ALEC, Stand-Your-Ground Laws, Trayvon Martin Murder. What can be done about it?

[Peter Lemkin]

Time to Repeal ALEC/NRA Stand Your Ground Laws

by Brendan Fischer July 15, 2013 - 8:54am
Topics: Politics

Projects: ALEC Exposed


Share thisThe acquittal of George Zimmerman for killing unarmed high-schooler Trayvon Martin serves as a reminder of the continuing inequities in America's criminal justice system -- and might be the impetus to repeal a law like "Stand Your Ground," which was adopted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and subsequently spread across the country. Stand Your Ground was part of the jury instructions in Zimmerman's criminal trial, and it could again come into play if Trayvon's family brings a civil suit.
"This is another tragedy for Black families everywhere, and another instance of how law enforcement and our criminal justice system routinely fail Black people and communities," said Rashad Robinson, Director of Color of Change.
"What the verdict says, to the astonishment of tens of millions of us, is that you can go looking for trouble in Florida, with a gun and a great deal of racial bias, and you can find that trouble, and you can act upon that trouble in a way that leaves a young man dead, and none of it guarantees that you will be convicted of a crime," writes Andrew Cohen in The Atlantic.

Jury Instructions Included Stand Your Ground

In 2012, the killing of Trayvon Martin acutely focused attention on Stand Your Ground laws, which give criminal and civil immunity to a person who claims they use deadly force because they allege a reasonable fear of harm. Because of the law, Sanford Police initially declined to arrest Zimmerman because they apparently agreed it was "reasonable" to feel threatened after stalking an unarmed African-American teenager returning from a trip to buy Skittles and iced tea.
Some have claimed that Stand Your Ground played no role after Zimmerman was eventually arrested -- he and his lawyers relied on Florida's lenient self defense statutes -- but the jury instructions invoked the Stand Your Ground protections by stating he had no "duty to retreat" from the situation:

"If George Zimmerman was not engaged in an unlawful activity and was attacked in any place where he had a right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he reasonably believed that it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony."

This language is nearly identical to that in the Florida Stand Your Ground law and the ALEC "model" legislation. We cannot know if the outcome would have been different had the six jurors been instructed differently -- but we do know that Stand Your Ground played a role in the case, even after Zimmerman's arrest.

Law Could Also Be Applied in Civil Lawsuit

And Stand Your Ground could still come into play.
If, as expected, Martin's family brings a civil suit against Zimmerman seeking damages for wrongful death, he could still try to invoke the law's protections. The Stand Your Ground law provides potential immunity not only in criminal prosecutions brought by the state, but also civil lawsuits filed by a person's family.
What's more, if the court sides with Zimmerman's Stand Your Ground claim in the civil case, the law would actually require Martin's family to pay Zimmerman's legal fees.

"The Poison of Stand Your Ground Was from ALEC"

As the Center for Media and Democracy (publishers of ALECexposed.org) uncovered, ALEC adopted Stand Your Ground as a "model" for other states in early 2005, just months after the NRA pushed it through Florida's legislature (with then-state legislator Marco Rubio voting in favor).
The NRA boasted that its lobbyist's presentation at a 2005 ALEC meeting "was well-received," and the corporations and state legislators on the Criminal Justice Task Force voted unanimously to approve the bill as an ALEC model, under the name the "Castle Doctrine Act." At the time, Wal-Mart, the nation's largest seller of rifles, was the corporate co-chair of the Task Force. Since becoming an ALEC model, twenty-six states have passed laws that contain provisions identical or similar to the ALEC legislation. ALEC called the legislation one of its "successes."
(See this infographic showing the connections between ALEC, the NRA, and Stand Your Ground.)
With this revelation, the spotlight turned on ALEC as never before, with the public soon becoming aware of ALEC's role in advancing an array of reactionary bills, including legislation that makes it harder to vote, criminalizes immigrants, destroys unions, protects corporations from civil liability, thwarts environmental regulations, and cuts holes in the social safety net -- all while the organization enjoys tax-exempt "charitable" status.
In response to public criticism and a campaign led by Color of Change, along with CMD, Common Cause, Progress Now and People for the American Way, at least 49 corporations, including General Motors, General Electric, Amazon.com, and Coca-Cola, have severed ties with ALEC.
In April 2012, ALEC disbanded the task force that had promoted Stand Your Ground and disavowed its gun bills, but the damage has already been done: laws influenced by ALEC's "model" Stand Your Ground law remain on the books in twenty six states, and ALEC has done nothing to promote their repeal.
On Sunday, Urban League President Marc Morial renewed calls to focus attention on ALEC.
"There needs to be sunlight on what they're doing, which what they're doing is creating model legislation and spread the poison of Stand Your Ground all over the nation."
"It's important to recognize a year ago when there was some sunlight on ALEC, many of us called for many of its major supporters to withdraw," he said on MSNBC's Up With Chris Kornacki. "I want to renew that call this morning, because the poison of the Stand Your Ground law was from ALEC."

ALEC Has Backed More Than Stand Your Ground

The Trayvon Martin tragedy has never been exclusively about Stand Your Ground laws. The case has captured the nation's attention because it serves as a reminder of the persistent racial inequities that continue to plague the country, such as the too-common presumption that young black men are criminals and the ways the criminal justice system persistently fails communities of color.
And ALEC's connections to those issues are not limited to Stand Your Ground. The group was instrumental in pushing "three strikes" and "truth in sentencing" laws that in recent decades have helped the U.S. incarcerate more human beings than any other country, with people of color making up 60 percent of those incarcerated. At the same time ALEC was pushing laws to put more people in prison for more time, they were advancing legislation to warehouse them in for-profit prisons, which would benefit contemporaneous ALEC members like the Corrections Corporation of America.
ALEC has also played a key role in the spread of restrictive voter ID legislation that would make it harder to vote for as many as ten million people nationwide -- largely people of color and students -- who do not have the state-issued identification cards the laws require.
ALEC began to focus on voter ID shortly after the 2008 elections, where high turnout from college students and voters of color helped sweep America's first black president into office. Soon after those elections, ALEC began promoting the myth of voter fraud (with "Preventing Election Fraud" as a cover story on the Inside ALEC magazine), and ALEC corporations and politicians voted in 2009 for "model" voter ID legislation. Bills reflecting ALEC's model Voter ID Act were subsequently introduced in a majority of states.
In some states, voter ID restrictions were blocked by the Department of Justice under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act -- but the U.S. Supreme Court recently held that states subject to Section 5 need not seek pre-approval from the federal government before changing voting rules. After the Court's decision in that case, Shelby County v. Holder, states with a history of legalized discrimination quickly rushed to pass and implement ALEC-inspired voter ID laws.
But "our country has changed," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the decision.

Stand Your Ground Victims Show Need for Repeal

"Were it not for Trayvon's family and countless supporters taking action, Zimmerman would have never faced a single question about his actions at all," Robinson says.
The persistence of Trayvon Martin's family eventually attracted national attention to the case, and only after a massive public outcry did Florida law enforcement reconsider their Stand Your Ground assessment, appointing a special prosecutor and eventually arresting Zimmerman six weeks after the shooting.
Most victims where Stand Your Ground has been invoked have not had the same level of press attention as the Martin case. There is the case of 17-year-old Jordan Davis, for example, who was shot and killed in Florida after a disagreement with 46-year-old Michael Dunn, who thought Davis and his friends were playing their music too loud; Davis was black and Dunn was white, and Dunn plans to invoke Stand Your Ground at trial. And the disparities in how Stand Your Ground are applied become clear by looking at the case of Marissa Alexander, also in Florida, who was convicted of 20 years for firing a warning shot after being threatened by her husband, who has a history of domestic violence.
Justice under Stand Your Ground laws have been anything but equal. The Tampa Bay Times found that people who killed a black person walked free 73 percent of the time, while those who killed a white person went free 59 percent of the time. Other studies have shown that Stand Your Ground is more likely to be applied in cases of white-on-black crime, and in May, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights launched an investigation into racial bias and Stand Your Ground laws.
ALEC is now trying to distance itself from its role in pushing legislation like Stand Your Ground and the laws that promote mass incarceration and voter suppression, but their position is not credible until they work to repeal these damaging policies.

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ALEC "celebrates" its 40th Anniversary in Chicago on August 7-9. Keep an eye on ALECexposed.org for details.




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The secretive right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has used its network of money and influence to push for more pro-gun state laws like Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, which initially helped shield George Zimmerman from prosecution for the Trayvon Martin killing and was later used in the jury instructions at his trial. We discuss ALEC and the "Stand Your Ground" laws with Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, and publisher of PRWatch.org and ALECExposed.org. She formerly served as deputy assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration's Department of Justice, where she handled national gun policy. "Even though it's popular wisdom to say 'Stand Your Ground' was not an issue in this case, in fact it was," Graves says. "The exact instruction to the jury was that Zimmerman had no duty to retreat and had a right to stand his ground and meet force with force including deadly force. Those jury instructions incorporate the Stand Your Ground law." Graves adds that the Stand Your Ground law could now threaten efforts by Martin's family to pursue a civil lawsuit against Zimmerman: "[The law] says the family of a shooting victim must pay the shooter's legal fees and lost wages if the judge in a civil case grants that George Zimmerman had immunity because he had a right to stand his ground and that he was in essence justified in the killing. Basically the NRA and ALEC put their thumb on the scale of justice in favor of the shooter."


Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: The killing of Trayvon Martin is not just about race, it's also about the regulation of guns in this country. We turn now to look at Florida's Stand Your Ground law. Under the Stand Your Ground law, which was approved in 2005 and has been copied in some form by about 30 other states, people fearing for their lives can use deadly force without having to retreat from a confrontation, even when it's possible. While George Zimmerman's attorneys did not use the Strand Your Ground defense, the Florida law impacted the instructions to the jury. The law came up Sunday at one of the New York protests against the verdict in Zimmerman's trial. This is a demonstrator named Jonathan addressing the crowd.

JONATHAN: [echoed by the People's Mic] ALEC is a political lobbying group. They write laws and give them to Republicans. Stand Your Ground was written by ALEC. ALEC is funded by the Koch brothers. Who is funding us? All this money in this society, who is funding justice? I am Jonathan. I have two sons. I want my sons to live.

AMY GOODMAN: For more on the Stand Your Ground laws and how the secretive right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, has used its network of money and influence to push for the law, we're joined, in addition to Phillip Agnew and Reverend Jesse Jackson, by Lisa Graves, via Democracy Now! video stream. Lisa is executive director for the Center for Media and Democracy, and publisher of PRWatch.org and ALECExposed.org, formerly served as deputy assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration's Department of Justice, where she handled national gun policy, and was the managing editor of the National Integrated Firearms Violence Reduction Strategy. She has written extensively about the history of the NRA-ALEC gun agenda.
Lisa, welcome back to Democracy Now! It's great to have you with us. Can you talk about Stand Your Ground? Most people probably think that that was the defense of George Zimmerman in the trial, though, in fact, it wasn't. Why is it significant?
LISA GRAVES: Well, even though the defense in the Zimmerman case did not ask for the legal grant of immunity that that law would have potentially given him, the fact is that the NRA, through changing that law in Florida, through getting Stand Your Ground enacted in Florida in 2005, got the jury instructions changed. And so, even though it's popular wisdom to say that that law was not at issue in this case, in fact it was, because the exact instruction to the jury was that Zimmerman had "no duty to retreat" and had a "right to stand his ... ground and meet force with force, including deadly force." That's a direct quote from the jury instructions. Those jury instructions incorporate the Stand Your Ground law. And so, I think that's significant.
It's also significant that that law, which affects the definition of "justifiable homicide," has been enacted in state after state in more than two dozen states at the urging of the NRA and at the urging of the American Legislative Exchange Council. And we've also seen during this time an increase in the number of claims of justifiable homicide.
But that's not all the law does. That law, which was secretly voted on at a closed-door meeting in Texas in 2005, after it passed in Florida, ratified by an ALEC committee that was headed by Wal-Mart, who is the largest seller of ammunition in the country, retail ammunition in the worldthat law actually also makes it extremely difficult for families to get justice in the civil courts, because what it actually doesand I think this is fundamentally immoralis it says that the family of a shooting victim must pay the shooter's legal fees and lost wages if the judge in a civil case grantsbasically grants that George Zimmerman had immunity because he had a right to stand his ground and that hethat he was, in essence, justified in the killing. And so, basically, the NRA and ALEC put their thumb on the scale of justice in favor of the shooter. The notion that a grieving family would be required to pay the killer of their child if they don't prevail in that civil suit, if the court rules on Stand Your Ground in favor of George Zimmerman, is just astonishing to me.
But it already, I think, affected this case, because clearly the jury was instructed that George Zimmerman had a duty to not retreat and hadhad no duty to retreat and had a right to stand his groundthose are the express wordseven though a law enforcement agency urged George Zimmerman to stay in his car and not pursue Trayvon Martin. That night in Florida, one man, in my view, was looking for trouble, and one kid was just looking for home. And that kid was trying to find a way home to his dad's house, but another man armed with a deadly weapon ignored the police dispatcher request that he stay in this car. But he didn't. And, in fact, Florida law, and the law in dozens of states in the country, has been changed to say that people like Zimmerman have no duty to retreat and have a right to stand their ground. And that puts many, many people in this country in danger.
AMY GOODMAN: Just let me read a little bit more the instructions to the jury in Zimmerman's trial. They were told, quote, "If George Zimmerman was not engaged in an unlawful activity and was attacked in any place where he had a right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he reasonably believed that it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony." That is what the jury was instructed. Now, this is very significant, what you're saying, Lisa, because what we understand are the two legal resources that can now be had are possibly the Justice Department, though Eric Holder saying it would take a very high bar to bring civil rights charges, and the family of Trayvon Martin suing George Zimmerman. You're actually saying that under this law, that if they do not win that suit, they could be forced to pay the legal bills of George Zimmerman.
LISA GRAVES: That's correct. And I think it's fundamentally immoral. And even though the defense attorneys did not ask for a grant of immunity in the criminal trial, there is nothing that precludes them from making that request in the civil trial, and there's nothing necessarily that would preclude the judge from granting that request. That's what NRA got the law changed to be in Florida, and that's what ALEC ratified the lawyou know, ratified as being a model bill for states across the country. And even though ALEC has tried to disavow its role, those laws are still on the books, and those laws remain in effect, and they put, I think, everyone in danger.
AMY GOODMAN: Right in the heat of all of the Trayvon Martin case, I want to turn to a clip from the NRA's annual meeting in April: NRA chief lobbyist Chris Cox vowing to defend Stand Your Ground laws.

CHRIS COX: The fact that other groups and other business entities and others haveare supportive of that concept as a constitutional freedom, whether they're concerned about it from a Second Amendment standpoint or an economic freedom standpoint, that's notthat's not my position toyou can call them and ask themthat's not my position to take or debate for them. But we stand in strong defense of any effort to allow law-abiding, good people to defend themselves against criminal attack. And so, we don't, you know, apologize for that. It's not a problem in this country. We will defend our efforts. We willwe will defend those laws. And if others want to join that fight, we welcome them.

AMY GOODMAN: That was the chief lobbyist for the NRA, Chris Cox. I wanted to ask Reverend Jesse Jacksonyou live in a city of great gun violence. What, June 17th, gun violence was rampant. Just looking at one headline over the weekend, with the shootings of at least 36 people, seven were killed, the violence following the six-month anniversary of the Newtown massacre. I mean, George Zimmerman, if he hadn't had a gun that night, who knows if he wouldn't have even stepped out of his car? Maybe he would not have had the courage without a gun to do that, and certainly would not have been able to kill Trayvon Martin.
REV. JESSE JACKSON: More ignorance, more fear, more guns, more violence. In Chicago, over the first six months, a thousand people have been shot or killed the first six months of this year. In Chicago, there are no gun ranges nor gun manufacturers. Guns are made in the suburbs and downstate, so guns are coming in. We know where the guns are sold. We know the gun route. We know them. We know the store that sells half of all the guns across street and city line. Guns in, drugs in from across the border, jobs out, and the homes foreclosed. In some sense, violence becomes like the mosquito, but the swamp of unemployment, poverty, expulsion from school and the like, lends itself to a kind ofthere is no plan for reconstruction. And so gun violence is an evidence of a deeper problem.
AMY GOODMAN: And final word to Phillip Agnew. What does your T-shirtyour hat says "power." Your T-shirt says?
PHILLIP AGNEW: Mm-hmm. "Can We Dream Together?" I don't know if you can see that.
AMY GOODMAN: We are moving into the 50we are moving into the 50th anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech, Washington, D.C., of course, August 28th on the Mall, 1963. There is going to be a large gathering. Many are saying that Trayvon's parents will be there, and people are going to coalesce around the killing of Trayvon Martin as well as the 50th anniversary of this historic address.
PHILLIP AGNEW: Mm-hmm. I think we have history as our compass, as I said before, and it's behooving upon us to build upon that history and really build something new upon what has been built. What we see with what ALEC has done, what the NRA has done, what the Republicans have done and what the Democrats have allowed to be done is a rollback of our civil rights and a dehumanizing of young people. And so, what we must do as young people is take charge of our future, take the torchif it isn't being handed, take itand get ready to move in a way that allows us to inherit America that looks like the America that we want.
AMY GOODMAN: Phillip Agnew
PHILLIP AGNEW: When Dr. King spoke about it

[Tracy Riddle]

I live in a rural area, and I'm a pretty strong supporter of the right to own guns, but these Stand Your Ground laws are ripe for abuse. They are going to be exploited by self-appointed vigilantes like Zimmerman.

[Peter Lemkin]

Yeah, all one has to do is say they THOUGHT they were in danger of harm...and that's a sure way to be acquitted of murder, even if you planned to murder or were overly fearful of someone who presented no danger or anything in between. Horrible laws - a reversion to the era of the 'ol Wild West.

[Albert Doyle]

Trayvon isn't the first black to be lynched in the south with the ghoulish casual approval of the "law".



The case was thrown by the prosecutors because what was really on trial was the state's "Stand Your Ground" law. A pure and total conflict of interest. When the law is justifying the murder of wrongly targeted, innocent 17 year old boys there's something seriously wrong with the law. But, hey, America is a country that pardons war criminal presidents - so what is another dead N*****?

[Charles Drago]

Yeah, all one has to do is say they THOUGHT they were in danger of harm...and that's a sure way to be acquitted of murder, even if you planned to murder or were overly fearful of someone who presented no danger or anything in between. Horrible laws - a reversion to the era of the 'ol Wild West.

Next, it will be determined that a gun is a person and thus entitled to ... well, you know.

[Albert Doyle]

The reason the state threw the Trayvon Martin case is because Zimmerman represented police authority even if by proxy.



This is the new American order after Bush.



It's very scary that you could be judged by that Florida idiot jury brainwashed by southern politics.



This is a case that begged for federal intervention but there you have the phony change president who kept Guantanamo open making excuses for the other side.