Ever since George Zimmerman beat the rap, vigilantes haven’t exactly prospered. In at least three high-profile cases since then, killers who claimed self-defense under “castle doctrine” or “stand your ground” laws have suffered devastating legal defeats and received lengthy prison sentences.
Case #1: In Florida, Michael Dunn, 45, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole for shooting into a car full of teenagers, killing one, following a verbal altercation over the teens’ loud music. Dunn and his girlfriend stopped at a gas station and convenience store where the teens were already parked. While Dunn’s girlfriend and the driver of the teens’ car were in the store, Dunn argued with the victim, then retrieved a handgun from his glove compartment and shot him, and kept shooting at the teens’ car as they they tried to flee. This occurred in early evening; Dunn and his girlfriend spent the night at a hotel, then went home the next day. Dunn later made up a cock-and-bull story that the victim pulled a shotgun that even his girlfriend wouldn’t vouch for. His first trial resulted in three attempted murder convictons and a hung jury on the murder charge; a retrial on the murder rap led to conviction.
Case #2: In Michigan, Theodore Wafer, 54, was convicted of second-degree murder and other charges and sentenced to 17 to 32 years in prison for shooting a 19-year-old woman who loudly banged on his door at 4:42 a.m., apparently seeking help after being in a car accident. Evidence indicates she was drunk, injured, and confused. Wafer claimed he was frightened because he thought she was trying to break into his house.
Case #3: In Montana, Markus Kaarma, 30, was convicted this week of deliberate homicide and faces up to 100 years in prison when he is sentenced in February for shooting a 19-year-old German exchange student he caught prowling in his garage who probably was looking for booze. It was a setup; after a previous break-in, Kaarma had installed motion detectors in the garage, left the garage door open, and left a purse containing cash as bait, hoping to catch a burglar in the act. When the detectors went off, Kaarma grabbed a shotgun, went outside, and fired four times into the garage, finishing off the wounded and unarmed victim with a final shot to the head.
Zimmerman’s acquittal initially raised fears among much of the public that “stand your ground” laws would give trigger-happy yokels a free pass to kill people. (You know who I mean … the antisocial types who post “Trespassers Will Be Shot, And Survivors Will Be Shot Again” signs on their property, which basically means the newspaper delivery boy will leave their paper on the curb instead of the porch.) It hasn’t worked out that way.
I’m a lawyer. I know something about self-defense law. In Washington, the basic rule of self-defense is that you have a right to use deadly force to defend yourself or another person in imminent danger of death or grave bodily harm. You lose this defense if you’re the aggressor. (Now if only we could get the legal system to apply this rule to cops.) For example, if you road rage and then shoot the other driver when he comes at you with flying fists, you’ll almost certainly go to prison. Washington hasn’t formally enacted the “castle doctrine,” which allows people to shoot home intruders without further justification, but as a practical matter these cases aren’t prosecuted in our state anymore because juries refuse to convict in them. Finally, several states have enacted “stand your ground” laws that extend the “castle doctrine” to public spaces, i.e., if you’re attacked, you don’t have to retreat, but can defend yourself in place.
It’s well to remember, though, that the law is one thing but what happens in court is something else. You may have a perfectly good defense, but you can end up in prison anyway, if the jury second-guesses your judgment or doesn’t believe your story. And juries are so unpredictable that most criminal defendants prefer to plea bargain and most civil litigants prefer to settle out of court. If the police decide to charge you, and the prosecutor pursues the case, the retelling of events by lawyers in the courtroom before the jury may bear little resemblance to your recollection of what happened. It’s a lottery.
For this reason alone, it’s a damned bad idea to play this game in the first place. Not using outdoor ATM machines at night is a much better idea than packing a gun for self-protection when you use an outdoor ATM machine at night. Keeping a gun in your car is an even worse idea, not least because it’ll end up in criminal hands if someone breaks into your car, but mainly because it’s just too tempting to use it when you go out in public and mix with strangers. Think road rage. Some years ago, here in Seattle, two motorists exchanged gunfire on the West Seattle Freeway bridge in traffic. They both went to prison.
Zimmerman won his lottery, but just barely. Most of the jurors thought he was guilty of something, and in my view he was guilty of several things (stalking and menacing, for starters, plus stupidity which isn’t against the law but ought to be), but they concluded Florida law gave him a defense he didn’t deserve when Trayvon Martin got mad and jumped the asshole who had been stalking him, even though most of the world believes Zimmerman deserved to get the crap beaten out of him.
Zimmerman wasn’t a vigilante so much as an officious meddler, in the sense that he didn’t initiate the violence (at least, if you believe his story, which the jury apparently did). On the other hand, Dunn and Kaarma were outright vigilantes, which explains why Zimmerman got off and they didn’t. That is, they were in no danger, had no need to defend themselves, and initiated the violence, which is why their self-defense claims failed so spectacularly. Wafer’s case is a bit fuzzier, but in general, knocking on a door isn’t the same thing as breaking down a door, and a person standing on your porch isn’t a home invader. At least, not in the eyes of the law, or any reasonable person.
Which brings us to another point about self-defense. The law will judge your apprehension of the situation according to what a reasonable person would think in the same circumstances, not according to your confused interpretation or subjective state of mind. This can be a real problem for people who can’t grasp why they’re riding inside a prison van because the police, judge, and jury somehow didn’t see things their way. The best practical advice I can give to such people is they would have been better off not having a gun in the first place. Going out into the world with a gun and a predisposition to “defend yourself” is just a bad idea, period. It turns you into a person who’s looking for trouble, and when you’re in that frame of mind, your chances of finding it go way up.
A case in point: When I was a law student, one of my classmates won a gunfight that took place just outside the student lounge where I was studying. This was over a woman who had been dating both guys. There had been bad blood between them for some time. Frankly, I don’t think any woman is worth fighting another guy for (who the hell wants a two-timer anyway?), and they should have both ditched her and found other women. In any case, because of previous threats, they were both packing heat when they ran into each other on campus. The survivor was convicted of second-degree murder and served 20 years. After he got out, the Washington Supreme Court refused to let him take the bar exam, citing moral turpitude. So he also lost his dream of becoming a lawyer.
There are lots of additional reasons why having a gun for “self defense” is a bad idea. For one thing, you’re more likely to get killed if you have a gun. That happened to another of my law school classmates. She shot a burglar who then shot her; he survived, she didn’t. Even if you pull a gun on an unarmed aggressor — in which case you don’t have legal justification to use deadly force — you still could get killed if the aggressor wrests your gun from you. Which he certainly will try to do.
I haven’t talked about race in this article, because it doesn’t really have much if any bearing on these issues. Racism was raised as an issue in the Zimmerman case, because Zimmerman was almost-white and Trayvon Martin became yet another young-black-man statistic, but whatever else you might say about Zimmerman, it’s not plausible that he shot Martin because he’s almost-white and Martin was black.
Case #1 and Case #2 above involve whites shooting blacks. Wafer’s defense attorney complained that he was treated harshly by the jury and sentencing judge because of the publicity surrounding the Zimmerman case. Case #3 involved a white shooting a white. My law school classmate murderer was black, and his victim was white. I don’t think there was a racial factor in that case. If the white guy had won, he’d have gotten 20 years, too.
I personally think all vigilantes, duelists, and other morons who resort to gunplay to settle garden-variety social frictions should be locked up to keep them off the streets, simply because I don’t want to get hit by their stray rounds. One of my college housemates lost his sister to a stray bullet that came in through a window. Few people have the knowledge, training, skills, and temperament required to use a gun properly in a stressful situation for legitimate self-defense. On balance, America’s insane gun fetish does far more harm than good. You’ll almost always be better off with a cell phone and dog. Even if you beat the rap, which is never guaranteed
, the defense attorney’s fees will bankrupt you.