Another attack on Stand Your Ground and Immunity from Prosecution
General Bill by Braynon
Use or Threatened Use of Force: Revising the standard under which a person is justified in using or threatening to use nondeadly or deadly force from a person’s reasonable belief to the objective belief of a reasonably cautious and prudent person in the same circumstances; revising the burden of proof from clear and convincing evidence to a preponderance of the evidence which the party seeking to overcome immunity from criminal prosecution under a specified provision must prove, etc.
You guys have to remember Braynon. He is the one that was porking RINO Anitere Flores who screwed us up by siding with Mom’s Demand.
If you go to the plain text of the bills, you will see a thing that is worrying: It substitutes “he or she reasonably believes” with the much higher threshold of “a reasonably cautious and prudent person in the same circumstances would objectively believe” being “objective” the most worrisome part. Doing away with the reasonable Person standard and asking that somebody seeking to defend his/her life, a very stressful and very active event, must somehow stop and consider objectively and reflective the actions he should take. Basically ti take time when you have none.
And e have seen where this demand was turned down by the Supreme Court before:
Brown v. United States, 256 U.S. 335 (1921)
The law has grown, and even if historical mistakes have contributed to its growth it has tended in the direction of rules consistent with human nature. Many respectable writers agree that if a man reasonably believes that he is in immediate danger of death or grievous bodily harm from his assailant he may stand his ground and that if he kills him he has not succeeded the bounds of lawful self defence. That has been the decision of this Court. Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.
Here we go again,,,
Miguel, “reasonable belief” IS an objective standard. The change from “reasonable belief” to “objective belief of a reasonably cautious and prudent person in the same circumstance” is saying the same thing with more words; the objective standard is (and always has been) whether the person claiming self defense was acting “reasonably” as an objective standard, usually applying the hypothetical “reasonable man,” not whether the person subjectively thought it was reasonable.
Reasonable here means reasonable under the circumstances faced – thus the lack of the need for “detached reflection in the presence of an uplifted knife.” I will point out as well that Brown v. US was a federal case, and has no controlling authority over the writing or application of state law in state courts, even assuming it’s still good law. Don’t hang your hat on Brown – it doesn’t help you.
The real change is the lowering of the burden from “clear and convincing” to “preponderance.” Frankly, even “preponderance” is higher than most states; the standard in my state is that the State must overcome the claim of self-defense and thus immunity by the standard of “probable cause” in order to end pre-trial immunity and force a trial. And probable cause doesn’t even rise to the level of preponderance.