or he was going to have bodily harm, he had a right." But if you look at what she actually says, what she is really referring to there is regular, plain old, self-defense. She uses that term interchangeably with self-defense, just as so many other people are doing. (See Myth #1) She also uses the term "robbery" when referring to the burglaries that had happened in the neighborhood, so you can see that she is not that legally sophisticated and has a tendency to conflate legal concepts.
The bottom line is that neither the defense nor the prosecution presented a theory of the case wherein Zimmerman had an opportunity to retreat once Trayvon Martin allegedly attacked him. Therefore, the duty to retreat was not an issue and this was not a Stand Your Ground case.
Myth #4: Stand Your Ground is predominantly used by white racists to kill people of color.
Fact: Surely some white racists have got away with murdering people of color because of Stand Your Ground, just as they have gotten away with it based on regular self-defense and other legal theories. However, the beneficiaries of the Stand Your Ground law are all murder defendants where the law is applicable. Because of the racism in our country and the economic and social consequences of that racism, murder defendants are disproportionately people of color.
In Florida, the statistics have been tallied by the Tampa Bay Times and, in 8 years, the defense has been invoked 133 times, resulting in 40 convictions (35%) and 73 acquittals (65%) with 20 cases still pending. Of those defendants who invoked the law, 40 have been listed as "Black" by the Tampa Bay Times. That represents 35% of all Stand Your Ground cases, even though African Americans only make up 16% of Florida's population. Of those cases, 25 were acquitted (78%) and 7 were convicted (22%). What this means is that African American defendants in Florida have disproportionately invoked the Stand Your Ground law in their defense and have been more successful than white defendants at getting acquittals with this defense. Wow, does that run contrary to what we've been hearing!
Myth #5: An African American woman, named Marissa Alexander, got 20 yrs. for firing a warning shot under circumstances comparable to Zimmerman's, demonstrating that Stand Your Ground only protects white people.
Fact: The evidence in Alexander's case is that she had an argument with her husband and he got aggressive and blocked her exit from the kitchen. She went into the garage, went into her car, got a gun, and came back and fired a warning shot, telling him to get out of the house. He left with the two kids that were also in the room.
This is not a case where Stand Your Ground or any version of self-defense was applicable because she was not being attacked or threatened at the time that she fired the gun. She was sentenced to 20 yrs., even though the judge didn't want to sentence her so harshly, because of Florida's 10-20-life law which makes it mandatory to give 20 yrs. if a gun is fired during the commission of an assault. That is an atrocious law, as is every mandatory minimum law that requires judges to issue harsh sentences without considering the particular facts of the case. This and all mandatory minimum laws should be repealed, but it has nothing to do with Stand Your Ground.
If I was her attorney, I would be desperate for a legal theory to prevent her from having to do a 20 yrs. sentence. I would certainly argue with everything I had that Stand Your Ground should apply. However, I would most likely have to accept that I would lose that argument, no matter what color the defendant's skin was.
Okay, so those are the myths debunked. Now, is Stand Your Ground a good policy? I believe so, but it's not without serious drawbacks, so it is certainly an issue that should be debated. It's been shown that murder rates have risen in some states that have enacted Stand Your Ground laws. What this means to me is that, with all the controversy and fanfare, some people get the idea that they now have a license to kill and they do so. This is a horrible unintended consequence.
However, without Stand Your Ground, many innocent people (disproportionately people of color and poor people) would do long prison terms for simply defending themselves against the violence of another. Try to get Trayvon Martin out of your head for a minute and imagine a 6'6'' neo-nazi skinhead with a swastika tatooed on his face. Imagine that skinhead approaches you and says get out of here you (insert racial, religious, ethnic, gender, sexuality, etc. epithet) or I'm going to break every bone in your body in ten seconds. 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. When he gets to 1, he starts taking off his jacket, revealing more racist prison tattoos and huge muscles, and looking menacing, so you grab a wine bottle and smash it over his head, causing a skull fracture. You are now looking at 10 or so years in prison, because you didn't run. You stood your ground. You could have ran, but really, should you have to, just because some bigot doesn't want you there and is determined to do you violence?
Perhaps we are too macho of a culture and we should value the prevention of violence over standing up for yourself. But we ARE in that macho culture. The values of American culture do not reflect favorably on those who run from fights. Maybe it is wrong to use violence unnecessarily in that situation, but is it really worthy of a life sentence in prison?
I am for gun control, not limiting the rights of a criminal defendant. I am well aware of who criminal defendants tend to be - underprivileged people who need every sword and shield they have against the power of the state to imprison. Occasionally, privileged people such as Zimmerman get afforded those same rights. Occasionally, when general rights are applied to a particular individual, the outcome is unsatisfying.
In law, you get used to the reality that laws are there to be applied generally and uniformly and are not tailored for each individual case. It is incredibly frustrating when a generally reasonable law seems unjust as applied to an individual situation, yet you are still bound by it. However, the cure for that is not just doing away with the law, because the absence of that law altogether often leads to more injustice than existed with the law. The goal is to make laws that work the most often for the most people, but they will never be perfect and there will be cases that just don't feel good. That is one of the many sucky facts of life.
Some of our issues with Stand Your Ground would actually be better addressed through gun control. I know this is basically a liberal wet dream, but I would like to see a requirement that every gun owner be highly trained and tested for intelligence, diversity awareness, mental health, firearm safety, and aggressive tendencies before being allowed to carry a gun in public. I won't be holding my breath.
So to sum up, the problem is not Stand Your Ground. The problem is racism. The problem is guns. The problem is violence. Now, you can proceed to flame me. Go ahead, make my day.
PS: Here is John Oliver's very funny piece. See how many of the above myths he is operating under. http://www.mediaite.com/...