Why "stand your ground" is good law

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abajaj11

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People in Great Britain and Australia have been convicted if they used a gun or in any way severely injured anyone who was attacking them...because over zealous prosecutors said they did not fulfill their duty to retreat.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Martin_(farmer)

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110113130440AA79Xit

http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_1_5/1473779__ARCHIVED_THREAD____the_australia_gun_arguement.html&page=2


Duty to retreat puts the burden on you, the person defending themselves against deadly force, to try and find all possible "reasonable" methods of retreat. Try doing that kind of analysis in a life and death situation!
Here is an example I just made up to illustrate. Say you are in a store that is being held up. You are near the door and can run out becuase the perps' back is towards you. Your kid is in the store somewhere else. You could have run out of the store but you chose to stay. The perpetrator starts getting violent, maybe stabs a customer with his knife as he screams at the proprietor to open his safe. You pull your gun out and shoot the perp. Now you are screwed. You could have retreated, but you did not. Stand your ground is Good law that protects law abiding gun owners, people who are not prone to breaking the law, from perpetrators who break laws all the time.
Without it, gunowners can use their firearms in name only, since they will almost certainly go to jail. In a society where common sense is becoming less common (example, the George Zimmerman case), explicity stand your ground laws are a MUST.
:)
 
I agree that Stand Your Ground laws are useful and desirable, but it's also unwise to manufacture supposed problems that don't exist. Hyperbole does not help our arguments.

For some well reasoned discussion of why Stand Your Ground laws are appropriate see here and here.

abajaj11 said:
People in Great Britain and Australia have been convicted if they used a gun or in any way severely injured anyone who was attacking them...because over zealous prosecutors said they did not fulfill their duty to retreat....
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Great Britain and Australia are not the United States. If we're discussing the laws in the United States, examples of things that happened in those other countries are irrelevant.

abajaj11 said:
...Duty to retreat puts the burden on you, the person defending themselves against deadly force, to try and find all possible "reasonable" methods of retreat....
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In States in which a duty to retreat exists, the usual legal standard is that one must be reasonably be able to retreat safely.

abajaj11 said:
...Say you are in a store that is being held up. You are near the door and can run out becuase the perps' back is towards you. Your kid is in the store somewhere else. You could have run out of the store but you chose to stay....
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Nonsense. Cite a case in the United States in which a court ruled that one had a duty to retreat when it would mean abandoning a family member in a dangerous situation.
 
The media has distorted this issue. Most people don't know that SYG only applies if the shooting was justified.
 
gbran said:
The media has distorted this issue. Most people don't know that SYG only applies if the shooting was justified.
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No, whether or not there is a duty to retreat is part of the analysis necessary to decide if a use of force against another human was justified. For a more detail discussion of the legal issues see here and here.
 
Frank Ettin said:
I agree that Stand Your Ground laws are useful and desirable, but it's also unwise to manufacture supposed problems that don't exist. Hyperbole does not help our arguments.

For some well reasoned discussion of why Stand Your Ground laws are appropriate see here and here.

Great Britain and Australia are not the United States. If we're discussing the laws in the United States, examples of things that happened in those other countries are irrelevant.

In States in which a duty to retreat exists, the usual legal standard is that one must be reasonably be able to retreat safely.

Nonsense. Cite a case in the United States in which a court ruled that one had a duty to retreat when it would mean abandoning a family member in a dangerous situation.
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You are right, perhaps if a family member was involved at this point, they may recognize there is no duty to retreat. But my overall point was that in many situations, the onus will be on the defender to do a complicated analysis of how they can retreat, even if the situation is a split second one.
Here is a video by Mass where he explains it well, especially towards the end:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EsQeTKnD_f0

:)
 
Stand Your Ground laws have only started to come under fire (no pun intended) and scrutiny because of a certain celebrity level case that we are all aware of, but I won't mention. What these discussions and reviews aren't looking at is SYG can only apply in places where you have a legal right to be. Not a self appointed "neighborhood watch" prowling around a different neighborhood looking for trouble. Home, business conducting commerce, your vehicle while doing legal activities. These are legal activities where SYG can be used as an after-the-fact defense.

The only states where SYG needs to be redone are states where there is a duty to retreat. The only one I know of is New York state.
 
Stand your ground laws are really more of a statement of how the community views things than a change in the law in states without a duty to retreat.

This is because ultimately it still rests with police, investigators, and a jury to determine if you were a mutual combatant or are felt to have provoked the situation or not irregardless of having a legal right to be there.

You have a legal right to be on a public sidewalk or street, just as in the recent high profile case. You can watch whoever you want and walk along that route.
Yet if people then feel your choice to be there resulted in something which could have been avoided, you can still be convicted. Likewise if they decide your choice to be where you have every legal right to be was acceptable to thier own standards or does not put you at some fault, then they can determine the resulting confrontation that required you to defend yourself was self defense.


So it really is not clear legal changer in places that don't have a duty to retreat. Stand your ground is more of a legal statement than anything.





Consider for example you have every right to confront, or even perform a citizen's arrest and use reasonable force to make such an arrest on someone outside breaking into your car.
Yet if you perform these entirely legal actions and the criminal chooses to use a level of force that requires you to defend yourself with lethal force, the result will often be you convicted.
The jury will see you as going out where you didn't have to be, putting yourself in a situation by choice that then resulted in the serious injury or death of the individual.
They will also paint you as a vigilante, and make claims you went out intending to use such force from the start.
So the fact that every single action you took was legal and entirely within your rights does not mean you won't go to prison.
So it really has less to do with exactly what is legal, and instead what meets the standards of the police that set the tone and make the reports, the investigators that gather the evidence and make reports, the district attorney's decisions to prosecute to what extent and in what context, and ultimately the standards of the jury. How each views what happened results in some bias in how things turn out.
So in a community that believes strongly one way, cases are more likely to go a certain way, and in another community frequently go another way, even if they are both under the same legal criteria.
 
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That case really has nothing to do with stand your ground or its legal points.
That is a defense stalling with formalities.

Nobody thinks the home intruder had a legal right to be there, and it is only about should they have a hearing to make it official.
 
Before we go debating SYG laws, let first look at what the states define SYG as. For me, as an IN resident, I am justified in using deadly force AND have no duty to retreat per the following IN Code (35-41-3):

http://www.in.gov/legislative/ic/code/title35/ar41/ch3.html

The following is a short summary of those situations as the code defines:

1.) Prevent serious bodily harm to myself, to a third person, or prevent the commission of a forcible felony
2.) Prevent or terminate an unlawful entry on my dwelling, curtliage, or occupied motor vehicle
3.) Prevent or terminate trespass or criminal interference of property I directly own, owned by an immediate family member, or have been given authority to protect
4.) Prevent or terminate hijacking, attempted hijacking, or attempts at unlawful control of an aircraft in flight

The code also makes provisions for use of deadly force against a public servant as well as defining situations where you are not justified in using deadly force AND have a duty to retreat.

How IN Code 35-41-3 makes me more prone to violence I will never know. They clearly spell out when & when not you are or are not justified in using deadly force.
 
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SYG basically extends current castle laws to outside the home.
 
The only "debate" on stand your ground is as follows: Do you believe that a person who or whose loved ones are in imminent danger of death or grave bodily harm has a duty to retreat, or are they allowed to use lethal force immediately to alleviate this imminent danger?

Keep in mind, the danger is imminent, meaning you have seconds or less to react. What would you rather do if you felt you or your loved ones had only seconds or less to live or risk grave bodily harm? Look around for retreat avenues, or neutralize the threat?

That's the only debate. The anti-2A folks clearly want you to not use lethal force. If you do, they will sue you. Of course, many of them have bodyguards and will not encounter a situation where they have seconds or less to decide. But if you believe in 2A and the empowerment of the common person, then where is the debate?
:)
 
Posted by abajaj11: But if you believe in 2A and the empowerment of the common person, then where is the debate?
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Two entirely different subjects.

"2A" has to do with the right to keep and bear arms.

"Stand your ground" laws, and court rulings of similar effect, have to do with whether or not one must attempt to retreat, if retreat is safely possible, before employing force that would reasonably be expected to have the potential to kill or seriously injure another human being for self preservation in a case of immediate necessity. Such force could be applied with the use of a pry bar, Khoury League bat, claw hammer, fry pan, walking stick, gum ball machine, or Cross pen, none of which are likely to come up in a discussion of the Second Amendment.
 
Stand Your Ground in Florida is not just "no duty to retreat" from where you have a right to be.

FL SYG includes no jail if the cops accept your self defense argument (free unless tried and found guilty).

FL SYG includes an option for SYG Hearing before a judge to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that it was justified and a trial is unnecessary. AKA SYG Immunity Hearing.


Tampa Bay Times has a database of SYG cases covering the six years since the law was passed; their collection of fatal SYG cases is considered almost complete; adjudication of non fatal SYG cases tend not to be reported.
http://www.tampabay.com/stand-your-ground-law/fatal-cases

In the TBT listing, the Zimmerman case is counted as SYG; apparently that was because he stayed out of jail for 44 days because the police found his self-defense claim credible; until the case was taken from local prosecutor Wolflinger by special prosecutor Corey. Zimmerman's lawyers did not seek an SYG Immunity Hearing and SYG was not advanced at trial by the defense. Jury instruction on "stand your ground" was the lowercase no duty to retreat.

In fatal FL SYG cases where SYG was invoked by 14 Jul 2013, where not guilty verdicts indicate justification of self defense, over the past six years:
40 convicted
73 justified
20 pending.
Tampa Bay Times depends on interviews with prosecutors and attorneys to help class these cases as SYG cases. SYG cases are just a fraction of homicide cases (murder, manslaughter and justified homicide) in Florida over the past six years, or 113 adjudicated SYG cases of over 6,000 homicides of the past six years.

Not all the fatal SYG cases involved shootings, a mistake by all commentators. SYG is not about defensive gun use only.

Of the 113 adjudicated fatal cases where SYG was invoked and racial breakdown was available:
65 whites have claimed justification under SYG and 40 were ultimately found not guilty (62%);
35 blacks have claimed justification under SYG and 24 were ultimately found not guilty (68%);
9 hispanics have claimed justification under SYG and 7 were ultimately found not guilty (78%);

51 whites who killed whites: 30 found not guilty (58%);
26 blacks who killed blacks: 17 found not guilty (65%);
7 whites who killed blacks: 6 found not guilty (86%);
6 blacks who killed whites: 4 found not guilty (67%);
5 whites who killed hispanics: 4 found not guilty (80%);
4 hispanics who killed whites: 2 found not guilty (50%);
3 hispanics who killed blacks: 3 found not guilty (100%);
2 hispanics who killed hispanics: 2 found not guilty (100%);
2 blacks who killed hispanics: 2 found not guilty (100%);

Critics of SYG stay out of jail want the not guilty to go to jail until trial, like Zimmerman did. Critics of SYG immunity want the not guilty to to go to jail and go to trial. [snark]Critics of SYG tend to be attorneys.[/snark]

When the figures are 10 or less cases for a category, such as Hispanic SYG, black defender/white victim, white defender/black victim, adjudication of pending cases radically changes the %iles.

Wikipedia shows the Florida population (19,317,568) as:
57.9% Non-Hispanic White
17.1% White Hispanic
16.0% Black or African American

The hispanic breakdown is complicated by the fact that many hispanics are reported as black or white by race in police reports, not always as hispanic by ethnicity. As prosecutors, attorneys and the public offer information or correction to the Tampa Bay Times, data is updated as TBT checks it out. Tampa Bay Times appears to be the only one trying to build a central database on cases adjudicated under SYG.
 
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The folks that go down the rabbit hole of trying to mandate 'Duty to Retreat' vs. SYG remind me of nothing but Monday Morning Quarterbacks. The phrase "Duty to Retreat" just sounds ludicrous. Duty? Really? To retreat? How about duty to either extricate yourself and your loved ones from the danger of grave harm or death, OR neutralizing the threat to you or your loved ones. Let's leave the choice up to the individual to determine whether to 'retreat' or neutralize the threat, since they are the ones who are in that situation at that moment in time. To mandate one course of action, and outlaw the other, and then nitpick the fact that some victim may have been able to run down this alley, or fled in that direction, or jumped from a bedroom window in order to avoid the use of force is plain stupid, and to try to force people to make those decisions in the heat of the moment, and then dissect their actions in the comfort of the Monday Morning Quarterback easy chair, is also stupid.

The very phrase 'duty to retreat' is as idiotic as the phrase 'common sense' when discussing gun laws, and other nonsensical, quippy phrases that sound neat but are actually very dumb.

People who are serious about 'duty to retreat' are simply naive, ignorant of how things happen in the real world, or are willfully oblivious...
 
Posted by Carl N. Brown: Stand Your Ground in Florida is not just "no duty to retreat" from where you have a right to be.

FL SYG includes no jail if the cops accept your self defense argument (free unless tried and found guilty).

FL SYG includes an option for SYG Hearing before a judge to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that it was justified and a trial is unnecessary. AKA SYG Immunity Hearing.
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Well, yeah, very loosely and colloquially speaking. The provision for immunity, etc. is part of a statute entitled Justifiable Use of Force. Journalists and some law enforcement personnel have taken to informally referring to the entire law with words taken from one very limited but important part of the statute:

(3) A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.
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Not very helpful, to be sure, but probably not as bad as the common reference to the Colorado law as the "make my day" law.
 
Posted by kwguy: The phrase "Duty to Retreat" just sounds ludicrous. Duty? Really? To retreat? ...The very phrase 'duty to retreat' is as idiotic as the phrase 'common sense' when discussing gun laws, and other nonsensical, quippy phrases that sound neat but are actually very dumb....People who are serious about 'duty to retreat' are simply naive, ignorant of how things happen in the real world, or are willfully oblivious...
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As pointed out in the links provided by Frank Ettin in Post #4, the concept of the duty to retreat is an ancient one. It was written into law by the finest legal minds that could be found, long, long before a Comptroller of Customs of the Port of London, one Geoffrey Chaucer, penned his first lines of poetry; those judges were in fact very well aware of how things "happened in the real world".

The law predated the advent of firearms by several centuries, but it remained in effect log afterward and was adopted on these shores, and it was the law when Washington, Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson, and others carried their guns out of doors on this continent.

The duty to retreat has been obviated in many places, starting about a century ago, if I recall correctly. One arguable reason for that is its inapplicability now that contact weapons are but one threat posed by the lawless.
 
I wonder if people were second guessed and "monday morning quarterbacked" and prosecuted for defending themselves or standing their ground back then as well, instead of retreating...
 
brickeyee said:
See SCOTUS, Beard v US, 158 U. S. 550 (1895).

There is a later ruling about retreating in public places though.

See also http://www.davekopel.com/2A/LawRev/Self-Defense-Cases.htm
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I think the Brown v. United States 256 US 335 (1921) case in Kopel's paper is a more compelling opinion on stand your ground outside of the home. Justice Holmes' statement that "[d]etached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife," is taken to have removed the duty to retreat from situations when someone is where they have a right to be and are attacked with deadly force.

Also from the Supreme Court ruling (I believe this is the actual ruling, as opposed to dicta - correct me if I'm wrong.)

"1. The right of a man to stand his ground and defend himself when attacked with a deadly weapon, even to the extent of taking his assailant's life, depends upon whether he reasonably believes that he is in immediate danger of death or grievous bodily harm from his assailant, and not upon the detached test whether a man of reasonable prudence, so situated, might not think it possible to fly with safety or to disable his assailant rather than kill him. P. 343. Beard v. United States, 158 U. S. 550."

I have been unable to find anything that would supersede this ruling.
 
bhesler:
The right of a man to stand his ground and defend himself when attacked with a deadly weapon, even to the extent of taking his assailant's life, depends upon whether he reasonably believes that he is in immediate danger of death or grievous bodily harm from his assailant, and not upon the detached test whether a man of reasonable prudence, so situated, might not think it possible to fly with safety or to disable his assailant rather than kill him.
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However that alone really does not say much, because while it seems simple, if you look at legal terms and threshholds it adds very little.

The bolded parts show why it is less clear than you might think, and why other legal criteria is more important in most situations.

First it clearly deals with situations involving the aggressor using a deadly weapon. When many situations may not involve a deadly weapon in the hands of the aggressor like in the recent media case.
Second it involves an attack.

A deadly weapon being involved if the attacker has no weapon in hands in an unarmed attack becomes a matter of opinion.
In the recent media case they agued the cement was a deadly weapon, which some will agree and others will not. So that Supreme Court ruling may or may not apply based on how that is determined.

Also consider when something qualifies as an attack is also left to opinion.
Is it after the force has been used by the aggressor and it is clearly an attack? Or when the clear threat of force is implied and clear ability to carry it out is involved in an assault?
Consider in many self defense scenarios that meet the first point by involving a deadly weapon in the hands of the aggressor have not yet resulted in that weapon actually being used to inflict harm. A robbery with a gun pointed or a knife held poses a very clear and immediate lethal danger, but may not be considered to be an actual attack yet. Waiting for one to actually be used could negate the ability to defend yourself entirely or survive the encounter, and so would be rather lousy criteria. This means when something is actually considered an attack would play a huge role in that Supreme Court decision even being relevant in most defensive scenarios.

Fortunately many self defense laws of the states go well beyond that. If someone even threatens with a deadly weapon or is involved in various felony offenses then deadly force against them is generally legal (presuming the defender is not considered a mutual combatant or to have created the situation.) So just the fact that they are engaged in certain violent felonies can warrant self defense in many states.

But it can still get murky in situations with a capable unarmed aggressor, because thier attack is not yet a felony and may be merely a misdemeanor unless and until they do a certain level of harm (which can be well after the ability to deploy a weapon successfully is past, and likely past the point of being able to avoid serious bodily injury.)
The recent media case highlights such a situation.
 
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Posted by kwguy: I wonder if people were second guessed and "monday morning quarterbacked" and prosecuted for defending themselves or standing their ground back then as well, instead of retreating...
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The problem then, as it is now, was to determine whether or not the survivor in a homicide had in fact been the lawful defender, the attacker, or the luckier participant in a case of mutual combat gone bad.

Evidence of having made every attempt to "retreat to the wall" was seen as an indication against guilt.

Technology--weapons, forensic investigation methods, medicine, video cameras and cell phones, and so forth--has changed, but the legal principles have not. Saying that one has lawfully defended oneself did not make it so, nor does it today.
 
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