Zimmerman can kill a kid outside his home. A woman can't defend herself inside her home. That's "stand your ground."
On February 26, 2012, Trayvon Martin was shot to death. His crime? He happened to be black, and a racist overzealous neighborhood vigilante named George Zimmerman decided to take matters into his own hands. He believed that "
those assholes always get away" and he decided to make sure Trayvon didn't. So he ignored the advice of the dispatcher and left his home, armed, and had a confrontation. We don't know the exact details of how that confrontation played out. But what we do know is that Trayvon Martin ended up dead for the simple crime of walking down his own street.
Normally, one would think that if someone ignores police dispatch, goes out of the house armed, provokes a confrontation with an innocent teenager, and then kills him, that would result in some sort of murder conviction. Not so in the state of Florida, however. Florida is one of many states with so-called "Stand Your Ground" laws, which grant immunity from prosecution if a person has a reasonable belief that they are fearing for their own life in a confrontation.
Just to be clear, this law was not the direct reason that Zimmerman is not currently in jail. The law grants immunity from prosecution, and Zimmerman was prosecuted for the homicide he committed. But as Kevin Drum wrote shortly after Zimmerman's acquittal last year, the fact that the law was in the news had a definite effect on the jury's perceptions of Zimmerman's guilt:
And consider it they did. According to the most outspoken juror, known only as Juror B-37, Stand Your Ground was key to reaching their verdict. She told CNN's Anderson Cooper in an interview that neither second-degree murder nor manslaughter applied in Zimmerman's case "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."
So that's it then, right? Even if you're the one that provokes the confrontation, even if you're the only one with a gun, even if the person you kill is completely innocent of any wrongdoing whatsoever—as long as you feared for your safety at some point during the confrontation, you have a right to kill.
As long as you're a man who isn't black. If you're a woman or if you're black, it's a different story. More below the fold.
If you're a woman fearing from your life in an abusive situation, the odds are that you won't get the benefit of Stand Your Ground laws as a justification for self-defense. Take the case of Marisa Alexander, also in Florida, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for firing a warning shot into the air during a violent domestic incident with her husband. Alexander was awarded a new trial, but both her original judge and the judge who overturned the sentence rejected her request for a Stand Your Ground defense, even though this was her testimony about the incident:
Alexander testified that, on Aug. 1, 2010, her then-husband, Rico Gray Sr., questioned her fidelity and the paternity of her 1-week-old child.
She claimed that he broke through a bathroom door that she had locked and grabbed her by the neck. She said she tried to push past him but he shoved her into the door, sparking a struggle that felt like an "eternity."
Afterwards, she claimed that she ran to the garage and tried to leave but was unable to open the garage door, so she retrieved a gun, which she legally owned.
Once inside, she claimed, her husband saw the gun and charged at her "in a rage" saying, "Bitch, I'll kill you." She said she raised the gun and fired a warning shot into the air because it was the "lesser of two evils."
The jury rejected the self-defense claim and Alexander was sentenced under the state's 10-20-life law, sparking outrage over how self-defense laws are applied in the state.
If her testimony is true, Alexander was physically assaulted (and not for the first time), and threatened with death. And even at that, two judges ruled that Stand Your Ground laws did not apply. Even worse, this is not an isolated incident. Prosecutors in South Carolina are
attempting to argue that their state's version of Stand Your Ground was not meant to be invoked by women who fear for their own life in domestic disputes:
Knapp focuses on the case of Whitlee Jones, who killed her boyfriend Eric Lee and claimed that she was acting in self-defense. Earlier that evening, a neighbor called the cops to report Lee assaulting Jones, saying she saw Lee pulling Jones down the street by her hair. Jones fled the scene before the police arrived and returned later to fetch her belongings. Lee confronted her at the scene. She says he shook her, but prosecutors deny it. She stabbed him in the heart, killing him, and fled once more.
"Nearly two years later, a judge found earlier this month that Jones, now 25, had a right to kill Lee under the S.C. Protection of Persons and Property Act, which allows people in certain situations to use force when faced with serious injury," Knapp writes. But the prosecutors are planning to fight the decision because, they argue, "stand your ground" laws should not cover domestic violence situations.
The crux of Kidd's appeal, though, is rooted in the wording of the statute itself.
It says that people should be expected to fear for their lives if someone is breaking into their home, their car or their business. Most people in those situations can defend themselves. But if people share their home with the target of their force, they don't have that "presumption" of fear, the law says.
Amanda Marcotte rightfully notes that women are 16 times more to be killed by a man they know than by a stranger. Furthermore, anyone who has ever had the misfortune to witness or be involved in an abusive relationship knows that a presumption of fear permeates the domestic environment in these situations. But despite that, these prosecutors want the application of Stand Your Ground to be reserved for situations in which "strangers" invade personal property.
Unfortunately, there's a reason for that. As I have written before, white conservatives have a deep fear of minorities invading their neighborhoods and threatening their lives and personal property. It's mainly expressed sotto voce, in terms that aren't so explicit. But sometimes, they actually mean what they say and say what they mean:
Because as horrific as it is, the fantasy about killing aggressive urban minorities in self-defense is a prevalent, deeply held narrative among certain sections of the American right. It's not a hidden fantasy, a secret and dark desire that dare not speak its name. No, this strain states its intentions and its desires loudly and proudly. Take, for instance, shock jock Neal Boortz, who had this to say about crime in Atlanta:
This town is starting to look like a garbage heap. And we got too damn many urban thugs, yo, ruining the quality of life for everybody. And I'll tell you what it's gonna take. You people, you are - you need to have a gun. You need to have training. You need to know how to use that gun. You need to get a permit to carry that gun. And you do in fact need to carry that gun and we need to see some dead thugs littering the landscape in Atlanta. We need to see the next guy that tries to carjack you shot dead right where he stands. We need more dead thugs in this city. And let their -- let their mommas -- let their mommas say, "He was a good boy. He just fell in with the good crowd." And then lock her ass up.
This isn't an isolated phenomenon. On far-right message board Free Republic, there have been threads where posters openly fantasize about killing black people who "invade" their communities subsequent to rioting or social unrest. In the minds of this strain of the American right, best represented by Rush Limbaugh and Ted Nugent, Trayvon Martin must have been violent, must have been a gangster, must have been a drug dealer or drug addict. Because were this not the case—were he simply, as he was, a teenager carrying a can of iced tea and a pack of Skittles minding his own business and on his way home—it would suggest that perhaps the vigilante fantasy that so pervades the conservative camp might be mistaken; that perhaps standing one's ground for so-called Second Amendment remedies could result in the death of an innocent teenager, rather than justified self-defense against one of Boortz' so-called "urban thugs."
The statistics bear this out: Stand Your Ground laws are concentrated in the South, and according to one study, they give
much more cover to white shooters of black victims than black shooters of white victims:
Race also plays a role in Roman's analysis, suggesting that the Zimmerman verdict is hardly unique. The data give credence to claims that such laws introduce bias against black victims and in favor of white shooters, as many have contended. In cases where the shooter was black and the victim white, there was hardly any difference between "Stand Your Ground" and other states: Only 1.4 percent of these homicides were deemed justified in "Stand Your Ground" states, in comparison to 1.1 percent in states without a statute. But, the situation is substantially different when the roles, and races, of shooter and victim are reversed. For murders with a white shooter and a black victim, 16.9 percent were ruled justified in "Stand Your Ground" states. Only 9.5 percent were in states that have no "Stand Your Ground" law on the books.
The entire point of Stand Your Ground is to reduce the legal peril involved when white men try to kill black people who they think are invading their property. Women who fear for their lives in a domestic abuse situation? An innocent black man
defending his home against who he thought were armed intruders?
They might as well not even bother. Stand Your Ground wasn't written for them.
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