Indiana fatal shooting renews questions about stand-your-ground laws and their limits. Here’s what to know
By Danya Gainor, CNN
(CNN) — Maria Florinda Rios Perez De Velasquez’s mistaken arrival at the wrong Indiana address Wednesday cost her her life. As the house cleaner tried to enter the home she thought was scheduled for housekeeping that morning, the homeowner fatally shot her.
The incident is renewing questions about so-called stand-your-ground laws that can empower individuals to defend themselves, even with deadly force, if they feel threatened or in danger. But the statutes are very specific and the extent of their protection varies by state.
Under Indiana law, individuals may use reasonable force — including deadly force — to stop a person from unlawfully trying to enter their property. But prosecutors say the statute doesn’t apply to the homeowner’s actions Wednesday.
Here’s what you need to know about stand-your-ground laws.
Stand-your-ground laws can empower homeowners against intruders
Generally, stand-your-ground laws and “castle doctrines” can allow people to respond to threats or force without fear of criminal prosecution in any place where a person has the right to be.
The “castle doctrine” is the legal notion that your home is your castle, and you have the right to use lethal force to defend your home and not retreat. A number of states have enshrined the castle doctrine in statutory law, sometimes with slightly different guidelines for when deadly force can be used.
In contrast, stand-your-ground laws and policies say even when a person is outside their home, they can stay where they are without retreating, even if they can avoid the danger by retreating, according to University of California, Los Angeles, law professor Eugene Volokh.
These statutes deal with a very specific question, according to Volokh: If someone reasonably fears death, serious bodily injury, etc., but can avoid the danger with complete safety by retreating, can that person still stay where they are and use deadly force?
“They allow people to respond to threats of death, serious bodily injury, rape, and some other serious crimes with deadly force,” Volokh told CNN.
Even so, you “generally can’t use deadly force for self-defense in most states unless you reasonably believe that you’re facing the risk of death or serious bodily injury or some serious crime: rape, kidnapping or, in some states, robbery, burglary, or arson,” Volokh previously wrote on the subject.
Supporters of the laws, including the National Rifle Association, say they give people the right to protect themselves, no matter where they are. Critics say the laws encourage violence and allow for legal racial bias.
Most states have some version of the self-defense laws
The count of states with stand-your-ground doctrines depends on the criteria used to define them, because states word and even enforce the statutes differently.
At least 31 states, Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands recognize that “there is no duty to retreat in any place in which one is lawfully present or has the right to be,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Arkansas and Ohio became the latest states to enact the legislation in 2021.
In eight states — California, Colorado, Illinois, New Mexico, Oregon, Virginia, Vermont and Washington — that don’t have stand-your-ground laws, courts and jury instructions can allow people to use deadly force to defend themselves if they believe they are in serious danger, according to the NCSL.
At least 23 states have laws to protect people from being sued for damages by the person they defended themselves against, the NCSL says. Six states tip the scales in the other direction, allowing even a person who wasn’t charged with a crime or found to have acted in self-defense to be sued in civil court: Hawaii, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Dakota and Tennessee.
The law has long been used in legal battles across the country
In Florida, where the first stand-your-ground law was passed in 2005, it was used in the acquittal of George Zimmerman, who fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012 while he was walking home from a convenience store. Zimmerman’s supporters said he was exercising his Second Amendment right to bear arms and Florida’s stand-your-ground law gave him immunity.
Florida’s law allows people to meet “force with force” if they believe they or someone else is in danger of being seriously harmed by an assailant. Under the law, a person can use deadly force anywhere as long as he is not engaged in an unlawful activity, is being attacked in a place he has a right to be, and reasonably believes that his life and safety are in danger as a result of an overt act or perceived threat committed by someone else.
In Texas, jurors were allowed to consider the “castle doctrine” in the 2018 murder case against Amber Guyger, the former Dallas police officer who said she mistakenly entered the wrong apartment and killed Botham Jean, a 26-year-old man. In October 2019, a jury ultimately found Guyger guilty of murdering Jean and sentenced her to 10 years in prison.
And more recently in Texas, after an 11-year-old playing “ding-dong-ditch” was fatally shot as he ran from a home whose doorbell he playfully rang in August, prosecutors were quick to deny that the state’s self-defense legislation was relevant. “The castle doctrine does not apply in any way, shape or form to an 11-year-old boy running down the street,” police previously told CNN.
The Texas law says a person can use force as a means of self-defense if they reasonably believe the force is immediately necessary to protect them against another’s use or attempted use of force. The state has “one of the strongest ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws,” according to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
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CNN’s Alisha Ebrahimji and Dakin Andone contributed to this report.
