Amid the ongoing furor over “Stand Your Ground” laws, adopted in Florida and about half the other states, the New York Times invited me to take part in a “Room for Debate” round-table on the subject. An excerpt from my contribution:
Under any criminal law, injustice can result if cops get the facts wrong. The Sanford, Fla., police, accused of buying a dubious self-defense tale after the Trayvon Martin shooting, will now come under searching scrutiny for that decision. Sanford’s mayor says his town is eager to stand corrected by the evidence as a fuller story emerges.So who’s left to disagree? Not the authors of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, who told The Miami Herald that the law they sponsored applies only to cases of genuine self defense and won’t protect neighborhood-watcher George Zimmerman if critics of the Martin shooting are right about what he did that night. …
I go on to point out ways in which a robust right of self-defense has historically proved to protect the interests of victims of domestic violence and racial minorities. (On the latter, see, for example, cases from Ossian Sweet’s in the 1920s to the present day; more here and here, and from my Cato colleague Jonathan Blanks here.)
Read more at http://www.cato.org/blog/defense-stand-ground-laws
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