NEW ORLEANS — In four instances this week, innocent people have been shot for making a simple mistake. It’s renewed discussion around "stand your ground" laws.
In Kansas City, Missouri, 16-year-old Ralph Yarl was shot in the head when he rang the wrong doorbell trying to pick up his siblings.
In Upstate New York, 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis was shot and killed while backing out of a driveway at the wrong address.
In Austin, Texas, two high-school cheerleaders were shot after trying to get in a car they thought belonged to a friend.
And in North Carolina, a 6-year-old girl and her parents were shot by a neighbor retrieving a basketball that rolled into his yard.
In all four cases, the shooters have been charged with serious crimes. And there are now renewed discussions about so-called "stand your ground" laws.
A bit of history: Early self-defense laws, often called Castle Doctrines, allowed legal defense for those using force or violence for self-defense inside their homes, but not outside the home.
In 2005, Florida became the first to expand its laws to allow force as self-defense in any location.
Now, most states have some version of those "stand your ground" laws. However, some states impose a "duty to retreat," or to leave if there’s any way to avoid the threat instead of resorting to violence.
In Louisiana, there is no duty to retreat.
The state law for justifiable homicide states: “A person who is not engaged in unlawful activity and who is in a place where he or she has a right to be shall have no duty to retreat before using deadly force as provided for in this Section, and may stand his or her ground and meet force with force.”
However, the threat has to be to your car, home, or business. You also have to believe you’re in imminent danger of being killed or severely hurt, and that deadly force is necessary to save yourself from that threat. Those beliefs also must be reasonable, under the law.
The defense is uncommon but has been used successfully. In 2019, in Ascension Parish, Jacob Westbrook was acquitted of murder after he stabbed a high school senior with a kitchen knife inside a home.
Whether "stand your ground" laws will apply to any of the four cases we’ve heard about in other states this week is up to the courts.
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