Stand/Ground and Abused Women
Do abused women have a right to stand their ground in their own homes?
South Carolina has an expansive “stand your ground” law that “paves the way for someone to get immunity from prosecution by declaring they killed another person in self-defense…” and …as you know…progressives have been critical of these laws, arguing that they make it far too easy for violent people to deliberately provoke or escalate confrontations and then avoid prosecution when things get dicey…and there is some reason to think that such laws correlate with a rise in the murder rate.
There are also concerns that stand/ground laws are unfairly applied, due to massive racial disparities in who successfully invokes “stand your ground” to avoid punishment.
Now comes a reason for women to be especially concerned.
Writer Amanda Marcotte In Slate tells us that in South Carolina, prosecutors are trying to argue that a woman’s right to stand her ground in a domestic dispute is less than a man’s right to stand his ground with some stranger with whom he’s gotten into a fight.
Three South Carolina women have been “charged with murder during the past two years after stabbing a boyfriend or a roommate she said attacked her,” despite the existence of the state’s strong “stand your ground” law.
Take the case of Whitlee Jones, who killed her boyfriend Eric Lee…claimed she was acting in self-defense. Earlier that evening, a neighbor called the cops to report Lee assaulting Jones, saying she saw Lee pulling Jones down the street by her hair.
Ms. Jones fled the scene before the police arrived and returned later to fetch her belongings. Lee confronted her at the scene. She says he shook her, but prosecutors deny it. She stabbed him in the heart, killing him, and fled once more.
“Nearly two years later, a judge says that Jones, now 25, had a right to kill Lee under the S.C. Protection of Persons and Property Act, which allows people in certain situations to use force when faced with serious injury.”
But prosecutors are planning to fight the decision because, they argue, “stand your ground” laws should not cover domestic violence situations.
Now you might say Ms. Jones could have done more to avoid the confrontation with Mr. Lee. She…could have tried to get her stuff when Lee wasn’t home.
Yet South Carolina has allowed other people to argue self-defense under “stand your ground” in much more doubtful situations. “The law, for instance, has been used to protect a man who killed an innocent bystander while pointing his gun at several teens he called ‘women thugs.'”
The question of whether someone should have less right to protect herself against someone she knows than against a stranger is at the heart of this case.
When people share a home with the target of their force, they don’t have that “presumption” of fear, the law says.
The problem, of course, is that many women who live with abusers are, in fact, living in fear.
Women are 16 times more likely to be killed by a man they know than by a stranger.
In this specific case, neighbors called 911 just hours before the killing because they feared for Jones’s safety.
“Stand/Ground” laws are a scourge. They encourage people to escalate confrontations instead of leaving or summoning help.
Still, if a state insists on having them, they should be applied evenly and fairly.
Stand/Ground sure as hell shouldn’t allow men confronting strangers to have more rights than women facing down the dangers of domestic violence.
Ron Powell
07/06/2019 @ 11:43 am
This post seems familiar to me….
….And there is a plethora of Wolfman posts here at BindleSnitch….
Are you reposting material saved from OS?
Jonathan Wolfman
07/06/2019 @ 11:52 am
Yes, of course, often edited, at times updated.
koshersalaami
07/06/2019 @ 8:32 pm
I already knew a lot of this stuff, plus the volume is really high at the moment as you observed
Mrs Raptor
07/06/2019 @ 9:51 pm
20 years ago tomorrow… the last time I was abused by a partner… the last time my children were harmed by a partner. He’s being released on Monday and on Monday I become a “Dead woman walking” – I KNOW this because I’ve had to move multiple times due to HIM finding our address… I KNOW this because we’ve had to change our phone number multiple times due to him getting our phone number and making harassing calls threatening us… I KNOW this because on at least one occasion he’s PAID someone to attempt to kill not only me but also a child who hadn’t even been BORN yet when he went to prison. The state doesn’t care. I have to wonder if the state will CARE when he kills me.
Jonathan Wolfman
07/06/2019 @ 11:47 pm
This is why we must keep writing abt this.
Mrs Raptor
07/07/2019 @ 12:30 am
I know. I cannot shut up about domestic violence. I won’t shut up about it until my body no longer draws breath and my heart no longer beats.