Creators Syndicate
March 4, 2024
More than a century ago, the United States Supreme
Court defined limits on the First Amendment. In 1919, Chief Justice Oliver
Wendell Holmes famously wrote that freedom of speech "would not protect a
man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic." Maybe a
jurist in Missouri will soon say that the Second Amendment does not give one
the right to spray gunfire into a crowd celebrating a Super Bowl win.
According to police affidavits, the man arrested for
firing the first shots at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl Rally told
authorities he felt threatened, while a second shooter said he fired because
someone was shooting at him.
According to The New York Times, experts suggest that
even though the shooting left one bystander dead and two dozen people injured,
the two shooters might have good cases for self-defense through the Missouri's
"stand your ground" law.
Florida passed the first stand-your-ground law in
2005, expanding on what was known as the Castle Doctrine. The Castle Doctrine
permitted the use of deadly force within one's home without first attempting to
retreat.
Florida's stand-your-ground law stated "a person
who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other
place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the
right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly
force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent
death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission
of a forcible felony." Missouri's law mirrors the Florida statute.
According to the National Conference of State
Legislatures, laws in at least 28 states provide that there is no duty to
retreat from an attacker anywhere in which one is lawfully present. At least 10
of those states have language stating one may stand his or her ground.
In probably the best known, and most controversial,
stand your ground case, Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman, a member
of a neighborhood watch in Sanford, Florida. Although his lawyers originally
sought a stand your ground defense, his defense team merely raised
self-defense. In 2013, he was acquitted by a jury of six women.
Maybe less known, but equally disturbing, was the
retired Florida police officer who shot and killed a man inside a movie theater
after a dispute over cellphone use, reported The New York Times.
A jury of four men and two women found Curtis J.
Reeves Jr. not guilty of second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of Chad W.
Oulson in 2014, in a movie theater near Tampa.
Reeves' legal team argued that he acted in
self-defense when he fired on Oulson, who had tossed a bag of popcorn on
Reeves.
Missouri's stand your ground law was enacted in 2016.
The mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl Rally could be a new
test of those expanded protections. However, Kansas City already has a
high-profile stand your ground shooting to contend with in the meantime.
Eighty-four-year-old Andrew Lester was charged with
two felony counts of assault and armed criminal action after he shot
16-year-old Ralph Yarl, a high school student who rang his doorbell by accident
Yarl was trying to pick up his siblings around 9:45
p.m. when he mistook Lester's home for a home where his siblings were waiting.
Yarl rang the doorbell, Lester opened the door and said "Don't come back
around here" and shot Yarl in the head through the door.
Lester's trial is set to begin in October of this
year, and could be a prelude to the anticipated Super Bowl Celebration stand
your ground defense.
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg,
Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book "The Executioner's Toll,
2010" was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at
www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.
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