For thee, but not for she
by Tom Sullivan
How are those Stand Your Ground laws working for ya? Well, if you’re a man like George Zimmerman and not a black man, just fine. And if you’re a woman?
“(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 [Charleston, SC] 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.”
In South Carolina, prosecutors are appealing a circuit judge’s ruling that under the state’s Protection of Persons and Property Act Whitlee Jones should not face trial in the stabbing death of her boyfriend two years ago. During a fight in which he dragged a screaming Jones down the street by her hair, reports Think Progress, neighbors called police.
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.
The Stand Your Ground defense tends to succeed in “many more cases involving white shooters and black victims,” says Think Progress, however,
In cases in which women have invoked Stand Your Ground laws, an MSNBC analysis found that women invoking the Stand Your Ground defense against white men succeeded in only about 2.6 percent of cases (2.9 percent of the woman was also white). The disparity of Stand Your Ground cases came to national attention with the case of Marissa Alexander, who was sentenced to 20 years in jail for firing a warning shot against her alleged abuser. She was denied Stand Your Ground immunity.
A Florida appellate court overturned Alexander’s 20-year sentence just weeks ago. Judging by the Google, the ruling barely made a blip on the national radar.
Alexander unsuccessfully tried to invoke Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law as the same prosecutors who unsuccessfully worked to put Zimmerman behind bars told the court that she did not act in self-defense.
In granting the new trial, Judge James H. Daniel also seemed unmoved by the Stand Your Ground defense.
“We reject her contention that the trial court erred in declining to grant her immunity from prosecution under Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, but we remand for a new trial because the jury instructions on self-defense were erroneous,” wrote Daniel.
Both Alexander and Jones are black women. “Inconsistent with [the statute’s] wording and intent”? Maybe. Or perhaps it was just a Freudian slip about whom Stand Your Ground laws consider “law-abiding citizens.”