No Retreat: The Dangers of Stand Your Ground
Reveal
The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX
4.7 • 8.7K Ratings
🗓️ 30 July 2022
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012 marked the beginning of a new chapter of the struggle for civil rights in America. A mostly White jury acquitted George Zimmerman of the teen’s murder, in part because Florida’s stand your ground law permits a person to use deadly force in self-defense – even if that person could have safely retreated. Nationwide protests after the trial called for stand your ground laws to be repealed and reformed. But instead, stand your ground laws have expanded to 38 states.
Reveal reporter Jonathan Jones talks with Byron Castillo, a maintenance worker in North Carolina who was shot in the chest after mistakenly trying to get into the wrong apartment for a repair. While Castillo wound up out of work and deep in debt, police and prosecutors declined to pursue charges against the shooter, who said he was afraid someone was trying to break into his apartment. Researchers have found that states that enacted stand your ground laws have seen an increase in homicides – one study estimated that roughly 700 more people die in the U.S. every year because of stand your ground laws.
Opponents of stand your ground laws call them by a different name: “kill at will” laws. Jones speaks to lawmakers like Stephanie Howse, who fought against stand your ground legislation as an Ohio state representative, saying such laws put Black people's lives at risk. Howse and other Democratic lawmakers faced off against Republican politicians, backed by pro-gun lobbyists, intent on passing a stand your ground bill despite widespread opposition from civil rights groups and law enforcement.
Modern-day stand your ground laws started in Florida. Reveal reporter Nadia Hamdan explores a 2011 road rage incident that wound up leading to an expansion of the law. She looks at how one case led Florida lawmakers, backed by the National Rifle Association, to enact a law that spells out that prosecutors, not defendants, have the burden of proof when claiming someone was not acting in self-defense when committing an act of violence against another individual.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. |
| 0:05.9 | I'm Al Leighton. |
| 0:08.1 | It's February 26, 2012 in Sanford, Florida. |
| 0:13.1 | Sanford Police Department. |
| 0:14.3 | Why is being recorded? |
| 0:15.4 | We've had some break-ins in my neighborhood, and there's a real suspicious guy. |
| 0:19.4 | This guy looks like he's up to no good or he's on drugs or something. |
| 0:24.0 | George Zimmerman, who was a part of a neighborhood watch, |
| 0:27.2 | spotted 17-year-old Trayvon Martin coming home from a convenience store. |
| 0:32.4 | Zimmerman was armed and he followed him. |
| 0:35.3 | Are you following him? |
| 0:37.2 | Yeah. |
| 0:37.7 | Okay, we don't need you to do that. |
| 0:39.9 | A few minutes after that interaction with a 911 operator, Trayvon Martin was dead. |
| 0:46.8 | According to Zimmerman, Martin punched him in the face and banged his head against the |
| 0:51.1 | concrete. |
| 0:52.3 | He says he shot Martin in the chest in self-defense. And of course, |
| 0:57.1 | we'll never know Martin's side of the story. |
| 0:59.1 | We are Trayvon Martin. And just like that, it seemed like the whole world changed. |
| 1:17.9 | Arguably, Trayvon Martin's death marked the beginning of a new chapter in the struggle for civil rights in America. |
| 1:24.2 | A nearly all-white jury acquitted George Zimmerman of second-degree murder and manslaughter. |
| 1:29.6 | One juror told CNN's Anderson Cooper that one of the reasons for that acquittal was Florida's Stand Your Ground law. |
... |
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