Stand your ground in Charleston, S.C., - Not against your abuser

Prosecutors in Charleston, South Carolina are taking a hard line in domestic violence cases, just not one that is right or just.  Think Progress reports that the prosecutor’s office in Charleston has decided to fight, over and over again, women using the state’s Stand Your Ground defense against domestic abusers.  According to them, you can stand your ground out in public and shoot a gun at strangers that you fear.  You can definitely stand your ground in your home and shoot at intruders (that’s the so-called Castle Doctrine), but you can’t stand your ground against someone you share the house with who is attacking you. Apparently, if you are a woman, you just have to take the beating, or take 20 years to life. Because the Castle Doctrine (the origin of self-defense that says you don’t have to flee your own home) doesn’t apply if it’s your husband or boyfriend who also lives in the house.  Then, you apparently have to flee. 

This makes no legal sense.  The only way it makes sense is when you consider that the prosecutors really, really don’t like men being shot by their spouses or boyfriends in their own homes.  Out in the yard, maybe, but not in their own home. That, they cannot abide. They can abide the man beating the hell out of the woman, but not the woman defending herself.

The prosecutor at issue, named Culver Kidd, made this statement in a case where Whitlee Jones had been beaten and dragged down the street by her hair by her boyfriend, someone called the police, she decided to quit him and get some of her things, then he came back and attacked her and she stabbed him.  Seems reasonable to me. It’s not a get out of jail free card.  What Stand Your Ground (or the Castle Doctrine of Self Defense, which should apply equally here) says is that you get to put on evidence that you reasonably feared for your life, and then if so, didn’t have the duty to retreat.  That’s it.  The defendant still has to prove she reasonably feared for her life and used reasonable force under the circumstances.  The prosecutor, Kidd, said this:  “(The Legislature’s) intent … was to provide law-abiding citizens greater protections from external threats in the form of intruders and attackers,” prosecutor Culver Kidd told the Post and Courier. “We believe that applying the statute so that its reach into our homes and personal relationships is inconsistent with (its) wording and intent.”

Nope,  not yours.  Stand Your Ground says nothing about internal versus external threats. It says that if you are in a place you have a lawful right to be (you aren’t breaking into a store and get shot at), then you have the right to defend yourself and don’t have to flee. That your attacker also has a right to be there is immaterial.  Most Stand Your Ground cases happen where both people have a right to be present (in public).  It seems that Mr. Kidd just doesn’t like women shooting or stabbing their boyfriends or husbands.  That’s all this could be.  Simple as that.  Because the legal explanation offered by the prosecutor makes no sense. It’s a travesty, and it needs to stop.  If anyone should be able to defend themselves, it’s women who are being abused in their own homes.

It's the prosecutorial logic behind the terrible injustice that kept Marissa Alexander behind bars for almost two years for firing a warning shot at her abusive mate, in her home, but was denied Stand Your Ground. She was convicted and given 20 years. The conviction has been overturned because the jury questions put the burden to prove self defense on her "beyond a reasonable doubt" which was too strong a standard. She's still been denied Stand Your Ground in the retrial, which is still wrong.