Charleston South Carolina's Stand Your Ground law has limits, according to SC prosecutors. Think Progress gives us some background here:
“(The Legislature’s) intent … was to provide law-abiding citizens greater protections from external threats in the form of intruders and attackers,” prosecutor Culver Kidd told the Post and Courier. “We believe that applying the statute so that its reach into our homes and personal relationships is inconsistent with (its) wording and intent.”
Most recently, Kidd raised this argument in vigorously pursuing a murder case against Whitlee Jones, whose screams for help as her boyfriend pulled her down the street by her hair prompted a neighbor to call the cops during a 2012 altercation. When the officer arrived that night, the argument had already ended and Jones had fled the scene. While she was out, Jones decided to leave her boyfriend, Eric Lee, and went back to the house to pack up her things. She didn’t even know the police officer had been there earlier that night, her lawyer Mary Ford explained. She packed a knife to protect herself, and as she exited the house, she says Lee attacked her and she stabbed Lee once in defense. He died, although Jones says she did not intend to kill him.
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The Stand Your Ground laws around the country have been used in some
pretty dubious ways. Follow me below the fold to find out how they've been used.
Here are some of classic Stand Your Ground perks:
• Those who invoke "stand your ground" to avoid prosecution have been extremely successful. Nearly 70 percent have gone free.
• Defendants claiming "stand your ground" are more likely to prevail if the victim is black. Seventy-three percent of those who killed a black person faced no penalty compared to 59 percent of those who killed a white.
• The number of cases is increasing, largely because defense attorneys are using "stand your ground" in ways state legislators never envisioned. The defense has been invoked in dozens of cases with minor or no injuries. It has also been used by a self-described "vampire" in Pinellas County, a Miami man arrested with a single marijuana cigarette, a Fort Myers homeowner who shot a bear and a West Palm Beach jogger who beat a Jack Russell terrier.
• People often go free under "stand your ground" in cases that seem to make a mockery of what lawmakers intended. One man killed two unarmed people and walked out of jail. Another shot a man as he lay on the ground. Others went free after shooting their victims in the back. In nearly a third of the cases the Times analyzed, defendants initiated the fight, shot an unarmed person or pursued their victim — and still went free.
You get the drift. But what about South Carolina?
Surely, prosecutor Culver Kidd is consistent in his defense and prosecution of these laws.
South Carolina judge granted immunity from prosecution to a man who shot and killed an innocent bystander during a botched confrontation with a group of teenagers. The judge relied on the state’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ law.
Seventeen-year-old Darrell Niles was in his car, minding his own business back in 2010 when 33-year-old Shannon Anthony Scott shot and killed him.
Earlier that day, a group of girls had followed and threatened Scott’s 15-year-old daughter. They later drove past Scott’s house in an SUV. But when Scott walked out of his house with a handgun to confront the “women thugs,” as he described them, he instead fired straight into the 1992 Honda of Darrell Niles, who was unarmed. Niles was killed instantly.
The main contention of the defense of Scott was that Scott only had to fear that his life was in danger.
Here are some domestic violence facts:
Almost one-third of female homicide victims that are reported in police records are killed by an intimate partner.
In 70-80 percent of intimate partner homicides, no matter which partner was killed, the man physically abused the woman before the murder.
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Like many, I believe that Stand Your Ground laws are stupid and barbaric, racist and unjust. But the worst part of the Stand your Ground movement is the absolute hypocrisy of it all.