Stand Your Ground Policy

Stand Your Ground Policy

Introduction

According to the 'Stand Your Ground' policy, a person has the legal right to use deadly force to defend himself when a threat on his life is imminent. The law is starkly similar to the 'Castle Doctrine' which grants the legal right to a person to defend himself in life-threatening situations when he is on his property. However, the Stand your Ground policy applies in any situation and practically anywhere so that a person who feels that his life is threatened by someone, such as a teenager across the street, may as easily and casually shoot them to death and then plead innocent under the law (Wible, 2012).

Discussion

When seen from the point of view of the public, the Stand Your Ground law is that it is the perfect weapon to strike fear into the hearts of criminals and murderers. This is because the law practically grants civilians a carte blanche whereby they can legally justify the use of deadly and lethal force when threatened by them. In clearer words, the law makes every civilian a vigilante who can directly contribute towards reducing crimes (Fullard, 2013). Therefore, criminals would be forced to think twice before committing a crime out of fear for their lives.

However, ever since it was passed and adopted by several American states, the law has been shrouded in controversy - controversies that have mostly been linked with dubious deaths where the killer has cited the Stand Your Ground Law to justify killing an unarmed man in cold blood (Campbell & Ohm, 2008). As a result, the law has taken a lot of flak from civil and human rights advocates while key political figures have as fervently defended it. Herein lies a major policy problem,

“In a country where every civilian is permitted under the Constitution to bear and carry arms, the Stand Your Ground law can be used as the perfect weapon to promote communal conflict and enmity, religious discrimination, and racial hatred, and then justify it under the law.”

Policy Recommendations

Recommendation 1: Use of reasonable force

The 'use of deadly force' clause should be replaced with 'use of reasonable force' and another clause should be added in the policy which iterates that taking the life of another person is strictly forbidden.

Recommendation 2: 5-year Imprisonment

In the event that the life of a person is taken using deadly force, the killer will be sentenced to spend 5 years in a state penitentiary.

Recommendation 3: Eyewitness Accounts

The 5-year imprisonment sentence can only be prevented if three independent witnesses can be presented to the court, all of whom were present at the time of the incident. All three witnesses should present an eyewitness account of the incident and prove that the killer defended himself in a life-threatening situation. If the opposition can present at least one witness who claims that the killer's life was not threatened, then the 5-year imprisonment sentence will stand.

Strengths and Weaknesses of the Plan Alternatives

Recommendation 1: Use of reasonable force

Strength

A major strength of this recommendation is ...