WASHINGTON - The mother of slain Florida teenager Trayvon Martin told a U.S. Senate panel that “stand-your ground” self-defense laws are confusing, open to abuse and should be changed.
“Trayvon was minding his own business” as he went to a store to buy a drink and candy, Sybrina Fulton said Tuesday during a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing in Washington. “He was not the criminal that the person who shot and killed him thought he was.”
Stand-your-ground laws let individuals use lethal force instead of retreating if they feel threatened with death or serious injury in public by another person. Similar laws have been adopted in 25 states in addition to Florida, said subcommittee Chairman Dick Durbin of Illinois.
Such laws have led to increases in homicides and shooting injuries without deterring crimes such as robbery and assault, Durbin, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, said. Studies show that shootings of black people by whites are more often ruled to be justified than shootings of white people by blacks, he said.
“These laws often go too far in encouraging confrontations that escalate into deadly violence,” Durbin said.
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said self-defense “is a bedrock liberty of every American” and such laws are the responsibility of state governments. The federal government should increase its prosecutions for illegal gun purchases and violent gun crimes, he said.
“The stand-your-ground law does not apply to aggressors,” Cruz said. “It is a defense that only, only, only applies to those who are the victims or potential victims of other violent aggressors.”
He also said some politicians are trying to exploit the Martin case “for agendas that have nothing to do with that young man who lost his life.”
The Senate panel also heard from Lucia McBath, mother of 17-year-old Jordan Davis, shot to death in Jacksonville, Fla., late last year.
“My son Jordan was shot and killed last November while sitting in the back seat of a friend’s car listening to loud music,” McBath said. “The man who killed him opened fire on four unarmed teenagers even as they tried to move out of harm’s way. That man was empowered by the stand your-ground statute.”
“This law declares open season on anyone that we don’t trust for reasons that we don’t even understand that don’t even have to be true,” McBath said.
McBath’s son was shot and killed in November 2012. Michael David Dunn is charged with first-degree murder in that case, according to the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville.
Dunn, who is white, is accused of firing on a vehicle carrying four black teenagers during a dispute over their loud music, killing Davis, according to the newspaper. Dunn said he saw a gun in their vehicle, but no gun was found, according to the paper. A trial is scheduled for next year.
Fulton’s 17-year-old son, Martin, was unarmed when he was shot dead in February 2012 in Sanford, Fla., by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood-watch volunteer who had followed him and told police the teenager was acting suspiciously. Martin was walking home from a convenience store.
Zimmerman, who was legally carrying a firearm, told police that when he got out of his truck, he was confronted and punched by Martin, and shot him in self-defense. Martin’s parents, and others, said Zimmerman racially profiled the black teen. Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder July 13.
Fulton said she wanted “to let you know how important it is that we amend this stand your-ground because it certainly did not work in my case. The person that shot and killed my son is walking the streets today, and this law does not work.”
“We need to do something about this law when our kids cannot feel safe in their own communities,” Fulton said.
The teenager’s father, Tracy Martin, told lawmakers in July that Congress should make it a crime to profile minors on the basis of race and then kill in self-defense. He spoke to the first meeting of the Congressional Caucus on Black Men and Boys.
Information for this article was contributed by Michael C. Bender and Heidi Przybyla of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 3 on 10/30/2013