Despite ‘startling’ racial stats, controversial ‘stand your ground’ laws withstand scrutiny

in-depth: pubbed

Six days after a jury said George Zimmerman was justified in approaching an unarmed Black teen and shooting him to death when a scuffle erupted in Sanford, Florida, President Barack Obama asked America a difficult question.

“If Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk? And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman, who had followed him in a car because he felt threatened?”

Several years later, in a report published in 2020 called “Stand Your Ground Kills,” the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence offered a response.

“Statistically speaking, the answer is no,” it said.

When controlling for variables, the odds of a white-on-Black homicide being found justified is 281% greater than the odds a white-on-white homicide is found justified, according to professor John K. Roman, whose research was based on the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Report, which unlike other data sets takes into account the final disposition of a proceeding.

In the days following the killing of Trayvon Martin, the concept of “stand your ground” laws and the consistency of their application were widely debated. Then-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called for a hard look at laws he contended “create more violence than they prevent.” At the same time, then-Florida Gov. Rick Scott convened a task force to consider repealing the law.

Scott’s task force quickly concluded “the majority of Floridians favor an expansive right to self-defense” and recommend Florida’s “stand your ground” law remain intact.

10 years later: How Trayvon Martin’s killing galvanized a new era of social activism

“Stand your ground,” as originally conceived, expanded the common law principle known as the Castle Doctrine to areas outside of the home, and removed any requirement that a person being attacked or approached in a threatening manner seek to remove themselves from an escalating situation before taking defensive action.

Months after Trayvon’s death, however, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights embarked in 2013 on a research project based on “stand your ground” laws but didn’t release results until 2020, long after any momentum for change created by the Martin shooting had subsided.

The commission was tasked with conducting an analysis to determine whether a racial bias existed in the “assertion, investigation or enforcement of justifiable homicide laws in states with “stand your ground” provisions.”

It reviewed FBI data in over 2,600 cases in an effort to determine foreseeable outcomes in cases similar to Zimmerman's shooting of Trayvon.

It was concluded the number of homicides of Black people deemed legally “justifiable” more than doubled in “stand your ground” states between 2005 and 2011. In cases involving a white shooter and Black victim, homicides were ruled justified 45% of the time, as compared to 11% of the time when the roles were reversed, the review showed.

In compiling an analysis of findings, Michael Yaki of the Commission on Civil Rights relied heavily upon data and testimony provided by Roman.

“This is an extremely sobering, and powerful, statistic,” Yaki wrote for the commission.

Pulaski, Tennessee: In the birthplace of the KKK, a group pushes to memorialize its overlooked Black history

‘This is not the way to have a safer society’

Little has been done in Florida to repeal or reform “stand your ground” laws – which now exist in some form in about 30 states.

In 2021 and again this year, Florida state Sen. Shevrin Jones, D-Miami, introduced legislation called the Self Defense Restoration Act, which would effectively repeal the “stand your ground” law. If passed, his bill would restore the “duty to retreat” aspect of the “stand your ground” statute.

So far, his attempts have failed.

“These laws suffer from pervasive racial and gender bias in their application,” the Giffords Law Center report said. “Disproportionately justifying the use of violence by people who are white and male against people who are not.”

Two years after the report, the Giffords Law Center stands by it.

“This is not the way to have a safer society,” said Robyn Thomas, the executive director of the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Many states, including Florida, continue to tweak their “stand your ground” laws to expand the rights of armed citizens to counter an alleged threat using deadly force.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has gone so far as to propose legislation that would justify using deadly force against people engaging in conduct that results in the interruption or impairment of a business, or participating in looting, which the bill defined as burglary within 500 feet of a violent or disorderly assembly.

A bill creating what became known as the “anti-riot” law was signed by DeSantis, but overturned by U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, who declared the legislation “vague and overbroad.” Walker termed that the law trampled First Amendment rights of free speech and assembly and also violated constitutional due process protections.

Grady Judd, sheriff of Florida's Polk County, contends that laws giving a person a right to self-defense have been around for years, and that all “stand your ground” did in 2005 was make it legal to stand up to an aggressor, rather than retreat.

The premise of the law is simple, Judd says: “If you’re walking through a parking lot and a guy confronts you with a knife and says ‘this is a robbery’ and you pull your gun and shoot him, that’s classic “stand your ground.”

But as the U.S. Commission for Civil Rights noted in its report, no two cases in which the “stand your ground” law is cited as a defense are the same.

A rape, a shooting, alleged harassment: How legal shields can protect police from lawsuits

Disproving ‘stand your ground’ hard ‘when someone is dead’

Critics of “stand your ground” say that the removal of a duty to retreat has helped create an environment where people tend to escalate, or even provoke, confrontation that might otherwise be avoided.

“From the rational standpoint, there are situations where you could say ‘you didn’t need to shoot someone in that scenario.’ But a lot of the time it doesn’t matter if you did or not,” said Chris Daniels, a Florida A&M University professor working in its Center for Global Security and International Affairs. “The prosecutor has to prove the person who used force didn’t feel threatened. That’s hard to do when someone is dead.”

Research has shown that in “shall issue” states like Florida, where the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services must issue a concealed weapons license if the applicant meets certain qualifications, gun purchases fueled by fear and a marketed need for self-protection have exploded.

With that, firearm homicide rates have risen by 8.6% and handgun homicide rates by 10.6% since the first “stand your ground” laws were passed in Florida in 2005.

These increases are being seen even though “stand your ground” laws do not appear to act as a deterrent to other crimes.

“There is a robust association between shall-issue laws and higher rates of firearm homicides,” the study said.

On Feb. 26, 2012, the night he shot Martin, Zimmerman was armed and working as a neighborhood watch captain. He called 911 to report the Black 17-year-old as a suspicious person. Martin was making his way back from a store to the home of his father and his father’s fiancée in Sanford, carrying a soft drink and a bag of Skittles. Zimmerman, who is white and of Peruvian descent, confronted the teen even though he’d been instructed not to do so by a dispatcher.

There were no witnesses to the ensuing scuffle and shooting, and Sanford police were initially hesitant to file charges based on Zimmerman’s account of how the incident had unfolded.

In the aftermath of Martin's shooting, a detective recommended a charge of manslaughter be filed. He said head injuries Zimmerman claimed he’d suffered were “marginally consistent with a life-threatening episode, as described by him, during which neither a deadly weapon nor deadly force were deployed by Trayvon Martin.”

After several months and much media scrutiny, Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder. Zimmerman’s lawyers did not use a “stand your ground” defense, opting instead to argue self-defense.

A jury of six women found Zimmerman not guilty of second-degree murder or the lesser-included charge of manslaughter.

To Daniels’ point, Martin was not alive to dispute Zimmerman’s account of events.

Further, Daniels said the subjective terms used to define what constitutes standing your ground are what make it dangerous in some cases.

“You could theoretically feel like you were threatened by anyone,” he said. “If I’m walking and some guy pops around the corner and surprises me, it could startle me enough that I’d feel threatened, and under ‘stand your ground’ I could shoot him, even though he was just walking too.”

Judd, the Polk County sheriff, said a better comprehension of what does and doesn’t constitute “stand your ground” is needed.

“A lot of times we’re investigating cases where people don’t understand the law or are trying to throw a Hail Mary and claim “stand your ground,” he said. “Sometimes if you scream ‘stand your ground’ you end up charged, because it wasn’t ‘stand your ground.’”

Education on unequal footing: Refugees arriving in US face uphill battle in classrooms

Continued discrepancy in how law is applied

While the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights study was conducted nearly a decade ago, more recent research done by the American Public Health Association indicates the commission’s findings remain valid today.

APHA looked at 25 studies that estimated “population-level impacts” of “stand your ground” legislation and published its findings in March of 2021.

“In at least some U.S. states, most notably Florida, stand-your-ground laws have been associated with increases in homicides, and there has been racial bias in the application of legal protections,” the report said.

On July 19, 2013, when President Obama addressed the nation regarding the Trayvon Martin case and asked his “could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk?” question, he had a follow-up statement. “If the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, then it seems to me that we might want to examine those kinds of laws.”

Pensacola resident Cedric Alexander is a 40-year law enforcement veteran who has served as president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives and was a member of Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing.

He echoed the former president’s concerns about the way “stand your ground” laws are enforced.

“The key to ‘stand your ground’ to me is we have to make sure it is applied equally to everyone,” he said. “If there is data out there to support that this is not the case, we need to look at that. It needs to be perceived and believed by everyone across our nation it is being applied equitably across the board.”

Follow reporter Tom McLaughlin on Twitter: @TomMnwfdn

'Our world is crumbling': Ukrainians try to flee homes with food, belongings amid Russian invasion

This article originally appeared on Northwest Florida Daily News: Trayvon Martin death: Laws like ‘stand your ground’ remain intact