There's a Difference Between Castle Doctrine and What Happened in Sanford

I received many emails following Sunday's column on Florida's Stand Your Ground law and the killing of Trayvon Martin, with a mixed bag of responses, many questioning my assertion that the law could serve to embolden vigilantes to take someone's life much quicker than would otherwise be the case. Most asked what I thought the solution to ensuring someone's right to defend themselves would be, short of such measures.

Let me say first that I believe in the right to bear arms. Maybe it's the suspicious Libertarian side of me, but a world in which only agents of the state are armed seems something less than one in which we are free. Truth be told, I'd prefer there were no guns, but so long as there are, I don't like the idea of the government being the only one allowed to have them.

I also believe in the so-called Castle Doctrine – a person's right to protect themselves and their family in their home without duty to first retreat, which is a remnant of laws constructed before the time of firearms, which I believe the courts have rightly determined obsolete in light of their arrival. A person's home is the ultimate sanctuary, and they should be able to defend their safety within its walls. Someone who unlawfully intrudes, should do so knowing they are putting their life at mortal risk.

Personally, I don't own a gun. I'm former military and have used everything from an RPG to an M-16 to a .50 cal machine gun, and I am perfectly comfortable handling weaponry. As a father, however, I have studied the statistics and made the personal decision that the risks associated with a gun in the home far outweigh the likelihood of using one in self-defense. For me, the conversation ends there.

Others will argue that education and other safety measures can negate those risks and allow them to transcend the statistics. I don't fault their personal decision just because it's different than my own. It has also on more than one occasion been pointed out to me that as a 6'3, 240-pound Golden Glove Champion, with hands roughly the size of cured hams, I might not be in touch with the average person's concerns in this arena. Criminals, like most everyone else, tend toward the path of least resistance, and there are certainly easier marks to be had.

What troubles me about the Stand Your Ground law is not the idea that deadly force might be used to prevent an aggressor from delivering the same. It's the notion that it might justifiably lead someone to conclude that they can unnecessarily elevate a conflict to the point of deadly force – and get away with it, causing incidents that would otherwise end at argument or assault to travel irretrievably beyond. The portion of the statute dealing with force outside of home protection reads:

776.012Use of force in defense of person. – ... a person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if:

(1) He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony

It's one thing to ask whether a person facing an armed assailant has the right to defend themselves with deadly force without a duty to retreat, which I think most Americans, myself included, would agree should be the case. Absent a weapon, I think there are still many instances where most Americans would feel that a person under unarmed and unprovoked assault – say being attacked by a mugger or rapist, of significant physical advantage – would be entitled to the use of deadly force in order to prevent severe damages to themselves that fall short of death.

But the law as it stands, leaves a troubling amount of gray area, and its application in just the brief time it has been on the books demonstrates that clearly. If an armed individual provokes an altercation in which they are outmatched physically, they might genuinely fear ”great bodily harm,“ but should it entitle them to the use of deadly force and then potentially limit law enforcement officers' ability to file charges?

Say a man walks up to another man twice his size and calls his wife the worst name imaginable, perhaps in front of their three young daughters. He hasn't necessarily broken the law, yet I don't think anyone expects him to escape with his nose intact, or would begrudge the larger man a stiff right-cross to the jawline. But the smaller man, upon feeling the force of the blow, and rather certain several more lie in waiting, might very well fear great bodily harm or even death. He's packing a concealed weapons permit along with along with his Government 45, so he mortally shoots the husband.

Now let's imagine it's a racial slur, a homophobic remark, or any of another number of ways someone might provoke a physical response. Surely that's not the intent of the law, but you can see how quickly its misuse can manifest itself – and in instances where only two people are present, only one of whom has retained the ability to form and speak words, it gets all the dicier. How hard would it be for someone to manipulate a situation, perhaps even pre-meditated, and then use the law as a shield in such a crime? Maybe a spurned spouse who instigates an unwitnessed confrontation with their ex's new lover? There are endless scenarios in which someone could potentially invoke the statute for nefarious purposes and if it never makes it to a courtroom because law enforcement determines that it fits the statute and no charges need to be filed, who's to say they won't be successful?

Also, whether we like it or not, there exists a population of Americans whose enthusiasm for the right to bear arms (and use them) far exceeds the beliefs I've described above. They are a powerful and organized lobby, and they have fought hard to get laws like this passed in states all across the country. Their vision of America is a lot more like the Wild West than any ideal the rest of us are likely to harbor. Laws like the Stand Your Ground statute dangerously reduce the threshold for using deadly force in a way that can clearly serve to escalate otherwise minor altercations to a mortal level all too easily.

If previous laws were inadequate in protecting a person's right to defend themselves, then I have to think that the solution is a statute that much more clearly spells out the threshold for use of deadly force in a very-wide range of potential circumstances that more fully respects the grave nature of taking human life – which in a civilized society should be a paramount measure of its humanity. In an age where we are at once so concerned with human life that we are arguing over things like fetal personhood, it seems contradictory that we should remain so eager to limit a person's right to life in other instances with laws like Stand Your Ground (ironically, legislation for both come from model bills crafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council).

Then there's the matter of what happens on the law enforcement level. If someone meets the standard, the statute renders them "immune from prosecution," including arrest, and even allows them to seek civil damages if prosecuted. If a national outrage hadn't focused attention on the case, it may very well have ended with Police Chief Lee's determination (not a prosecutor's) that Zimmerman ”fit the standard.“ Now we're learning that Zimmerman's father was a magistrate and that he may have had a sealed record containing other arrests. It seems likely that the Sanford Police Department did not do anything close to a thorough job in investigating the shooting, but it also seems clear that the law can be used as a shield when such accusations are made.

SYG advocates are quickly pointing out that Martin had apparently been suspended for an empty marijuana baggy rather than chronic tardiness, as originally reported, insinuating that it somehow makes Zimmerman's self-defense argument more credible. His newly-retained defense attorney is claiming he had a broken nose and large gash as a result of being assaulted, though newly released surveilance video shows him arriving at the police station that night without any discernable cuts or bruises. But we need to ask why this case is being investigated part and parcel in the blogosphere in the first place and whether the law contributes to that.

Assaults, fights and other matters of conflict should be sorted out by proper authorities after a thorough investigation of the facts, with both parties alive to tell their sides. George Zimmerman claims to have been fighting for his life against a 140-pound teenager whom he followed and seemingly confronted against the advice of a 911 dispatcher. The fact that he had a gun and claims that a close-range shot to the boy's chest was the only way he could protect himself from the just-turned-17 year-old's blows, without suffering death or great bodily harm, seems questionable.

It may well have been the case, though it appears that it will remain almost impossible to tell, as the law seems to put the burden of proof on the dead boy. But if Mr. Zimmerman's ill-advised tactics simply caught him a beating from someone justifiably unnerved after being followed by someone clearly not a law enforcement officer, the two should be in front of police, and then a judge, to sort out who was in the wrong and what punishments, if any, should be levied. However, if the Stand Your Ground law permits one participant's story to define the events of that evening, simply because it allowed him to kill the other, then it's a law that should make every Floridian uneasy.

Dennis Maley is a featured columnist and editor for The Bradenton Times. His column appears every Thursday and Sunday on our site and in our free Weekly Recap and Sunday Edition (click here to subscribe). An archive of Dennis' columns is available here. He can be reached at dennis.maley@thebradentontimes.com. You can also follow Dennis on Facebook and Twitter by clicking the badges below.

Dennis Maley