Analyzing the Stand Your Ground Law Essay

This case is one that changed the way the United States Police forces will work forever. Every human in the world has natural born rights. Even people who have been arrested have rights, ‘The rights of the accused’. These rights are the main point of this court case.

The basis of criminal justice in the United States is one founded on both the rights of the individual and the democratic order of the people. Evinced through the myriad forms whereby liberty and equity marry into the mores of society to form the ethos of a people. However, these two systems of justice are rife with conflicts too. With the challenges of determining prevailing worth in public order and individual rights coming down to the best service of justice for society. Bearing a perpetual eye to their manifestations by the truth of how "the trade-off between freedom and security, so often proposed so seductively, very often leads to the loss of both" (Hitchens, 2003, para. 5).

The Stand Your Ground Laws are becoming a hot topic in today’s news. Headlines are flooded with stories about cases around the country. These laws surround everyone from your everyday citizens to prominent sports figures and entertainers. The Stand Your Ground laws provide individuals with certain rights to protect themselves in events where they may feel threatened. It is also known as the Castle Rule, most of the United States have adopted some form of this law to protect its’ residents who may feel the need to use self-defense in situations where they may feel threatened. These laws spread quickly around the country since Florida passed the first laws in 2005. The law in most states would suggest that a person attempt to retreat

The criminal justice system used today is to follow principles that protect and establish equality for all and while the United States criminal justice system may strive to follow these right of the people, but unfortunately, this is where the system falls short of fundamental American principles. Repeatedly the criminal justice system does the adverse of what it’s supposed to do. It does not protect the many liberties the people should have. Some may argue that the criminal justice system is indeed fair for

The moral and ethical debate on the sentencing and enforcement of capital punishment has long baffled the citizens and governing powers of the United States. Throughout time, the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, and the vast majority beliefs of Americans, have been in a constant state of perplexity. Before the 1960s, the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution were interpreted as permitting the death penalty. However, in the early 1960s, it was suggested that the death penalty was a "cruel and unusual" punishment and therefore unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. Many argue that capital punishment is an absolute necessity, in order to deter crime, and to ‘make things right’ following a heinous crime of murder. Despite the belief that capital punishment may seem to be the only tangible, permanent solution to ending future capital offenses, the United States should remove this cruel and unnecessary form of punishment from our current judicial systems.

On February 26, 2012, an apparently innocent teenager was shot as he walked home through his neighborhood late at night. The Trayvon Martin killing and trial has recently been one of the primary topics covered by the media in America. The response to the news coverage of the case has been staggering. Students have organized hoodie marches and created Facebook groups to protest the unjustified murder of the young man. However, is the American public as well informed as it pretends to be? Americans have an unsettling susceptibility to manipulation from the media. In 1991, a similar event occurred in the case of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, where Supreme Court nominee, Clarence Thomas, had his personal affairs put on display for

This paper will be covering the controversial case of the shooting of Trayvon Martin at the hands of George Zimmerman. This was a polarizing trial for it pitted gun rights activists against gun-control activists and people who were generally against the new gun rhetoric that is in Florida. George Zimmerman was the neighborhood watch for the gated community and would always do his job diligently. However, one night he witnessed someone in a grey hoodie walking on the sidewalk wearing a hoodie. Zimmerman thought this person was suspicious and continued to follow him. After Zimmerman called in that he was following this individual, he was told not to leave his vehicle. Instead, he followed the person into who knows where and the rest of the story is up for debate. The defense team stated that Trayvon had jumped out of the bushes and begun to attack Zimmerman violently to the point where he felt that his life was in danger. The prosecution believed that Zimmerman had initiated a fight with Trayvon and he was at the mercy of Zimmerman at gunpoint for a significant amount of time.

Few in this country would argue with the fact that the United States criminal justice system possesses discrepancies which adversely affect Blacks in this country. Numerous studies and articles have been composed on the many facets in which discrimination, or at least disparity, is obvious. Even whites are forced to admit that statistics indicate that the Black community is disproportionately affected by the American legal system. Controversy arises when the issue of possible causes of, and also solutions to, these variations are discussed. It’s not just black versus white, it is white versus white, and white versus oriental, whatever the case may be, and it is not justice. If we see patterns then the judges should have the authority to say something. Jury nullifications cannot be overturned regardless of the cause. Exclusionary rule, according to CULS (2010) – Prevents the government from using most evidence gathered in violation of U.S. Constitution; like unreasonable search and seizure (Fourth Amendment).

In today’s hot topic news there is constant issues with the Stand Your Ground Law. The headlines, television, and social media are overflowing with cases about shootings all around the country. The Stand Your Ground Law creates immunity for an individual who uses deadly force under the belief that he or she is threatened by another person. This law is also called the Castle Rule. Most of the states in the U.S. have adopted some type of form of this law to protect its residents who may feel the need to use self defense in situations where they may feel threatened. This has mainly became a race issue between white police officers and African American citizens. A solution that we can use to help solve a lot of the crimes that associates with the

Michael Brown in Ferguson, Eric Garner in Staten Island, Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Walter Scott in North Charleston and, most recently, Freddie Gray in Baltimore have dominated the headlines this entire school year. These men and their stories provide the basis for claims of racially discriminatory treatment of African Americans at the hands of the police. It is true that each of the stories surrounding these men is different, but the one unifying theme is that police around the country are interpreting our Constitutional rights in a way that is insufficient to protect African Americans and the population in general. This paper will explore one Constitutional right— the 4th Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizures--and examine how one Supreme Court decision that narrowed the scope of the 4th Amendment and unintentionally created a mechanism by which the rights of citizens could be unfairly impeded by police.

To begin, what is the “Stand Your Ground Law”? Well many states such as: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia have stand your ground laws which state that individuals do not have to retreat before using force in a self- defense situation or many states have laws that are remarkably similar to stand your ground laws. Stand Your Ground laws started in 2005 when Florida was the first state that passed the stand your ground law which basically allowed individuals to stand their ground instead of fleeing or retreating if they believed

To be specific, the occurrence of the Treyvon Martin shooting impacted the lives of many, and opened the door to many conversations. This event made Americans realize that racial profiling was still at the forefront of America’s issues. Treyvon Martin, an African American bystander, was shot down by a neighborhood watchman who was part of a watch group (Ortiz 717). Now, many debated whether or not George Zimmerman, the perpetrator, was racially profiling Treyvon. This sparked the debate towards the subject of discrimination and led to new topics that included

To look closely at many of the mechanisms in American society is to observe the contradiction between constitutional equality and equality in practice. Several of these contradictions exist in the realm of racial equality. For example, Black s often get dealt an unfair hand in the criminal justice system. In The Real War on Crime, Steven Donziger explains,

Kaepernick began his silent, kneeling protest at the beginning of last season, not as an assault against the United States military or the flag but as a dissent against a system that has, with a great degree of consistency, failed to hold accountable police who kill unarmed citizens. Since he did this, forty-one unarmed individuals have been fatally shot by police in the United States, twelve of them African-American, according to a database maintained by the Washington Post. The city of St. Louis recently witnessed three days of protests after the acquittal of Jason Stockley, the former officer who, while still working for the city’s police force, fatally shot Anthony Smith, an eighteen-year-old African-American motorist who had led officers on a chase. Stockley emerged from his vehicle, having declared that he would “kill the motherfucker,” then proceeded to fire five rounds into the car. Later, a firearm was found on the seat of Smith’s car, but the weapon bore only Stockley’s DNA. The issue is not imaginary.

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance, which requires a permit for parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest (53).