Florida Man Uses Stand Your Ground Defense in Killing of Black Teen Over Loud Music

[Bazinga]

58. Likewise, the context is meaningless without the statistics.

Is it not more simplistic to say "Person X was acquitted for reason Y, therefore SYG is a bad thing"?

Statistics can't answer such broad questions as "is policy Z a good thing." We attack that question with smaller, testable questions using the data available. You have highlighted many of those questions, and they are all important when considering the effect of SYG. I was addressing one of those questions, the one that is most often cited as the infamous legacy of SYG, namely "Is there a racial disparity in the acquittal rates of SYG cases in Florida?" The answer to that question is a pretty resounding no, with the exception that the race of victim seems to play some statistically significant role.

Those other questions that you raised can be answered by restratifying the data to study the chosen variable. But the fact that other questions exist does not discount the results of the question I answered, and it definitely doesn't make them "meaningless." Perhaps answering one of your questions will elicit a mechanism for the disparity in victim race.

Question #3 from your post is, in my opinion, THE most important consequence of Florida's SYG law. It is here that the push to reform this law should concentrate. I support the idea of SYG policies over the alternative duty-to-retreat laws, but I don't think any killing, justified or not, should go without investigation. There is potential harm in prosecutors being able to second guess the split-second decisions of victims in life or death situations from the comfort of a court room, but there is absolutely no reason that we can't get as close as possible to the truth.