I have spent a lot of time during the course of the last decade trying to grasp the reality of self-defense laws in this country. Especially since I made the decision to finally start carrying a gun for self-defense, my nose has been in a lot of books and I've spent a significant amount of time looking into whichever cases I can get my hands on.
Look, people on all sides of any issue are going to have voices, usually loud ones, that are wrong or lack nuance. It's also generally a bad idea to claim that something always happens or never happens to be true.
Still, the narrative that stand your ground laws open a door for murders to exploit a loophole and get off scot free is entirely without merit. I strain to think of even a man bites dog story that would lend credibility to that idea. The closest thing that I think anybody could conceivably come up with is the Trayvon Martin shooting; but, even then, regardless of where you stand, that falls apart the moment that you realize that stand your ground became irrelevant to George Zimmerman's defense.
In fact, it was that case that created so much of the polarization over stand your ground; but, it should have gone the other way.
The moment that Zimmerman's story was revealed to have been that Martin was on top of him and slamming Zimmerman's head against the concrete, no matter who or what you believe, stand your ground wasn't a factor because Zimmerman's claim was that he couldn't have retreated. Unlike more recent cases in the news, we don't have the benefit of video evidence of the altercation; but, if a video were released of a person being attacked, pinned down, and the attacker slamming the guys head against the ground before the guy on the ground pulled a weapon, even in a duty to retreat state, that would likely be self-defense. The reality is that, even in a duty to retreat state, Zimmerman was facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison and he didn't even benefit from Florida's stand your ground laws.
The reality is quite the opposite of the narrative that even the South Park guys joked about with Cartman shooting Token (Tolkien) and claiming stand your ground. No matter where you live in this country, if you are placed in a situation where you have to take a life in defense of yourself or others, you're still likely to go through a legal hell no matter how right you may have been. Again, even in the most famously stand your ground state in the country (if not the world) people still face murder charges even if they don't attempt to claim stand your ground.
There are obvious scenarios that don't require much or any imagination that show why stand your ground should be an obvious policy. Are you going to tell a woman in heels who's being attacked by a man in sneakers that she has to demonstrate that she tried to run away lest she face murder charges? Are you going to tell a sixty-year-old man that he needs to try to outrun a man half his age and twice his size before he defends himself? Well, the Jose Alba case gives us a clear "yes" answer from New York.
Still, the thing that people miss about duty to retreat is that it often flips the burden of proof. This is a disgusting but not unpopular idea. After the Rittenhouse case, The New York Times ran a piece about how, in self-defense cases, the burden is often on the prosecution as if it were a bad thing. The burden of proof should always be on the state.
Still, even though Wisconsin is neither a stand your ground nor a duty to retreat state, if you watched the trial, you saw a prosecutor try to flip the burden on the defendant to prove his innocence. If Alba's charges weren't dropped, given that New York is very much a duty to retreat state, Alba could very well have been found guilty of murder despite how obvious it was that he was acting in self-defense. Alba would have had to have proven that he could not retreat and escape under New York law.
If nothing else, stand your ground keeps the burden of proof where it belongs -- with the state.
Seriously, I dare anybody who opposes stand your ground legislation to point to a single person who you legitimately think got away with murder because of the policy. Even if you're certain that Zimmerman is a murderer, stand your ground had nothing to do with his acquittal. Even if you're a complete moron and you think that Rittenhouse was a murderer, stand your ground had nothing to do with it. Even if you guzzle moron jizz for sustenance and think that Alba is a murderer, stand your ground isn't relevant.
The thing is, even if stand your ground were relevant and you're convinced that some of these dudes only got off because of it, there are still two points to be made.
One is that, even if you are charged with a heinous crime, go to trial, and win, you're not off scot free. You've gone through hell for probably close to two years with your life hanging in the balance. If you're lucky enough to be able to afford a good lawyer, you're probably set back half a million dollars or more. If you're not independently wealthy, you're either stuck with the luck of the draw among public defenders; or, if your case is high profile, you may be able to raise money for your defense at the cost of half the country wanting to kill you and probably having to deal with that for the rest of your life.
The other point is Blackstone's Ratio. I can't go a week without a couple of stories of the latest people who have been released from prison after several years after it was proven that they were innocent. If we were to make the assumption that Zimmerman was lying about his encounter with Martin and that Zimmerman did murder Martin in cold blood and that Zimmerman beat himself up to make it look like self-defense, I would gladly let Zimmerman go free if, in return, we got Ledell Lee off of death row before he was executed and if Anthony Broadwater didn't have to spent four decades on the sex offender registry for a rape that he didn't commit. You might not like this bit; but, if you're truly in favor of criminal justice reform, against police misconduct, and think that our prisons are overcrowded and that too many people are rotting behind bars who shouldn't be, you've gotta embrace Blackstone's Ratio lest you embrace your own hypocrisy.
This really shouldn't be anywhere close to a controversial issue. Anything other than stand your ground should be considered to be somewhere on the border of duty to die.
