Stand Your Ground Law, Racial Disparity, and Homicide Rates
There are racial inconsistencies all through the criminal equity framework. From a stop and search, to vehicle looks at activity stops, to sentencing and the requisition of capital punishment, African Americans excessively are reached by the criminal equity framework in bunch ways. Outstandingly, discovering a racial difference is not synonymous with discovering racial disparity. African Americans are more prone to live in thick, devastated spots, and neediness and isolation are unmistakably joined to criminal rate and predominance. Recognizing racial enmity inside racial incongruities is exceedingly troublesome with existing datasets that do exclude such key measures as setting and connection. Then again, it is conceivable to look at the rates of racial difference crosswise over purposes of criminal equity framework contact. Such an exertion could help highlight similarly unbalanced laws and techniques. Florida's Stand Your Ground law, would it say it is permitting offenders to escape with homicide? To be truthful, relatively few knew the law existed. Florida's Stand Your Ground law falls flat because it avoids feelings for brutal ambushes and killings. It is continuously utilized as an escape clause and pushes vigilantism. Self-protection laws, otherwise called "Stand Your Ground Laws,” have been a huge part of numerous court cases. Nonetheless, in the same way as most different laws, these laws might be utilized shamefully and reason overabundance debate around these cases.
Looking at the extremely disputable demise of unarmed 17 year old Trayvon Martin. With all the media encompassing this grievous story, it is hard not to peruse an article or listen to the news. An adolescent man's life given the ax February 26, 2012 as he strolled from a store with a bundle of skittles and frosted tea, coming back to the home of his father's life partner. The man who shot him a neighborhood watch captain, George Zimmerman. He called the police to report a suspicious individual strolling through his neighborhood. Police prompted him that they were en route, and to not seek after him. However, when police touched base at the scene Trayvon Martin was dead, executed by one discharge wound to the midsection, terminated by George Zimmerman (Kaduce, Davis, 2012) We all realize that there are two sides to each story. Nevertheless, the situation being what it is for this situation, and we are left with one and the only side. Preceding the section of the law, a subject in Florida had the obligation to withdraw when gone up against with deadly compel or destructive power. It applies additionally to the impression of savage power. Kaduce and Davis (2012) note that the conflict between the citizens and the police fits into the research on the typification of crime that is largely seen as black phenomenon, in which the viewing of a black teenager wearing a hoodie, would seem threatening. (Kaduce, Davis 2012)At the same time with the way the law is organized, you can meet lethal constrain by fundamentally standing your ground. How are we characterizing deadly and fatal power?
The creation of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law was a part of the governments’ move to replace the common law used in self-defense. “The common law approach had erected an expectation that a party to a threatening interaction occurring outside the home (or castle) leave or retreat from the situation when it was reasonable to do so.” (Kaduce, Davis, 2012) The purpose for this critical analysis is to examine objective national information that could measure the vicinity of racial inconsistencies in decisions of legitimate murders. In this examination, the expression "racial disparities" is esteem free: the vicinity of a racial dissimilarity is a vital, however, deficient condition to recognize racial hostility in a criminal case handling. Racial ill will must be causally recognized if all other contending clarifications for the presence of a racial divergence could be rejected. Be that as it may, an overall outlined review investigation of observational information can recognize paramount connections between murder case qualities and the vicinity of racial variations. The adoption of Stand Your Ground laws spread to within 22 states, with each experiencing increased rates of homicides overall including justifiable, and firearm related, with Florida being the highest at the increase of over 200% in homicide rates in 2006. (Mayors Against Illegal Guns, 2013) The establishment of the law is an extension of the Castle Doctrine, in which, “Sanctioned by half the states in the USA, people can now carry their invisible castle along with them virtually anywhere they go, as long as they have a lawful right to be there” (Kurtz, 2013). What is more perplexing, is the impact that it is having on the black community in which their homicide rate has increased more than twice in states that have Stand Your Ground laws, compared to the rest of the country. While there are some proponents that believe that there have been no racial disparities with the law, it is impossible to ignore the overwhelmingly compiled data, research, and analysis from examples that we see in an out of the media.
While undermining with simply words does not constitute as any manifestation of power. If at any point in the circumstances of being debilitated ought to an individual simply take off? Marissa Alexander, a 31 year old mother of three are confronting a compulsory 20 years sentence for discharging a cautioning shot in an exertion to frighten away her harsh spouse. (Stacy, 2012) Her spouse undermined to murder her, so she shot one shot. The judge in the case rejected Alexander's lawyers’ solicitation to conjure Stand Your Ground, saying Alexander's choice to retreat into the house was not predictable with somebody in trepidation for her wellbeing. Why the disparity in how the law is rebuked? In this case where the victim or offender was in her own home and felt threatened. However, this was not considered self-defense, or in this case, a proponent of Stand Your Ground law. Florida's Stand Your Ground law was passed with the best of aims. What's more, it has profited a lot of homeowners, who truly were acting in self-preservation, there have likewise been situations where it has fizzled. The issues that exist at present with Florida's Stand Your Ground law are constrained to Florida, as well as numerous different states too. Those states all have their rendition of Stand Your Ground.
Using the information from the FBI Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) data based on the work of Roman (2013) in which he used data compiled from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data from the years 2005 to 2010. The sample size included 53,019 observations in which the offender and victim were black and white, which showed that the rate of homicides is over six times higher in case that match the sad case of Trayvon Martin. “Racial disparities are much larger, as white-on-black homicides have justifiable findings 33 percentage points more often than black-on-white homicides” (Roman, 2013). This percentage is highly exuberated by the use of the Stand Your Ground defense. What is crucial that the data presented in the Roman study is that black on white homicide cases were less than half the odds of white on white homicides being justified, while white on black homicides 281 percent more than the reverse. (Roman, 2013)
This paper discovers a generous proof of racial differences in reasonable crime determinations. Notwithstanding how the information is broken down, considerable racial differences exist in the results of cross-race manslaughters. These discoveries hold all through the analysis, from contrasts in normal rates, to bivariate tests of the relationship, to relapse dissection. Furthermore, the late development of Stand Your Ground laws in two dozen states seems to intensify the difference. It is conceivable that this finding of racial uniqueness is not connected with any cognizant or oblivious racial enmity in the equity framework. In the event that the actualities of white-on-dark crimes vary from the certainties connected with dark on-white murders such that one routinely happens as a major aspect of self-preservation and alternate as a component of a road wrongdoing, then there is no disparity.
References
Kaduce, Lonn Lanza, Davis, Andrea. (2012). License to Kill: A Theoretical Critique of “Stand Your Ground”. University of Florida.
Kurtz, Hilda E., (2012). Trayvon Martin and the Dystopian Turn in US Self-Defense Doctrine. Antipode Vol. 45 No. Retrieved from http://geog.ggy.uga.edu/pmwiki/pub/uploads/Main/Kurtz.pdf
Mayors Against Illegal Guns. (2013). Shoot First. ‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws and Their Effect on Violent Crime and the Criminal Justice System. Amazon WS. Retrieved from https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/images/ShootFirst_v4.pdf
Roman, John K. (2013). Race, Justifiable Homicide, and Stand Your Ground Laws:
Analysis of FBI Supplementary Homicide Report Data. Urban Institute.
Stacy, Mitch. (2012). Marissa Alexander Gets 20 Years for Firing Warning Shot. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/19/marissa-alexander-gets-20_n_1530035.html
