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A Stand Your Ground Law is a law that allows citizens to protect themselves if they feel their lives are in danger, regardless of whether they could have safely exited the situation. For example, Stand Your Ground law states that no one should feel forced to leave a premises they have every right to be in.

Therefore, the law allows him to use lethal force against a person if he feels that person is an imminent threat to his safety. To explore this concept, consider the following Stand Your Ground Law definition.

Noun

Origin

1600s English Law

The meaning of Stand Your Ground Law is rooted in home defense. For this reason, another name for it is the Castle Doctrine, because the law allows people to do whatever they feel is necessary to protect themselves and their home, or castle. This includes the use of deadly force.

For example, Stand Your Ground Law protects those who use a gun or knife to defend themselves, even if that attempt results in a fatal injury. For this reason, some refer to this concept as the shoot first law. While some states require individuals to flee a dangerous situation before resorting to deadly violence, states that uphold Stand Your Ground do not. These laws protect those who choose to defend themselves and their property, even when there is a legitimate opportunity for a safe escape.

The effects of Stand Your Ground Laws are spotty at best, and researchers are still studying them. For instance, it appears that one of the effects of Stand Your Ground Laws is that they may moderately increase the rates of homicide in states that enforce these laws.

In the same vein, however, researchers have not determined there to be any effects of Stand Your Ground Laws on other kinds of violent crimes in those states. There is also inconclusive evidence regarding the rates of suicide and defensive gun use in Stand Your Ground states.

Stand Your Ground states in the U.S. include states mostly in the South and Midwest. For instance, Stand Your Ground states in the South include Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, and North Carolina. Midwest Stand Your Ground states include Missouri, Indiana, and Kansas. Some states are not Stand Your Ground states per se, though they do adopt the ideas in practice. These states are mostly in the Western U.S. and include California, Colorado, Nevada, and Oregon, to name a few.

Some states limit stand your ground practices to when a person is in their vehicle, like in Ohio, North Dakota, or Wisconsin. Other states follow the castle doctrine, which is the idea that people can use deadly force in their home, car, etc. but if they are in public where others might be hurt they must retreat. These states include New York, Maryland, Connecticut, and Maine. Of all fifty states, only two Vermont and Washington, D.C. require citizens to exit the situation, rather than attempt to defend themselves even if they are in their own homes.

Perhaps one of the most prominent Stand Your Ground Law examples in Americans minds is the Trayvon Martin case (more on that later). In 2012, in response to the Martin case, the Tampa Bay Times created a report detailing cases involving Stand Your Ground Laws. The Times also created a database of Stand Your Ground Law examples wherein those charged attempted to invoke the law as a defense.

Interestingly, what the Times discovered was that no racial disparity existed in the state of Florida. Police were charging, and juries were convicting, whites at the same rate as blacks, and mixed-race cases were about the same for black-on-white and white-on-black crime. Two things the Times did discover were:

Per the Urban Institute, juries deciding white-on-black homicides in Stand Your Ground states are over 350% more likely to side with the defense than in cases of white-on-black homicides. And a study conducted in 2015 found that Stand Your Ground Law examples involving victims who were white were doubly likely to result in convictions than were cases involving victims who were black.

Perhaps the most well-known example of Stand Your Ground Law invoked as a defense in a case involving a homicide is the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin. In February of 2012, George Zimmerman shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida. At the time, Zimmerman was the neighborhood watch coordinator for the gated community where Martins relatives lived. Martin was in town visiting his relatives.

On the night of the shooting, Zimmerman noticed Martin as Martin returned from a nearby convenience store, on foot, to the Twin Lakes housing community. Zimmerman was passing through the neighborhood in his car while running an errand. Zimmerman called the police, suspicious of Martin, who he said he believed to be up to no good. Zimmerman told the dispatcher Martin started to run, and he then followed him, despite the dispatcher telling Zimmerman that wasnt necessary.

When Zimmerman caught up to Martin, they engaged in a violent encounter which resulted in Zimmerman fatally shooting Martin 70 yards from the door of the house Martin was staying at. Martin did not have a weapon on him, yet Zimmerman, who suffered minor injuries to his face and head, claimed to have shot him in self-defense. The police arrested Zimmerman. However, due to Floridas Stand Your Ground Law, coupled with the fact that there was no evidence to refute Zimmermans self-defense claim, police had no choice but to let him go.

As word of the case spread to the point of national coverage, thousands of protestors called for a full investigation into the case and for the police to arrest Zimmerman and hold him accountable for Martins death. In April of 2012, police arrested Zimmerman again and charged him with second-degree murder.

The criminal trial began on June 10, 2013, and a little over a month later, the jury found Zimmerman not guilty. While some wanted Zimmerman charged with a federal hate crime, the U.S. Department of Justice announced in February of 2015 that there simply was not enough evidence for a prosecution on this charge.

Many believed that Zimmermans actions betrayed racial motivations. After the trial, Zimmermans family came to his defense, arguing that Zimmerman was not racist, as he had black relatives. Zimmermans father said his sons actions could not be racially motivated, as Zimmerman himself was Hispanic, grew up in a multiracial family, and, as such, would be the last person to discriminate against anyone. No one, from Zimmermans neighbors to his co-workers, had a bad thing to say about him.

Notably, in the years prior to and following the Martin case, Zimmerman had had several other run-ins with the law. In 2005, police arrested him for shoving an undercover officer, and his fiance got a restraining order against him, claiming domestic violence. In the years following the case, police responded to several calls involving Zimmerman, including one in November of 2013, when his girlfriend claimed he pointed a shotgun at her. In 2016, Zimmerman allegedly yelled at a waitress and, according to the deputy who responded to the call, referred to her as a ner lover.

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Stand Your Ground Law - legaldictionary.net

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April 17, 2018

By: Teo Spengler

Standing your ground when faced with an aggressor sounds like the better half of fight or flight to some people. But the stand-your-ground laws are quite controversial and have resulted in what many people consider unnecessary deaths. The details of the laws differ among states, but they basically provide that a person who is in a place where he has a right to be can use deadly force to repel an unlawful intruder, without trying to retreat first, if he perceives the intruder as a threat.

A stand-your-ground law gives people the right to use deadly force if they feel threatened in a place they have a right to be.

Under the common law, a person has a duty to retreat from aggression if possible before using deadly force. Stand-your-ground laws create a broad exception to this. The common law "castle" doctrine allowed people to use deadly force against an intruder who enters their home or office. Stand-your-ground laws, enacted in many states, take this one step further, extending that right to any place, including a public place, where a person has a right to be. These laws provide authority to use any level of force, including deadly force, against an immediate threat of serious bodily harm.

Many states have enacted explicit stand-your-ground laws. These include, in alphabetical order: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.

A few other states, like California, have not adapted specific stand-your-ground laws, but allow the doctrine as part of their self-defense law. In these states, it is the courts that have interpreted self-defense statutes to include the right to defend yourself in a public place.

Self defense is a legal justification for aggressive actions. Every state has laws authorizing people who are under attack to use reasonable force to defend themselves or other people around them. If proven, self-defense is a defense to criminal charges that stem from use of force, like homicide, assault and battery.

Generally, in order to have a valid claim of self-defense in a criminal case, an accused must prove that self-defense was justified. The rule is that you can use only reasonable force, and only when it appears reasonably necessary to prevent an injury. When you use force in self-defense, it should be only as much force as is required to stop the threat. Normally, deadly force cannot be used to repel non-deadly force.

Several stand-your-ground law cases have proved extremely controversial. One such case occurred in 1984, when three young black men approached Bernhard Goetz, a white tech worker, on a subway train in New York. Goetz, a white computer technician, had been mugged some two years earlier.

One of the young men asked Goetz to give him five dollars, and Goetz stood up and shot four times at the youths, hitting two of them in the back. He then walked up to another of the young men named Darryl Cabey and fired again into his spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down. Goetz was charged with attempted murder, assault, criminal possession of a weapon and reckless endangerment. He claimed that he had acted in self-defense, and the jury convicted him only of illegal gun possession. However, Cabey sued him and won a verdict of $43 million.

A second, well-known stand-your-ground case involved the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida by an armed neighborhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman. Martin was an unarmed, black, 17-year-old high school student walking through Zimmerman's neighborhood. Zimmerman was white and armed and he shot and killed Martin. Zimmerman was ultimately acquitted on claims of self-defense. Although he did not rely on the stand-your-ground doctrine, the case brought it into the public eye, raising issues in many people's minds about the wisdom of these laws.

Teo Spengler earned a J.D. from U.C. Berkeley's Boalt Hall. As an Assistant Attorney General in Juneau, she practiced before the Alaska Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court before opening a plaintiff's personal injury practice in San Francisco. She holds both an M.A. and an M.F.A in creative writing and enjoys writing legal blogs and articles. Her work has appeared in numerous online publications including USA Today, Legal Zoom, eHow Business, Livestrong, SF Gate, Go Banking Rates, Arizona Central, Houston Chronicle, Navy Federal Credit Union, Pearson, Quicken.com, TurboTax.com, and numerous attorney websites. Spengler splits her time between the French Basque Country and Northern California.

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What Is the Stand Your Ground Law? | Legal Beagle

Key Points

Question Did the implementation of Floridas stand your ground self-defense law have an impact on homicide and homicide by firearm between 2005 and 2014?

Findings This study used an interrupted time series design to analyze changes in rates of homicide and firearm-related homicide. We found that the implementation of Floridas stand your ground law was associated with a 24.4% increase in homicide and a 31.6% increase in firearm-related homicide.

Meaning The removal of restrictions on when and where individuals can use lethal force was associated with a significant increase in homicide and homicide by firearm in Florida.

Importance In 2005, Florida amended its self-defense laws to provide legal immunity to individuals using lethal force in self-defense. The enactment of stand your ground laws in the United States has been controversial and their effect on rates of homicide and homicide by firearm is uncertain.

Objective To estimate the impact of Floridas stand your ground law on rates of homicide and homicide by firearm.

Design, Setting, and Participants Using an interrupted time series design, we analyzed monthly rates of homicide and homicide by firearm in Florida between 1999 and 2014. Data were collected from the Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER) web portal at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We used seasonally adjusted segmented Poisson regression models to assess whether the onset of the law was associated with changes in the underlying trends for homicide and homicide by firearm in Florida. We also assessed the association using comparison states without stand your ground laws (New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and Virginia) and control outcomes (all suicides and suicides by firearm in Florida). October 1, 2005, the effective date of the law, was used to define homicides before and after the change.

Main Outcomes and Measures Monthly rates of homicide, firearm-related homicide, suicide, and suicide by firearm in Florida and the 4 comparison states.

Results Prior to the stand your ground law, the mean monthly homicide rate in Florida was 0.49 deaths per 100000 (mean monthly count, 81.93), and the rate of homicide by firearm was 0.29 deaths per 100000 (mean monthly count, 49.06). Both rates had an underlying trend of 0.1% decrease per month. After accounting for underlying trends, these results estimate that after the law took effect there was an abrupt and sustained increase in the monthly homicide rate of 24.4% (relative risk [RR], 1.24; 95%CI, 1.16-1.33) and in the rate of homicide by firearm of 31.6% (RR, 1.32; 95% CI, 1.21-1.44). No evidence of change was found in the analyses of comparison states for either homicide (RR, 1.06; 95% CI, 0.98-1.13) or homicide by firearm (RR, 1.08; 95% CI, 0.99-1.17). Furthermore, no changes were observed in control outcomes such as suicide (RR, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.94-1.05) and suicide by firearm (RR, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.91-1.06) in Florida between 2005 and 2014.

Conclusions and Relevance The implementation of Floridas stand your ground self-defense law was associated with a significant increase in homicides and homicides by firearm but no change in rates of suicide or suicide by firearm.

Throughout the United States the application of lethal force as a means of self-defense is governed by criminal law.1 Since the colonial era, it has been an individuals duty to retreat from perceived threats before resorting to any use of force. When force is unavoidable for self-defense, one must demonstrate that steps were taken to retreat first. The castle doctrine is an exception, granting individuals who encounter threats in their own home (ie, their castle) immunity when using lethal force.2 Since 2005, states across the United States have made changes to their self-defense laws, removing the duty to retreat and allowing the use of lethal force in situations (inside and outside the home) where an individual perceives a threat of harm.3

Stand your ground laws have been implemented in 23 states to date, with considerable debate about their potential impact on public health (Box).4-6 Advocates of the laws suggest that the increased threat of retaliatory violence deters would-be burglars, resulting in fewer intruder encounters.4 Critics are concerned that weakening the punitive consequences of using force may serve to escalate aggressive encounters.7 They also argue that these laws may exacerbate racial disparities in homicide where threats motivated by racial stereotypes produce unnecessary fatalities.2,7

Box.

Utah (1994)b

Florida (2005)

Alabama (2006)

Alaska (2006)

Arizona (2006)

Georgia (2006)

Indiana (2006)

Kansas (2006)

Kentucky (2006)

Louisiana (2006)

Michigan (2006)

Mississippi (2006)

Oklahoma (2006)

South Carolina (2006)

South Dakota (2006)

Tennessee (2007)

Texas (2007)

West Virginia (2008)

Montana (2009)

Nevada (2011)

New Hampshire (2011)

North Carolina (2011)

Pennsylvania (2011)

a Definitions of states that have enacted stand your ground laws were derived by cross-referencing several resources (eg, smartgunlaws.org and NRA.org) as well as recent publications.7,11,12

b Utah was the first state to pass a law that expanded a citizens right to use lethal force in public places. Florida was the first state to draft and pass a specific stand your ground law. The conditions of each law vary.

Few evaluations of the impact of stand your ground laws on homicide have been conducted. Evaluations of Arizonas and Texas stand your ground laws found no statistically significant impact on homicide.8,9 Several observational studies have assessed whether homicide rates are higher in states with stand your ground laws compared with states without. Using uniform crime reports from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 1 study that used a difference in differences design to examine changes in 20 states that enacted stand your ground laws between 2000 and 2010 compared with all nonparticipating states found an associated 8% increase in homicide.10 A study using US vital statistics data for the same time period, using comparable methods for the same states, found that the enactment was associated, on average, with a 7.1% increase in homicides.11 In 2016 a study by Gius,12 using uniform crime reports (FBI data) between 1995 and 2010, found no relationship between the enactment of stand your ground laws and either homicide or firearm homicide.

On April 26, 2005, Governor Jeb Bush signed Florida State Bill 436, enacting Floridas stand your ground law.3,13 The law increased the scope of self-defense claims by creating a no duty to retreat rule when individuals reasonably believed that force was necessary to prevent harm to themselves or others.2 The Florida law extended the no duty to retreat clause of the castle doctrine to public places. In addition, the law created a series of conditions to strengthen the rights of individuals claiming self defense, including extending no duty to retreat to situations where the defendant initiated a confrontation, extending the use of lethal force as a legitimate defense for the protection of private property (eg, to deter vehicle theft), entitling defendants to pretrial immunity hearings allowing judges to sanction immunity prior to jury trial, and providing defendants with immunity from any ensuing civil lawsuits.1,7

As the first state to implement a stand your ground law, Florida is an important test case about the removal of the duty to retreat principle. We used the years that have elapsed since the enactment of the Florida law as a natural experiment to assess its impact on rates of homicide and homicide by firearm.

We used an interrupted time series design to compare monthly rates of homicide in Florida before and after the stand your ground law came into effect on October 1, 2005. Interrupted time series designs use data that are collected over time, usually recorded at regular intervals (eg, months).14-17 These data are used to identify an underlying trend and when an intervention (eg, new law) occurs at a known time, postintervention trends can be examined for distinct changes from preexisting trendsthus serving as the counterfactual.18 This study design can be valuable in situations where retrospective evaluations of population level interventions are required.19,20

A potential limitation of interrupted time series designs is the possibility that other factors that occur simultaneously may distort estimates of intervention effects. Such factors might include national changes in social or economic variables (eg, a recession) or events that have a profound and lasting impact on society (eg, natural disasters). Additional design elements can be added to interrupted time series designs to assess whether such factors are influencing statistical estimates.14,15 We employed 2 such design features: analysis of homicide rates in 4 comparison states (New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and Virginia), and analysis of control outcomes (suicide and suicide by firearm).

These analyses help to rule out the possibility of misattributing any changes to causal factors unrelated to the intervention in question. From the 27 states that had not implemented stand your ground laws as of September 2016 only 4 had consistent monthly homicide data that could be used for analysis. The analyses of suicide and suicide by firearm tested for comparable intervention effects in variables that may be equally sensitive to social and economic trends, but that we did not hypothesize to be affected by the stand your ground law. If patterns in these analyses showed changes similar to those found in our analyses of homicide and homicide by firearm, it may be reasonable to assume that any estimated intervention effect was not attributable to the stand your ground law.14,15,20-22

We collected monthly totals of homicides and suicides (in total and for firearm-related cases) for Florida between January 1999 and December 2014. The data were accessed through the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions (CDC) Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER) web portal.23 We classified cases by place of occurrence (within or outside the State of Florida), cause of death (homicide or suicide), mechanism (firearms or other means), and month of occurrence. We classified causes of death using the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD-10).24

We extracted 4 monthly time series: (a) all homicide (ICD-10, X85 to Y09); (b) all suicide (ICD-10, X60 to X84); (c) homicide by firearm (ICD-10, X93-X95); and (d) suicide by firearm (ICD-10, X72-X74). Additional analyses were disaggregated by racial and ethnic grouping (white or African American), age group (0-19 years, 20-34 years, and 35 years), and sex (male or female) for all outcomes. Population denominators were calculated separately for each series using annual population estimates from the US Census Bureau.25 In total, each of these time series spanned 192 months (82 preintervention and 110 postintervention).

We evaluated whether postintervention trends in homicide and homicide by firearm in Florida differed significantly from preintervention trends. We used segmented quasi-Poisson regression analysis to analyze trends in both periods and estimate an effect size taking underlying trends into account. Recent technical tutorials provide a detailed explanation of these models.18,26 Time series analyses may be confounded by seasonal effects that generate stable highs and lows in data trends. To account for this we applied seasonal models, using harmonic terms that control for seasonal influences.18,19,27 Owing to the time sequencing of data points used in time series analysis, residual autocorrelation can lead to the violation of regression assumptions. Where significant residual autocorrelation was detected (P<.10) and the assumptions of the general linear models became problematic, robust standard errors were generated (using a sandwich estimator) to produce more conservative estimates of uncertainty.28

Owing to the nature of the interventiona legal change fixed at 1 point in timewe hypothesized the potential impact of Floridas stand your ground law as an immediate and permanent change.18 Analysis was repeated for comparison states without stand your ground laws to test the validity of any effects observed for Florida. The comparison between Florida and other states was tested statistically by including an interaction term in a single model including intervention and comparison states. In addition, sensitivity analysis was performed using rates of suicide and firearm suicide as a control outcome for both Florida and comparison states. This was done to assess specific biases that may have resulted from the onset of the 2008 economic crisis in the United States, which could potentially effect homicide rates indirectly.29 We chose suicide because recent research shows a significant association between suicide and the onset of the 2008 financial crises and subsequent austerity policies.19,30,31

Stratified analysis was conducted to investigate whether the stand your ground law may have had a distributional impact on race and ethnicity, age group, and sex in Florida. Where large numbers of data points were missing or suppressed owing to small cell counts (eg, <10 cases per month), we could not analyze certain population groups separately. This included: Hispanic populations (all analyses); children and adolescents (19 years); African American populations (suicide and suicide by firearm); and females (homicide). Thus, analyses for these groups are not reported. All data analysis was conducted in R statistical software (version 3.1.2; RStudio, Inc) using RStudio (version 0.99.486; RStudio Inc). Statistical significance was taken as P<.05.

Between 1999 and October 2005, Florida had a mean monthly homicide count of 81.93, a homicide rate of 0.49 deaths per 100000 population and a mean monthly homicide by firearm count of 49.06, a homicide by firearm rate of 0.29 deaths per 100000 population, with 59.1% of all homicides resulting from firearm injuries. There was a slight decline in monthly rates of homicide and homicide by firearm over this period. In the 9 years following the implementation of the stand your ground law, both rates increased with a mean monthly count of 99.22 and 69.29, respectively (homicide, 0.53 deaths per 100000 population; homicide by firearm, 0.37 deaths per 100000 population; 69.8% of homicides by firearm) (Table 1). After accounting for underlying trends, we estimated a 24.4% (RR, 1.24; 95% CI; 1.16-1.33; P<.001) increase in the postintervention monthly homicide rate when compared with preintervention trends. For homicide by firearm the findings were similar, with an estimated 31.6% (RR, 1.32; 95% CI, 1.21-1.44; P<.001) increase in postintervention monthly homicides by firearm when compared with preintervention trends. Figure 1A displays the magnitude of these effects for homicide and Figure 1B shows homicide by firearm in relation to trends in the comparison states.

We compared these findings with comparison states to test whether such increases in patterns of homicide and homicide by firearm were present in states unexposed to changes in self-defense laws. We found no significant changes in postintervention homicide rates in the comparison states when compared with preintervention trends (RR, 1.06; 95% CI, 0.98-1.13). Interaction models comparing Florida and the comparison states found a significant difference between intervention effects (RR, 1.24 vs RR, 1.06; P<.001).

For homicide by firearm rates, we found no significant changes in postintervention firearm homicide when compared with preintervention trends in control states (RR, 1.08; 95% CI, 0.99-1.17). A formal test of difference between Florida and comparison states found a significant difference in the patterns of homicide by firearm after the Florida law took effect (RR, 1.32 vs RR, 1.08; P<.001).

Analyses of suicide and suicide by firearms in Florida following the enactment of the law showed no evidence of effects comparable to those for homicide and homicide by firearm. Prior to the implementation of the law, the mean monthly suicide rate in Florida was 1.13 per 100000 (mean monthly count 188.30) vs after the law took effect, with 1.23 deaths per 100000 and a mean monthly count of 232.50 (relative risk, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.94-1.05; P=.97). These findings help rule out the possibility that our estimates may have been confounded by other social or economic trends (eg, the 2008 economic recession) that may have had an impact on the patterns of homicide.

Stratified analyses for Florida found that the increases in homicide affected all demographic groups, but that the magnitude of effects was distributed unevenly across the population (Table 2). Comparing preintervention and postintervention trends, the onset of the stand your ground law was associated with significant increases in homicide for whites (28.7%) (Figure 2B); African Americans (20.4%); those aged 20 to 34 years (31.7%) (Figure 2A); those 35 years or older (13.8%); males (28.1%); and females (13.5%). Similar patterns were observed when comparing preintervention and postintervention trends for homicide by firearm in Florida (Table 2). These findings suggested a statistically significant increase in homicide by firearm for whites (45.1%) (Figure 2B); African Americans (22.9%); those 20 to 34 years (35.8%) (Figure 2A); those 35 years and older (21.5%); and males (31.8%). For suicide and suicide by firearm, we found no significant differences before and after the law took effect.

Since Floridas stand your ground law took effect in October 2005, rates of homicide and homicide by firearm in the state have significantly increased; through 2014, monthly rates of homicide increased by 24.4% and monthly rates of homicide by firearm by 31.6%. These increases appear to have occurred despite a general decline in homicide in the United States since the early 1990s.32 In contrast, rates of homicide and homicide by firearm did not increase in states without a stand your ground law (New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and Virginia), or for either suicide or suicide by firearm. Our findings support the hypothesis that increases in the homicide and homicide by firearm rates in Florida are related to the stand your ground law. We found increases in homicide and homicide by firearm in Florida in all the demographic groupings we examined; the largest proportional increases were in those aged 20 to 34 years and among whites.

The increases in homicide and firearm homicide we report are greater than those reported elsewherewhere increases in homicide were estimated to be less than 10%.10,11 These differences may reflect differences in the stand your ground laws between states (the other studies were not of Floridas law), and differences in sociodemographic and cultural factors, as well as firearm and other laws.

Our study has limitations. Circumstances unique to Florida may have contributed to our findings, including those that we could not identify. We did not compare the impact of stand your ground laws across states; such analyses are susceptible to biases owing to differences in regulatory contexts and events or other factors that influence homicide and firearm homicide rates but that are unique to a particular state. Finally, there has been considerable debate over the potential of the Florida law to deter crime and improve public safety.30,31 Our study examined the effect of the Florida law on homicide and homicide by firearm, not on crime and public safety. We also did not study the effects on firearm injuries other than homicide or suicide.

The enactment of Floridas stand your ground law in 2005 has been associated with abrupt and sustained increases in homicide and homicide by firearm in the state.

Corresponding Author: David K. Humphreys, PhD, Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford, 32 Wellington Square, Oxford, OX1 2ER, England (david.humphreys@spi.ox.ac.uk).

Accepted for Publication: September 16, 2016.

Published Online: November 14, 2016. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.6811

Author Contributions: Drs Humphreys and Wiebe had full access to all of the data in the study and take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the analysis.

Concept and design: All authors.

Acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data: All authors.

Drafting of the manuscript: Humphreys, Wiebe.

Critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content: All authors.

Statistical analysis: All authors.

Administrative, technical, or material support: Humphreys.

Study supervision: Wiebe.

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: None reported.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Shoot First: Stand Your Ground Laws and Their Effect on Violent Crime and the Criminal Justice System. National Urban League; 2013. https://everytownresearch.org/reports/shoot-first/. Accessed February 15, 2016.

Florida Code. Senate Bill 436. 776.013; 2005.

Cook TD, Campbell DT. Quasi-Experimentation: Design & Analysis Issues for Field Settings. Chicago: Rand McNally & Co; 1979.

Shadish WR, Cook TD, Campbell DT. Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co; 2002.

McDowall D, McCleary R, Meidinger EE, Hay RA. Interrupted Time-Series Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Beverly Hills; 1980.

McCleary R, Hay R, Meidinger EE, McDowall D, Land KC. Applied Time Series Analysis for the Social Sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Beverly Hills; 1980.

Pinker S. The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity. London: Penguin; 2012.

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Impact of Floridas Stand Your Ground Self-defense Law ...

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Florida's "stand your ground" law is being tested again after a 28-year-old father was mortally wounded in front of his young children following an argument with another man over a handicapped parking space.

The State Attorney's Office is expected to review the case and make the final decision on whether it falls within the claim of self-defense under a law that first gained prominence in the 2012 shooting death of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin. State prosecutors could not immediately be reached for comment Monday.

Surveillance video taken from the Circle A convenience store in Clearwater last Thursday showed Markeis McGlockton, his girlfriend Britany Jacobs and their three young children pulling into a handicapped spot. McGlockton ran into the store with their 5-year-old son.

A man in a light-colored hat later identified as Michael Drejka, 47 went up to the car, and he and Jacobs got into a spat.

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said at a news conference Friday that the two were arguing over whether Jacobs could be in that parking space.

As Jacobs stepped out of the car, McGlockton came out of the store and shoved Drejka to the ground. In response, Drejka pulled a gun out of his pocket.

Drejka could be seen firing at McGlockton as the young father stepped away. McGlockton was wounded in the chest, and ran back into the store, where surveillance footage from inside showed him falling to the ground in front of his 5-year-old.

McGlockton later died at the hospital.

Gualtieri said that the video does appear to show Drejka protecting himself, so his agency does not have an authority to make an arrest "unless we have probable cause that the person committed a crime."

"Markeis should not have gone up and slammed this guy to the ground. Markeis wouldn't be dead if Markeis didnt slam this guy to the ground," Gualtieri added. "So Markeis has got skin in this game, too. And the reason why it makes it justified, and within the framework of 'stand your ground,' is because of what Markeis did."

He said that it will fall on the state to determine whether Drejka was "not entitled to use force in this circumstance."

The sheriff, however, said the circumstances surrounding the shooting were not clear-cut.

"There is a pause even if it's only for a couple seconds there is a pause between the time Drejka hits the ground and he shoots. That pause gives me pause," Gualtieri said. "That pause gives me some concern. And it goes back to what I said when I opened: just because you can, doesn't mean you should."

McGlocktons father, Michael, said that his son was just standing up for a family he adored.

"Markeis was a good man he was all about his kids," Michael McGlockton said in an interview with NBC News on Monday. "He wasnt out there looking for trouble, but he would stand up for his family and thats exactly what he did. As a man, if you see someone confronting someone that you love, what are you gonna do? Youre gonna run to their defense. Youre gonna try to protect them."

Michele Rayner, a lawyer representing the dead man's family, added that Drejka was so close to Jacobs car door that she would have hit him had she opened it.

"So would he have shot her then?" Rayner said. "If anyone was really standing their ground or defending someone, Mr. McGlockton was defending his family.

Drejka could not be reached for comment Friday.

Another Circle A customer, Rick Kelly, told NBC affiliate WFLA that he encountered Drejka in a similar situation a couple of months ago. Kelly said he had pulled into that same handicap spot and Drejka began inspecting his decals to see if he had the right to be there. The situation escalated.

"He was basically threatening to shoot me that day," Kelly said.

And in 2012, Tyler Smith, 18, accused a driver later identified as Drejka of hanging a gun outside of his truck window during a road rage incident in Palm Harbor, northwest of Tampa, according to law enforcement documents obtained by NBC News.

Smith, whose account was corroborated by his passenger, told a Pinellas County sheriffs deputy that Drejka began yelling and honking at him when he stopped at a yellow traffic light, the documents say.

Smith said Drejka then dangled a black handgun from his drivers side window and placed two magazines on his trucks dashboard. After Drejka followed the car, the passenger told the deputy, Smith called the sheriffs office to report him though he didnt want to press charges, according to the documents.

During an interview with deputies, Drejka said hed yelled at Smith and honked his horn after the car cut him off, the documents say. Drejka denied following the vehicle or displaying a Glock that he kept in his trucks center console.

No charges were filed in the case and the documents say Drejkas concealed weapons license was valid.

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Dozens of protesters marched on Sunday and held a vigil for McGlockton as Jacobs called for justice.

"He was a great man, and you know, he didn't do nothing wrong," Jacobs said, according to WFLA. "He was just trying to protect us."

At least 24 states have some form of a "stand your ground" law, with Florida's enacted in 2005 with the help of gun lobbyists.

Since then, Floridians have been able to justify using deadly force in order to "prevent imminent death or great bodily harm." Florida goes the extra step of not requiring the gun owner to first try to flee from danger before pulling the trigger.

In legal cases, the defense had been required to prove a case of "stand your ground" until last year, when it was changed to put the burden of proof on the prosecution.

This change could leave prosecutors with a "very tricky case" if they pursue charges in McGlockton's killing, said NBC News and MSNBC legal analyst Daniel Goldman.

"But I think there is a real possibility that the state attorney general will look at this and [say]...'You know what, it shouldn't be our decision as prosecutors to say whether or not this was a proper use of stand your ground law,'" Goldman said. "We have a jury of peers in this country for a reason. Let's present this to the jury and let them decide."

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George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, had claimed self-defense when he fatally shot Martin, a 17-year-old high school student who had been walking through the gated community.

Zimmerman was later charged with murder, but acquitted. His attorneys did not use "stand your ground" as a defense at trial, but the law still became a flash point as part of a larger national conversation.

The law was again invoked in Florida in 2014, when a 71-year-old retired Tampa police captain fatally shot a 43-year-old man inside a movie theater after the two got into an argument. A trial in the case is scheduled for next February.

The race of McGlockton, who was black, has added another element in the case as protesters on Sunday held signs demanding the "racist" law be repealed.

Shevrin Jones, a black Democratic state lawmaker in Broward County, tweeted Sunday that McGlockton's death "should give a clear sign that Florida need(s) to take a look and make changes to Stand Your Ground."

Across the country, "stand your ground" laws haven't proven to curb crime and are fraught with "racial imbalance," said David Harris, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and host of the podcast "Criminal Injustice."

A 2015 study in the journal Social Science & Medicine found that a person charged in such cases is twice as likely to be convicted of a crime if they killed a white victim as opposed to a minority.

In the McGlockton case, the surveillance video helps to shed some light on what occurred, Harris said, but it's "not an open and shut" justification for deadly force simply because Drejka had been pushed to the ground.

Still, if prosecutors decide to charge Drejka, they will face a "heavy pretrial burden" to prove he wasn't acting in self-defense, Harris said.

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Florida's 'stand your ground' law under scrutiny after ...

USA Today NetworkWTSP-TV, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla. Published 8:45 a.m. ET July 23, 2018 | Updated 10:39 a.m. ET July 23, 2018

A recent decision not to charge a man who shot and killed another man in a convenience store parking lot because of Floridas stand your ground law prompted protests. USA TODAY

An argument over a handicapped parking spot turned fatal at a Florida convenience store last week. The man who fired the shot will not face charges, because of Florida's "stand your ground" law.(Photo: WilliamBunce, Getty Images/iStockphoto)

CLEARWATER, Fla. A recent decision not to charge a man who shot and killed another man ina convenience store parking lotbecause of Floridas stand your ground law prompted protest Sunday night.

Protesters gathered at the Circle A store on Sunset Point in Clearwater the scene of the shooting to express their frustration on how the Pinellas County Sheriffs Office handled the case.

It all started when Markeis McGlockton's girlfriend drove into a parking spot while he walked into the Circle A store.

During a press conference Friday, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri mentioned that a regular customer of the convenience store was frustrated when he saw McGlockton's girlfriend illegally parked in the handicapped spot.

The customer and the girlfriend started yelling at each other after the customer complained to her about parking there, according to deputies.

Another customer went inside to tell the manager about a disturbance outside. McGlockton walked outside and shoved the customer to the ground.

While on the ground, the man shot and hit McGlockton in the chest. McGlokton was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Britany Jacobs, McGlockton's girlfriend, told Good Morning America the couple's 5-year-old son also witnessed the shooting.

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The man who shot him is being cooperative with deputies and told them he was fearful for his life.

"After being slammed to the ground, he felt he was going to be further attacked," Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said.

More than 20 states have "stand your ground" laws, which generally allow the use of lethal force for self-defense without the duty of trying to escape. "Stand your ground" allows a person to use deadly force if they think they're about to face, "imminent death or great bodily harm." The law has been criticizedby parents of slain black teens Jordan Davis and Trayvon Martin.

Protesters say the circumstances of the incident shouldn't categorize it as a "stand your ground" case.Hundreds called for an arrest in the case.

More: Florida man faked his murder using a gun and a weather balloon

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