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TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) A Tampa Bay mother says the man responsible for killing her teenager is getting away scot-free.

Justin Schmitt was stabbed once in the chest. He had no weapon and he was in his own house so why are prosecutors declining to file charges against his attacker?

On Feb. 25, 2020, Schmitt, 18, was with a group of friends at his home in the 4800 block of Haines Road North in St. Petersburg.

They were making prank calls. There was also drinking. Then, around 2:30 a.m., there was an argument and Schmitt was stabbed in the chest.

The forensics team would later be found on his porch as St. Petersburg police drove to his moms house.

Allison Garris fell apart.

His birthday was the next day, he was about to be 19, said Garris. It was the worst day of my life.

Months later, Pinellas County prosecutors havent charged Schmitts attacker.

According to State Attorney Bruce Bartletts Office, this is a stand your ground case. That means, the teens attacker was acting in self-defense and it was reasonable for him to fear for his own life.

On that night, prosecutors say, Schmitt was combative. He pushed one friend then swung at and lunged towards another who warned he had a knife, said the prosecutor assigned to the case.

Attorney Amber Patwell represents the teens family.

Even if there was a punch or a push that happened, neither of those things would cause a reasonable person to think that they were at risk of great bodily harm, said Patwell. When youre talking about stand your ground and being authorized to kill somebody the circumstances in which youre permitted to do that are very narrow.

8 On Your Side spoke at length with the prosecutor assigned to the case, Assistant State Attorney Christie Ellis.

Ellis is sympathetic to Schmitts family. She says she did a thorough investigation. Prosecutors interviewed witnesses multiple times, under oath.

In the end, she believes she cant prove by clear and convincing evidence, the standard of proof required, that this isnt a stand your ground case.

Stand your ground is like a license to murder people and the onus is put on the state attorneys office to prove that it wasnt, Garris said.

Garris still believes prosecutors should at least present the case to a judge.

Kids do get into fights all the time, she said. Its not a license to kill.

8 On Your Side asked the prosecutor if her decision was final. Ellis says it is unless and until, theres new evidence.

Right now, 8 On Your Side is looking into the criminal history of all parties involved.

My kid loved to plant flowers, so thats what I do, thats what Im left with, Garris said. I wanted to see him get married but you stole that from us, you took that away, and thats not fair.

8 On Your Side is not identifying the attacker since hes not being charged at this time.

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Man accused of stabbing St. Pete teen wont face charges due to stand your ground law - WFLA

(CNN)

Cases of self-defense arent always simple especially in states with a stand your ground law.

In July 2018, police say Michael Drejka fatally shot a man who shoved and knocked him to the ground in an argument over a parking space in Florida.

Although critics say Drejkas use of deadly force was uncalled for, the Pinellas County sheriff declined to arrest him, citing the states stand your ground law, which gave him immunity. The decision sparked outcry and calls for reform.

But its not the first time a stand your ground law has created controversy. Many states have similar laws on the books.

Heres what you need to know about them.

Generally, stand your ground laws allow people to respond to threats or force without fear of criminal prosecution.

Most self-defense laws state that a person under threat of physical injury has a duty to retreat. If after retreating the threat continues, the person may respond with force.

If you attack me in a non-stand your ground state, Ive got to try to get out of it, explained CNN legal analyst Mark OMara. I have to retreat before I attack The theory is, it (responding with force) has to be your last chance.

But in stand your ground states, you have no obligation to retreat, OMara said.

In other words, someone facing an imminent threat can use lethal force right away without first trying to escape.

04:10-Source:CNN

Mark O'Mara on the shooting of Markeis McGlockton

While most states provide some form of legal protection in cases of self-defense, 25 have enacted stand your ground laws, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).

The laws in at least 10 of these states, mostly in the South, literally say that you can stand [your] ground.

Its important to note that not all stand your ground laws are the same. States may word and even enforce them differently.

Florida has had several high-profile cases that sparked national conversation about stand your ground laws.

The state passed its stand your ground law in 2005, allowing people to meet force with force if they believe theyre under threat of being harmed.

Of all the states with stand your ground laws, Floridas is probably the strongest at this point, OMara said, for three reasons.

First is the fact the states law says a person has no duty to retreat.

Second: the states law provides immunity from criminal prosecution and civil actions, OMara said, which not all other stand your ground statutes do.

The final reason, OMara said, can be attributed to a recent change in the law, which shifts the burden onto the state to prove that a shooter did not act in self-defense and is therefore not entitled to stand your ground immunities.

Previously, the shooter used stand your ground as a defense, and had to prove she or he feared further bodily harm. But no longer.

Nowhere else is there anything like this in criminal law where somebody asserts something and the burden then shifts to the other person, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said in a press conference. Thats a very heavy standard and it puts the burden on the state.

Floridas law has drawn attention over the years, most notably in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida.

11:55-Source:CNN

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In 2012, a jury found George Zimmerman who OMara represented in that case not guilty in the shooting death.

Martin was walking to his fathers fiancees house from a convenience store when Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, saw him and called the police. Zimmerman defied an order to not approach the teen. When he did, the two got into a physical altercation, and Zimmerman shot Martin.

As the case garnered national attention, onlookers speculated whether Zimmerman would try to use the Floridas stand your ground law as part of his defense.

Zimmerman was charged in Martins death but was eventually acquitted. Ultimately, he did not lean on the states stand our ground law, but did claim self defense.

Still, the case cast a spotlight on Floridas stand your ground law and demands to change it.

Supporters of stand your ground laws say they give people the right to protect themselves. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush defended the law at the National Rifle Associations 2015 annual meeting in Nashville.

In Florida you can defend yourself anywhere you have a legal right to be, he said. You shouldnt have to choose between being attacked and going to jail.

The NRA has pushed hard for stand your ground laws in the past. Its former president, Marion Hammer, helped create Floridas law back in 2005.

Critics say the laws encourage violence and allow for legal racial bias. In 2013, Sherrilyn Ifill, then president and director-counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, gave testimony in a hearing on stand your ground laws.

Even those who do not consciously harbor negative associations between race and criminality are regularly infected by unconscious views that equate race with violence, she wrote.

Racial stereotypes, she wrote, could cause people to misinterpret innocent behavior as something threatening or violent, and stand your ground laws could justify this violence.

With the controversy surrounding stand your ground laws, there have been efforts to change or repeal them. In 2017, North Carolina lawmakers filed the Gun Safety Act, which would repeal the states stand your ground law. No updates on the bill have been available since April of 2017.

The NCSL says recent attempts have not been successful.

Link:
'Stand your ground' laws: Everything you need to know - CNN

Imagine if your state legislature passed a law saying that any person who feels threatened by another person may use lethal force to execute the perceived threat. Then say that, as a matter of state policy, residents should presume that Black people are more threatening than White people.

This sounds absurd, but this is basically a Stand Your Ground law in a nutshell.

These laws pervert self-defense and make it self-offense." Our countrys weak gun laws and prolific civilian firearm carrying mean Stand Your Ground laws increase, rather than decrease, gun crime. This, alone, is an unacceptable attack on everyones right to live. And when combined with deeply-rooted, racist conceptions of white innocence and black criminality, as well as courts unequal applications, Stand Your Ground laws particularly devalue Black lives.

With rights come responsibilities. The right to keep and bear arms is not a free for all; it does not encompass a right to trigger-happy vigilantism devoid of reason or proportionality. Stand Your Ground laws are an affront to our right not to be shot and we must stand our ground against them.

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What are Stand Your Ground Laws? | Brady

Photo by Ryan Vaarsi via Flickr

To George Zimmerman, a 17-year-old black kid in a dark hoodie was a threatening presence. Under Florida's Stand Your Ground statute, this was reason enough for him to shoot and kill Trayvon Martin in his family's neighborhood in Sanford, Florida in 2012.

Florida was the first state to pass a Stand Your Ground law in 2005. The controversial statute that's been enacted in 23 states across the US authorizes a person to use lethal force to defend his or her life against any threat (or perceived threat). But critics of the self-defense statute argue that it perpetuates racial biasand a recent study published in the journal Social Science & Medicine has given law's detractors new evidence to prove it.

In "Race, law, and health: Examination of 'Stand Your Ground' and defendant convictions in Florida," researchers Nicole Ackermann, Melody S. Goodman, Keon Gilbert, Cassandra Arroyo-Johnson, and Marcello Pagano combed through data from a Tampa Bay Times investigation. They further examined the 204 cases in the state in which Stand Your Ground was cited as a defense against homicide or some other violent act and the results were, sadly, not surprising. The study found that in cases argued from 2005 to 2013, juries were twice as likely to convict the perpetrator of a crime against a white person than against a person of color. "These results are similar to pre-civil rights era statistics, with strict enforcement for crimes when the victim was white and less-rigorous enforcement with the victim is non-white," the researchers report.

Read More: The Murder of Keisha Jenkins and the Violent Reality for Trans Women of Color

Take the lesser-known Stand Your Ground case of 69-year-old Trevor Dooley, a black man who claimed the statute as his defense for shooting an unarmed white man, 41-year-old David James, at a basketball court following an altercation. Although the Tampa Bay Times said this was a "case with many similarities" to Trayvon Martin's, the judge denied Dooley immunity and convicted him of manslaughter.

Behind this unequal application of the law, the study reveals, is implicit racism built on the effects of hundreds of years of explicit discrimination; Implicit Association Tests have consistently shown that, regardless of explicit preference, both black and white people associate whiteness with positive stimuli and blackness with negative stimuli.

Stand Your Ground laws are an example of "the constitutive presence of racial bias in our society by the determination of whose life is valued, demonstrated through the legal consequences for taking such a life," the study concludes. Or in other words, the question of whether #blacklivesmatter cannot be affirmed by an individual, only by our institutions and our laws. And self-defense doctrines like Stand Your Ground are akin to Jim Crow laws that viewed "white as the superior race and helped to legalize certain forms of homicide."

Read More: Alternatives to Alternatives: The Black Riot Grrrls Ignored

James Jones, a psychologist at the University of Delaware, is a member of the National Task Force on Stand Your Ground Laws, which calls for other states to conduct similar studies such as this. In the American Medical Association's Monitor on Psychology he ultimately calls for the repeal of Stand Your Ground laws and other statues that provide far too much room for bias. "What we know from our research is that there is a lot of racial and ethnic bias in the judgment of threats," he writes. "It's important for us to show inherent bias in laws that use such a subjective criterion for self-defense."

Ackermann et al. underline the urgency of this endeavor in their study. "We have made a lot of progress since 1787, but this halving of the odds of being found guilty of a crime if the victim is non-white is an eerie reminder of the infamous three-fifths compromise."

Read more from the original source:
'Stand Your Ground' Laws Are Racist, New Study Reveals

Gun control and violence in the United States has been a controversial topic, particularly in recent years. Some citizens and politicians push for gun control, while others believe that the countrys laws surrounding guns should remain the same. Gun laws vary by state, including regulations on purchasing firearms and concealed or open carry permits and laws. One particularly controversial law is the stand your ground law.

Stand your ground laws allow a person to use force if necessary if there is a threat of harm. Many self-defense laws state that a person that believes they are being threatened with personal injury has a duty to retreat. If there is a continued threat after leaving, the threatened person is permitted to use force to defend themselves. In stand your ground states, there is no duty to retreat.

For example, a robber comes into the home of a person who is sleeping. The person awakens and investigates the noises and is met by the robber holding a gun. In states with stand your ground laws, the threatened person could respond with force including using their own gun, if one is owned if necessary. A person that defends themselves in such a situation would not have to worry about criminal prosecution.

Opponents of stand your ground laws often believe that such laws can be dangerous. For example, a person could shoot first when there isnt a real threat. One such instance was the case against George Zimmerman, who faced criminal charges following the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman was later acquitted of the charges.

Several states have adopted stand your ground laws. Those states are:

Some states use stand your ground in practice, such as through jury instructions or case law. These states are:

Some states have also adopted stand your ground laws, but these laws only apply when a person is in their vehicle. These states are:

Finally, there are states with castle doctrine, which allows a person to defend themselves using force while in the home or their vehicles, but have a duty to retreat in public places. These states are:

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States With Stand Your Ground Laws 2021