SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE PASSES MODIFIED CASTLE DOCTRINE BILL
Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a committee substitute for Senate Bill 145, a Castle Doctrine bill sponsored by Senator Shirley Love, D-Fayette, and cosponsored by every other member of the Senate. The bill is designed to provide improved protection from civil liability for individuals who have to defend themselves against a burglar in their own home.
Although WVCDL supports this bill, we do not believe it goes far enough to provide West Virginians the same level of protection now enjoyed by residents of Florida and the nearly two dozen other states that have copied Florida’s popular 2005 Castle Doctrine/Stand Your Ground law.
However, there are two major pieces of good news. First, unlike Florida and many of the states that have recently enacted Castle Doctrine laws, West Virginia has fairly good common law on self-defense. Florida and many states had previously had “duty to retreat” statutes that imposed upon a person who had to make a split-second decision when confronted by a burglar or mugger the duty to determine whether he or she could retreat or use less deadly means of self-defense before resorting to deadly force to protect himself or herself from a violent criminal. Second, we are working with several legislators on crafting a better bill (we note that the committee substitute for SB 145 is an improvement upon the introduced bill) that conforms West Virginia law, for both criminal and civil purposes, to the majority of states that have copied the Florida law.
