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In South Carolina, prosecutors are arguing that as a victim of violent domestic abuse, you do not have the right to defend yourself with deadly force if necessary.
Meaning, if you accidentally killed your partner who was coming at you with a deadly weapon, you would not be able to apply the infamous ‘Stand Your Ground’ defence.
THAT law is reserved for shooting random people on the street, firing indiscriminately into passing cars, and – hey, why not – police killing black people.
George Zimmerman’s murder of Treyvon Martin in Florida is probably the best-known example of where the widely adopted ‘Stand Your Ground’ law was cited. When he shot Martin - Martin was 17, was unarmed and not engaged in any obvious criminal activity at the time - Zimmerman claimed self-defence primarily, but Zimmerman supporters pushed ‘Stand your Ground’ as justification for the shooting. He was acquitted.
The law in effect removes the responsibility of someone to retreat from a violent attack, and in fact justifies in using lethal force in self-defence.
Several other states have adopted the laws, and several other cases involving ‘Stand Your Ground’ as a successful defence have entered the record.
In 2012, for example, Byron Thomas fired into an SUV filled with teens, killing a 15 year-old, Cordell Jude shot a pedestrian walking past his car, and a particularly bewildering verdict acquitted Greyton Garcia after he chased a suspected burglar down a street and then stabbed him to death.
So how is that South Carolina – a state that acquitted a man who shot and killed an innocent bystander when he fired at a group of “women thugs” driving past his house – is seeking the nullification of the “Stand Your Ground” defence against a woman who stabbed her abusive partner in self defence?
ThinkProgress reports on the case thus:
(State Prosecutor Culver)“… 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.
“On October 3, Circuit Judge J.C. Nicholson sided with Jones and granted her Stand Your Ground immunity, meaning she is exempt from trial on the charge. In response to Kidd’s argument that individuals could not invoke Stand Your Ground to defend against violence in their own homes, Nicholson said that dynamic would create the “nonsensical result” that a victim of domestic abuse could defend against an attacker outside of the home, but not inside the home – where the most vicious domestic violence is likely to occur.
“Kidd is unsatisfied with this reasoning, and is appealing the case to argue that Jones and other defendants like her can’t invoke the Stand Your Ground law so long as they are in their home.”
Incidentally, Jones is one of three persons charged with a similar offence in the same jurisdiction – all face murder charges after killing their domestic partner during a violent confrontation.
Basically, the prosecutors are arguing that a domestic partner cannot apply force if they perceive that their life is threatened. Given some of the examples of where the law has been applied above, this would seem ludicrous. Especially given this sobering statistic, as reported via the Huffington Post:
- Number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq: 6,614:
- Number of women, in the same period, killed as the result of domestic violence in the US: 11,766
To be clear – the Stand Your Ground law is problematic in general as applied by US enforcement. But that it could apply to a person of Zimmerman’s history in his particular case (or any of the others referenced), but not to the incident involving Whitlee Jones in unimaginable. Are women (and men) who are victims of violent abuse from their partners that disposable?
For shame – though perhaps not surprising - that a law so championed by gun rights activists and largely the right-wing of American politics may be failing sufferers of domestic terror and minorities, if prosecutors like Culver Kidd had their way.
Follow Women24 on Twitter and like us on Facebook.
Meaning, if you accidentally killed your partner who was coming at you with a deadly weapon, you would not be able to apply the infamous ‘Stand Your Ground’ defence.
THAT law is reserved for shooting random people on the street, firing indiscriminately into passing cars, and – hey, why not – police killing black people.
George Zimmerman’s murder of Treyvon Martin in Florida is probably the best-known example of where the widely adopted ‘Stand Your Ground’ law was cited. When he shot Martin - Martin was 17, was unarmed and not engaged in any obvious criminal activity at the time - Zimmerman claimed self-defence primarily, but Zimmerman supporters pushed ‘Stand your Ground’ as justification for the shooting. He was acquitted.
The law in effect removes the responsibility of someone to retreat from a violent attack, and in fact justifies in using lethal force in self-defence.
Several other states have adopted the laws, and several other cases involving ‘Stand Your Ground’ as a successful defence have entered the record.
In 2012, for example, Byron Thomas fired into an SUV filled with teens, killing a 15 year-old, Cordell Jude shot a pedestrian walking past his car, and a particularly bewildering verdict acquitted Greyton Garcia after he chased a suspected burglar down a street and then stabbed him to death.
So how is that South Carolina – a state that acquitted a man who shot and killed an innocent bystander when he fired at a group of “women thugs” driving past his house – is seeking the nullification of the “Stand Your Ground” defence against a woman who stabbed her abusive partner in self defence?
ThinkProgress reports on the case thus:
(State Prosecutor Culver)“… 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.
“On October 3, Circuit Judge J.C. Nicholson sided with Jones and granted her Stand Your Ground immunity, meaning she is exempt from trial on the charge. In response to Kidd’s argument that individuals could not invoke Stand Your Ground to defend against violence in their own homes, Nicholson said that dynamic would create the “nonsensical result” that a victim of domestic abuse could defend against an attacker outside of the home, but not inside the home – where the most vicious domestic violence is likely to occur.
“Kidd is unsatisfied with this reasoning, and is appealing the case to argue that Jones and other defendants like her can’t invoke the Stand Your Ground law so long as they are in their home.”
Incidentally, Jones is one of three persons charged with a similar offence in the same jurisdiction – all face murder charges after killing their domestic partner during a violent confrontation.
Basically, the prosecutors are arguing that a domestic partner cannot apply force if they perceive that their life is threatened. Given some of the examples of where the law has been applied above, this would seem ludicrous. Especially given this sobering statistic, as reported via the Huffington Post:
- Number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq: 6,614:
- Number of women, in the same period, killed as the result of domestic violence in the US: 11,766
To be clear – the Stand Your Ground law is problematic in general as applied by US enforcement. But that it could apply to a person of Zimmerman’s history in his particular case (or any of the others referenced), but not to the incident involving Whitlee Jones in unimaginable. Are women (and men) who are victims of violent abuse from their partners that disposable?
For shame – though perhaps not surprising - that a law so championed by gun rights activists and largely the right-wing of American politics may be failing sufferers of domestic terror and minorities, if prosecutors like Culver Kidd had their way.
Follow Women24 on Twitter and like us on Facebook.
