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The two chambers have approved different versions of a proposal (SB 128) intended to shift a key burden of proof in stand your ground cases from defendants to prosecutors in pre-trial hearings.

TALLAHASSEE The House and Senate are in a standoff, for now, about a controversial bill dealing with stand your ground self-defense cases.

The two chambers approved different versions of a proposal (SB 128) intended to shift a key burden of proof in stand your ground cases from defendants to prosecutors in pre-trial hearings.

As the bill returns to the Senate after the House approved its version this week, House and Senate leaders are maintaining support for their different positions.

The House wants to require prosecutors in stand your ground cases to overcome the asserted immunity sought by defendants through clear and convincing evidence. The Senate, which rejected the clear and convincing evidence language earlier this session, has set a higher standard known as beyond a reasonable doubt.

Ive said from the beginning, if the government wants to convict you of a serious crime and send you to prison, they should have the burden of proof at every stage of the proceeding beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt, Senate President Joe Negron, R-Stuart, told reporters Thursday. Its the highest legal standard in the world. Its served us well. And in order for the government to prevail in the underlying criminal case, theyre going to have to prove beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt. So I prefer the Senates higher legal standard.

When asked if the House language could kill the bill, Negron, an attorney, replied, Its only week five of the legislative session. I assume theyll send the bill back to us, and it will be up to the senators on what they want to do. My preference would be that we stand on the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt criminal standard.

The 60-day regular session is scheduled to end May 5.

The overall proposal, backed by groups such as the National Rifle Association and the Florida Public Defender Association, stems from a Florida Supreme Court ruling in 2015 that said defendants have the burden of proof to show they should be shielded from prosecution under the stand your ground law.

House sponsor Bobby Payne, R-Palatka, told reporters Thursday the clear-and-convincing-evidence threshold was a reasonable and fair place to land after hearing from numerous groups regarding how the 2005 law should be interpreted.

We need to consider the opportunity for encouraging victims to come forward in those particular situations, Payne replied when asked why he supported the clear and convincing language.

On Wednesday, before the House voted along party lines to support the bill, Rep. James Grant, a Tampa Republican who is an attorney, also defended the House clear-and-convincing-evidence approach.

If the government cannot beat the lesser, easier burden in an immunity trial, then they darned sure cant meet beyond and to the exclusion of each and every reasonable doubt when they ask for a conviction, Grant said.

The Senate voted 23-15 to approve its version of the bill March 15.

The stand your ground law has long been controversial. It says people can use deadly force and do not have a duty to retreat if they think it is necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm.

In its 2015 ruling, the Supreme Court majority opinion written by Justice Barbara Pariente said immunity in the stand your ground law is not a blanket immunity, but rather, requires the establishment that the use of force was legally justified.

But a dissenting opinion, written by Justice Charles Canady and now highlighted by Republican lawmakers, countered the majority ruling substantially curtails the benefit of the immunity from trial conferred by the Legislature under the Stand Your Ground law.

The factual question raised by the assertion of Stand Your Ground immunity in a pretrial evidentiary hearing is the same as the factual question raised by a Stand Your Ground defense presented at trial: whether the evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendants conduct was not justified under the governing statutory standard, Canady wrote.

The proposed change has been opposed by Democratic lawmakers and groups such as the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association and the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence, who have argued it would put an end to cases before all the facts are revealed. They also contend the stand your ground law has disproportionate effects on minorities, as it is used more successfully as a defense when white shooters kill African-Americans.

Read more:
House, Senate differ on 'stand your ground' - The News Herald

New York Daily News

Stand Your Ground changes easier on Fla. shooting suspects New York Daily News Shooting suspects in Florida might have a better chance to avoid prosecution because of a new Republican-backed measure on the Sunshine State's controversial Stand Your Ground law. The Florida House of Representatives passed an NRA-endorsed bill ...

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Stand Your Ground changes easier on Fla. shooting suspects - New York Daily News

A critic of the states stand your ground law Wednesday said a change to the law now moving through the Legislature will make it easier for people to murder other human beings.

Lawmakers now are considering shifting the burden to prosecutors, making them disprove a claim of self-defense. Sen. Perry Thurston, a Fort Lauderdale Democrat, called that making a bad law worse.

He appeared with several fellow Democrats at a morning press conference in the Capitol.

The stand your ground law, enacted in 2005, allows people who are attacked to counter deadly force with deadly force in self-defense without any requirement that they flee.

The House onTuesday amended a Senate measure(SB 128) to change the burden of proofto overcomeself-defense to clear and convincing evidence, a lower threshold than the Senates beyond a reasonable doubt.

But lowering the burden wont help the bill, Thurston told reporters, because the problem is with the burdens shifting: Essentially forcing prosecutors to prove a negative.

Rep. Kamia Brown, an Orlando Democrat, added thatthe move willincentivize domestic abusers to finish the job.

Why not go all the way there wont be anyone around to dispute a stand your ground defense, she said.

And Rep. Bobby DuBose, anotherFort LauderdaleDemocrat, said it will embolden gang members to pick on the competition with impunity under the cover of a stand your ground defense.

Specifically, the Senate billsponsored by Fleming Island Republican Rob Bradleywould requireprosecutors to showthat a defendant is not immune from prosecution.

Its in reaction toa state Supreme Court decision that put the onus on the defendant to show self-defense under the stand your ground law.

The House is scheduled to vote on the amendedbill later Wednesday, sending it back to the Senate.

A Periscope video of the press conference can be viewed below:

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Democrats decry change to 'stand your ground' law - Florida Politics - Florida Politics (blog)

Good policymaking requires an evenhanded approach. The proposed changes to the Stand Your Ground Law that recently passed the Florida Senate are anything but evenhanded.

The bill pushes back on a majority decision by the court that ruled that individuals who claim self-defense under the Stand Your Ground statute must prove in a pretrial immunity hearing that they met deadly force with deadly force in fear for their lives.

Under the bill, the burden of proof shifts to the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the individual is not entitled to claim stand your ground immunity.

While beyond a reasonable doubt sounds like what prosecutors ordinarily should do, consider that in the hearing that they must prove what someone is not entitled to.

Likely the victim is no longer living and the witness list is either grossly short or non-existent.

Further, a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that even the law as it currently exists is associated with a spike of over 30 percent in Floridas firearm-related homicide rate since its passage in 2005. This is despite a national decline in homicides since the early 1990s.

Another study, conducted by the Tampa Bay Times, found that one-third of defendants initiated the confrontation, shot or pursued an unarmed victim and went free.

Given what we know, and what the court apparently understands, the political badminton on this issue should stop and the scales should not be pushed away from fairness and justice.

Valuing the life of individuals should reign over a need to play whos boss, and the court should be able to operate in its appropriate space.

The Senate bill now waits as the House companion, I hope, goes through enough committees to give it proper vetting with more opportunity for public testimony that exposes the fatal flaw of victims never getting their side of the story told because they are no longer able to talk.

And people are able to walk away from a potential murder scene.

State Sen. Audrey Gibson,

Jacksonville

Read this article:
Tuesday's Lead Letter: Change to Stand Your Ground Law is ... - Florida Times-Union

As the only independent, state-based gun violence prevention organization in Minnesota, Protect Minnesota strongly opposes the passage of Stand Your Ground legislation.

This bill is unnecessary. Minnesota law allows individuals to use deadly force in self-defense from grievous bodily harm or death. There is nothing confusing about it: Minnesotans can already use deadly force in self-defense. However, current law establishes an objective standard: the shooter is required to prove the shooting was justified.

This bill removes the obligation to retreat in all situations and gives the presumption of innocence to the shooter, setting a completely subjective standard. All the shooter must do to justify killing another human being is claim that he felt threatened, whether or not the threat was real.

The bill also authorizes use of deadly force when responding to any attempted felony on private property -- in effect establishing the death sentence for attempting to steal a high-end bike out of a garage.

This bill would not make Minnesota safer. Minnesota's gun death rate is 6.6 per 100,000 people. The average gun death rate in the 24 states with Stand Your Ground laws is 14.3 per 100,000 more than twice Minnesota's rate, according to the Kaiser Foundation. A study of states that have enacted such laws showed no evidence of crime deterrence -- rates of burglary, robbery, and aggravated assault have not been affected. On the other hand, homicides in those states have increased by around 8 percent, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

This bill would put Minnesotans at risk. The implementation of Florida's Stand Your Ground law was associated with a 24.4 percent increase in homicide and a 31.6 percent increase in firearm-related homicide, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. On average, Stand Your Ground states have experienced a 53 percent increase in homicides deemed legally "justifiable" in the years following passage of the law, compared to a 5 percent decrease in states without the laws, according to the National Urban League.

Stand Your Ground represents a particular threat to people of color and immigrants, who are often met with suspicion by Minnesotans. If it passes, almost any shooting could be justified because the shooter "felt threatened," even if the "threat" was a hoodie or a hijab. Racial bias and inconsistency in the implementation of these laws is a widespread phenomenon. In Stand Your Ground states, white killers are 354 percent more likely to be found innocent if the victim is black than if the victim is white, according to FBI data cited by the PBS news program "Frontline."

This bill also puts anyone whose behavior is unusual at risk, such as those who suffer from mental illness or autism. Although the gun lobby would like us to believe that the mentally ill are the primary perpetrators of gun violence, in actuality they much more likely to be victims. Their behavior can seem "scary" and this bill gives Minnesotans the right to shoot "scary" people.

The same is true for home health care workers, meter readers, pizza deliverers, repair people, census takers, and kids whose Frisbee ends up in a neighbor's garden -- anyone who has to cross a property line or knock on a stranger's front door would be put at risk if someone in the home felt "threatened" by their presence.

To sum up, Stand Your Ground is unnecessary, won't make Minnesota safer, and will put Minnesotans at risk. This "shoot on sight" legislation does not align with Minnesota Nice nor Minnesota values. We urge state law makers to keep House File 239 from moving forward.

The Rev. Nancy Nord Bence is executive director of

, which is based in St. Paul.

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Bence: Stand Your Ground law makes no one safer - Post-Bulletin