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- Title
The Distraction that Is Stand Your Ground.
- Authors
Santa Cruz, Katryna
- Abstract
Many critics of stand your ground law are motivated by the inaccurate belief that it gives Floridians a license to kill and a get-out-of-jail-free card before trial ever begins. This is a severe misinterpretation of Florida law. Stand your ground does not allow a person to kill anyone who makes him feel threatened, and it certainly does not grant defendants immunity from criminal prosecution based solely on their subjective fear of the victim. However, there still exists an aspect of stand your ground that is in obvious need of critical review and reform: self-defense jury instructions. This comment proposes that to function effectively and justly, Florida jurors acting as decision-makers in criminal trials must be reminded that they inadvertently operate with subconscious bias, and more importantly, that those biases have no place in the courtroom or in their verdict. Accordingly, in self-defense cases where race is at the heart of the issue, courts should refrain from using a color-blind approach--by banning discussions of race from the courtroom--and, instead, should adopt model jury instructions that explicitly prohibit race from being a part of the factual determination that the use of deadly force in self-defense was or was not reasonable.
- Subjects
FLORIDA; STAND your ground (Law); SELF-defense (Law); STATUTORY interpretation; JURY instructions; CRIMINAL trials
- Publication
FIU Law Review, 2020, Vol 14, Issue 1, p149
- ISSN
2643-7767
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.25148/lawrev.14.1.12