Two weeks ago, a drunk teenager, Renisha McBride, got into a car accident in suburban Detroit and sought help at the nearby house. Homeowner Theodore Wafer cracked open his door and shot her in the face with a shotgun – and then called 911. A full news report here. Jelani Cobb examines the state of self-defense in the US:
It is entirely reasonable to be alarmed by an unexpected knock in the middle of the night, and it’s not difficult to imagine someone nervously answering the door with a weapon nearby. But the Rorschach moment is what happens next: Is it possible to look through a cracked-open door and register [Glenda] Moore or [Jonathan] Ferrell or McBride as something other than an amalgam of suspicions? The raging debates over racial profiling forced police departments to confront the question of what constitutes reasonable suspicion, but at a time when the lines between police authority and that of the common civilian are increasingly blurred, those concerns have been partially privatized. Self-defense is now a matter of interpretation, divining the truth of what we see when we look at another person.
But how much blame lies with Michigan’s Stand Your Ground law? Wafer has already been charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter. Bridgette Dunlap argues that SYG – while a “terrible law” – still doesn’t allow people to shoot first and ask questions later:
The right to self-defense allows a person to use deadly force if she reasonably believes it is necessary to prevent an imminent use of deadly force by an aggressor – but she has a duty to retreat rather than use force if it is safe to do so in most states. What Stand Your Ground laws do is remove the duty to retreat when attacked. That’s it. They do not give you a right to attack when you are not in imminent danger.
In the McBride case, the law that would apply is technically not Michigan’s SYG but the state’s “Castle law,” which authorizes the use of force without any duty to retreat at one’s home. (Not having to retreat in one’s home has long been the standard; almost all states have Castle laws.) However, the Castle law will also be to no avail if Wafer did not have a reasonable fear of imminent death, severe bodily injury, or sexual assault. The facts are unclear and may never be known, but it is hard to imagine any jury would believe that a 5’4” woman knocking on a locked door would cause a reasonable fear of imminent death. So it was unreasonable to suggest SYG would apply to those facts.
The Nation has claimed that “due to similar Stand Your Ground laws in Michigan as in Florida, it’s possible [McBride’s killer] may never be charged with any crime.” Actually, we should have expected the shooter would be charged. This demonstrates a misunderstanding of SYG laws generally, and Michigan’s specifically. … Stand Your Ground is relevant here to the extent that it has exacerbated the general gun-carrying culture in the United States and altered the public understanding of self-defense. Multiple studies have shown that states that pass SYG laws experience significant increases in homicide. They do not see significant increases in justifiable homicides. This suggests that the problem is what people think SYG does more than what it actually does, which is provide a defense to homicide.
The Dish 