George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin. Marissa Alexander received a 20-year sentence for firing what she said were warning shots.
To some, those contrasting fates are evidence enough that Stand Your Ground laws are applied in a way that’s anything but race-neutral. Alexander, an African-American woman from Jacksonville, Florida, unsuccessfully invoked the law last year after being charged for firing into a wall during a confrontation with her husband, who, her lawyers said, had a history of abuse. Attorneys for Zimmerman, whose father is white and whose mother is Hispanic, didn’t use the law in his defense, but it was included in instructions to the jury, and one juror cited it as a factor in Zimmerman’s acquittal.
But anecdotal evidence can sometimes shed more heat than light. After all, Stand Your Ground can work the other way, too. Consider Shane Huse, a white resident of Citrus County, Florida, who in 2009 was fatally shot in the neck and shoulder—with his two small children sitting in his nearby truck—after arguing with a neighbor, Oscar Delbono, over Huse’s two pitbulls. A witness said Huse was turning to leave when he was shot, but Delbono, a Hispanic, wasn’t even charged.
“It is a tragic, unfortunate set of circumstances that occurred, but given the state of the law there’s no criminal prosecution,” a prosecutor wrote.
Attorney General Eric Holder last week suggested Stand Your Ground laws—which exist in various forms in 25 states—are of particular concern to African-Americans, telling the NAACP they “sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhoods.” And in the wake of Martin’s killing last year, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) launched a probe, still ongoing, into concerns about racial bias in how the laws are applied.
Nor is there evidence that the laws have a deterrent effect. A recent Texas A&M study found that after states passed Stand Your Ground measures, they saw no drop in robberies, burglaries, and aggravated assaults, and murders actually increased.
“All the data shows it makes people kill people more often, and it makes black people die more often,” Michael Yaki, the commissioner leading the USCCR probe, told MSNBC.
A close look at the range of available data on potential racial disparities in Stand Your Ground offers a more nuanced picture but largely supports the claim of racial disparities. At least in Florida, white defendants appear no more likely than black ones to successfully invoke Stand Your Ground. But there’s evidence that a Stand Your Ground defense in the Sunshine State is more likely to work when the victim is black. And nationwide, Stand Your Ground-style defenses seem more likely to benefit whites charged with killing blacks than vice versa. Still, none of this proves outright racial bias, though it might well suggest it.
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