From Threat to Victim: Why Stand Your Ground Laws Are Inherently Prejudiced and Do Nother to Further Justice
![handle is hein.journals/hasrapo18 and id is 68 raw text is: From Threat to Victim:
Why Stand Your Ground Laws Are
Inherently Prejudiced and
Do Nothing to Further Justice
RENE PEREZ'
Abstract: Stand Your Ground laws give jurors too much leeway in
determining what constitutes a reasonable threat in defense cases.2 By
removing the traditional duty to retreat, the reasonableness determination
makes or breaks a case and inherently discriminates against people of color.
This is because reasonableness can all too easily become a character
determination instead of an objective adjudgment. Because Stand Your
Ground is present at the investigator's discretion stage, the prosecutorial
discretion stage, and finally the judicial stage through jury instructions and
juror bias there is a unique platform for implicit bias to dictate how
defendants are advantaged or disadvantaged in their defense. This article
examines the history of Stand Your Ground and how it has affected people of
color, particularly Black men. The effectiveness of Stand Your Ground on
violence, in general, is also examined. Finally, selected solutions are offered
in the form ofa change to normative reasonableness standards and removing
the civil and criminal immunities granted by Stand Your Ground statutes.
The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim
has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.
James Baldwin3
1. Juris Doctor Candidate, University of California, Hastings College of the Law.
2. While Stand Your Ground laws apply to law enforcement as well, the protections and
immunities afforded to law enforcement is beyond the scope of this article, and instead focuses
on the application to civilians. See, e.g., Frances Robles, Florida's 'Stand Your Ground'
Law Applies to Police, Too, Court Rules, N.Y. TIMES (Mar. 21, 2012), https://www.
nytimes.com/2018/12/13/us/florida-stand-your-ground-police.html.
3. Baldwin's use of the word threat is a synonym for empowered, as the victim has
identified their oppression and has called the occupier out. Baldwin wrote that Harlem [was]
policed like occupied territory, and perhaps the Black man in America has never ceased to
[67]](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/hasrapo18&div=7&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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From Threat to Victim: Why Stand Your Ground Laws Are Inherently Prejudiced and Do Nother to Further Justice
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