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‘Stand Your Ground’—a law that favors white men and increases homicides—now applies to cops in Florida
Last week, Florida’s Supreme Court ruled that “Stand Your Ground” laws apply to police officers. The ruling offers even broader immunity to officers than they already enjoy, making it harder to hold police criminally responsible for killing civilians, even when they had other options than to kill a person. The court held that police officers have the same rights as other Florida residents: “Put simply, a law enforcement officer is a ‘person’ whether on duty or off.” The case before the court stemmed from the 2013 killing of a computer engineer who was mentally ill. The engineer, Jermaine McBean, a 33-year-old Black man, was walking into his apartment complex with an air rifle slung across his shoulders, and people called police after seeing him yell to himself. Three Broward County sheriff’s deputies responded, but McBean apparently could not hear them when when they told him to drop his weapon. He was listening to music with earbuds. One of the deputies, Peter Peraza, claimed that McBean turned and pointed the air rifle at the officers, so he fired three shots, killing him. But witnesses said McBean never pointed a weapon. And after a New York Times examination of the case, Peraza was indicted. He was the first Florida law enforcement officer to be charged in an on-duty killing in decades. [Frances Robles / New York Times]
Peraza claimed Stand Your Ground protection, and it was granted, but an appellate court ruled against him, and the Florida Supreme Court sided with Peraza. In 2012, a Florida officer tried unsuccessfully to claim Stand Your Ground to avoid trial after stomping on a 63-year-old man. The officer, Juan Caamano, went to trial and was acquitted. “Last year, two Miami police officers successfully invoked Stand Your Ground immunity when they were sued for damages in the beating of a man in a wheelchair,” reports Frances Robles for the New York Times. David I. Schoen, an attorney representing McBean’s family, said the ruling was particularly troubling because it placed too much decision-making power on elected local judges, who often depended on support from police unions to win elections: “Every unscrupulous law enforcement officer in Florida who kills a civilian now in suspicious circumstances will say he feared for his life, and even with eyewitnesses saying otherwise, he walks.” [Frances Robles / New York Times]
The 2005 law eliminates a person’s duty to retreat from a dangerous situation and allows them to use deadly force “if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary” to prevent harm or death, shielding people from both criminal and civil liability. It is commonly associated with the 2012 shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, who claimed he shot the unarmed teenager in self-defense. Last year, Florida’s law was expanded, shifting the burden of proof from the defense to the prosecution, requiring that the government prove that a person who used deadly force instead of retreating did not act reasonably. [Elizabeth Elkin and Dakin Andone / CNN.com]
It may come as little surprise that the laws make people less safe, not more. The RAND Corporation conducted a meta analysis of various studies that aimed to measure the impact of Stand Your Ground laws. They found evidence that the laws increase homicide rates, including one study published in JAMA Internal Medicine showing that Florida experienced a significant 24 percent increase in total homicides and a 32 percent increase in firearm homicides associated with the enactment of the Stand Your Ground law in 2005. [Lea Xenakis / RAND Corporation]
As if white people did not have enough relative advantages in our criminal justice system, some analyses have shown that Stand Your Ground laws favor white defendants. “The American legal system’s handling of violent self-defense has long favored white, property-owning men,” scholar Caroline Light argued in an op-ed last year. “Nonwhite, female, poor, or gender-nonconforming people have always been more likely to be punished for defending themselves and less likely to see the courts come to their aid when they are harmed.” She cites a study that documents how people perceive Black men as larger and stronger and thus more threatening than they actually are. These biases work their way into this law’s application because “defendants must convince the court that they were truly—reasonably—in fear for their lives in the moment when they used violence. But the concept of ‘reasonable fear’ is anything but value-neutral. Courtrooms are filled with people— judges, jurors, lawyers and witnesses—whose perceptions are shaped by the prejudices and implicit biases of our culture.” [Caroline Light / New York Times]
Light points to the case of Marissa Alexander, a Black Florida woman who fired a warning shot “to fend off an attack from her estranged husband” who had told her, “If I can’t have you, nobody will.” No one was harmed, but Alexander was denied Stand Your Ground immunity and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Then-State Attorney Angela Corey explained that, in her opinion, Alexander “was not in fear” when she fired her weapon, she was “angry.” [Caroline Light / New York Times]
Yesterday, a trial date was set in the Florida case of Michael Drejka, a white man who shot and killed Markeis McGlockton, an unarmed Black man, after McGlockton pushed him to the ground during an argument over parking. The parking lot incident was captured on surveillance camera. Drejka had told authorities he feared being hit again, and the sheriff initially refused to arrest him under the Stand Your Ground law, fearing such an arrest would make his department vulnerable to a lawsuit. Ultimately, the sheriff did arrest Drejka, and he was charged with manslaughter. [Kathryn Varn / Tampa Bay Times] |
