If you ever doubted that the mass media was
largely anti-gun, you can find proof of it with a simple Google search of
articles, columns and essays written on “Stand
Your Ground” laws. Gun prohibitionists
and lawyers with agendas have poisoned countless reporters with falsehoods that
have been passed on to the American public. Let’s look at some of those
misunderstandings, and compare them to reality.
First, we have to understand that the “Stand
Your Ground” principle applies only to innocent people attacked outside their
homes, in a place where they have a right to be. In some jurisdictions, there
is a “retreat requirement”—the innocent victim is expected to retreat until
retreat becomes impossible and deadly force is their only recourse. It has been
called a “back to the wall” law. Some jurisdictions have never required that.
The specific Stand Your Ground laws rescind that retreat requirement and allow
the innocent victim to respond immediately with appropriate defensive force.
That’s what Stand Your Ground means. No more, no less. Now, we’ll examine why
that is.
Myth: Stand Your Ground laws let anyone kill
anyone and get away with it by simply claiming “I was in fear for my
life.
The most notorious and most deeply studied of
these laws is Florida’s, which explicitly requires that the defendant show to a
preponderance of evidence standard (a greater than 50-percent certainty) that
said defendant did indeed act with reason and prudence to save his life or that
of another innocent person. Florida law expressly prohibits the use of the
so-called Stand Your Ground defense if the defendant was committing a crime
when the incident occurred, or was even in a place where he did not have a
right to be. There is no place in the country where the mere claim “I was in
fear for my life” becomes a get-out-of-jail-free card. The second best-known
such law is that of Texas, where one man set up a confrontation with a neighbor
he hated (videotaping it, no less, and babbling on camera “I am in fear for my
life.”) He ended up killing that man and wounding two others in the course of
the confrontation he provoked, and he is now rotting in prison for that crime.
Do a Google search for Texas v. Raul Rodriguez.
Myth: Stand Your Ground laws mean that you can’t
be sued in civil court if you aren’t convicted for the same act in criminal
court.
That misunderstanding came out of the Florida
model, where the rescinding of the retreat requirement was part of a
legislative package that provided a clarification of existing castle doctrine.
This included a provision for a self-defense hearing that could derail an
unmeritorious criminal charge and keep it from going to trial, and a tort
reform element that provided judges an avenue to throw out lawsuits in cases
where a shooting had already been ruled justified by the criminal justice
system.
In Florida (the model state for this
discussion), the law states that the suit should be dismissed if the criminal
justice system has already ruled the use of force in question to have been
justifiable. However, the nature of that ruling is still somewhat vague.
Absence of indictment or prosecution only shows that the prosecuting authority
didn’t think it could get a conviction under the high standard of proof beyond
a reasonable doubt, which most law professors describe as a high 90th
percentile certainty of guilt. Even a full-blown trial resulting in acquittal
only means that the prosecution tried, and failed, to convince the judge or
jury that the likelihood of culpability was that high. For a civil court
lawsuit, the standard of proof is much lower: preponderance of evidence, which
is only slightly greater than a 50 percent certainty of wrongdoing. Thus, not
being convicted or even prosecuted is not, in and of itself, necessarily a bar
to a lawsuit.
The so-called Stand Your Ground hearing, if it
results in a favorable finding of the defendant, means that an experienced
judge has heard the evidence and determined that it is more likely than not
that the defendant acted in justifiable self-defense. Since this shows that
it’s virtually impossible to prove the opposite to a standard beyond a
reasonable doubt, it would constitute both injustice and a waste of the
taxpayers’ money to put the person who had that ruling through a civil trial.
The Florida statute allows the judge to dismiss a lawsuit if this is the case.
A memorandum of closure by a prosecutorial entity explicitly stating that the
shooting was justifiable should have the same effect. Anything less is no
guarantee that the suit will be thrown out, however, and an allegation of
negligence on the part of the plaintiff may negate this tort reform protection
as well.
Myth: Stand Your Ground is bad because it has
led to more justifiable homicides.
First, “more justifiable homicides” is not
necessarily a bad thing. It’s only ruled justified if an investigation shows
that it was necessary to protect the lives of the innocent. Thus, every
justified homicide can be construed as meaning at least one innocent life was
saved by that act, an obvious benefit to society.
Also, in jurisdictions where justifiable
shootings by law-abiding armed citizens increase, justified line-of-duty
shootings by local police often increase, too. This points to an increase in
violent attacks by “bad guys against good guys,” and not anything sinister on
the part of those good guys who won gunfights initiated by violent criminals.
The Bottom Line
Of the many states with Stand Your Ground
provisions, Florida has become the focus of the national media, largely because
of the furor that surrounded the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George
Zimmerman. When there was an outcry for the law to be repealed or modified,
Florida Governor Rick Scott empanelled a blue ribbon committee that included
anti-gunners, respected chief law enforcement officers and veteran attorneys.
The panel’s final recommendation was to leave Florida’s so-called Stand Your
Ground law as is. I hope that this article helped explain why.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2015/05/01/massad-ayoob-3-stand-your-ground-myths/#ixzz3k94zyfBe
