Time to repeal the ALEC/NRA Stand Your Ground Laws

[rdharma]

Jury Instructions Included Stand Your Ground

In 2012, the killing of Trayvon Martin acutely focused attention on Stand Your Ground laws, which give criminal and civil immunity to a person who claims they use deadly force because they allege a reasonable fear of harm. Because of the law, Sanford Police initially declined to arrest Zimmerman because they apparently agreed it was "reasonable" to feel threatened after stalking an unarmed African-American teenager returning from a trip to buy Skittles and iced tea.

Some have claimed that Stand Your Ground played no role after Zimmerman was eventually arrested -- he and his lawyers relied on Florida's lenient self defense statutes -- but the jury instructions invoked the Stand Your Ground protections by stating he had no "duty to retreat" from the situation:


"If George Zimmerman was not engaged in an unlawful activity and was attacked in any place where he had a right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he reasonably believed that it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony."

This language is nearly identical to that in the Florida Stand Your Ground law and the ALEC "model" legislation. We cannot know if the outcome would have been different had the six jurors been instructed differently -- but we do know that Stand Your Ground played a role in the case, even after Zimmerman's arrest.

http://prwatch.org/news/2013/07/12180/time-repeal-alecnra-stand-your-ground-laws