What are stand your ground laws? Experts break down the tragic reality behind ‘The Perfect Neighbor’
Stand your ground laws have made the already murky legal terrain around self-defense even more complicated.
At the heart of “The Perfect Neighbor,” Netflix’s latest viral documentary, is a tragedy — and a law.
The documentary chronicles the steady escalation of events that, in 2023, led to Susan Lorincz fatally shooting her neighbor Ajike Owens, a mother of four in front of her children. The Florida killing — and Netflix’s documentary — reignited a controversy around the so-called stand your ground laws at the center of Lorincz’ defense.
What exactly are these controversial laws?
Stand your ground laws are the broadest possible interpretation of self-defense. They allow people to respond with potentially lethal force in a situation where they feel threatened. Florida became the first state to adopt a stand your ground law in 2005. Now, the legislation exists in 30 states.
Estimates of the number of stand your ground cases vary widely, according to the RAND Corporation. However, a team of policy researchers determined that the laws are associated with 700 deaths nationwide each year.
Daniel Medwed, a university distinguished professor of law and criminal justice at Northeastern University, says stand your ground laws originated as a response to what some states saw as the legal restrictions around self-defense.
Most jurisdictions in the U.S. instituted a common law practice known as the duty to retreat, a legal obligation for someone facing a threat to escape the situation, Medwed explains. There is one exception known as the Castle Doctrine that allows for the use of force when facing a threat in your home.
“What’s happened since 2005 is states have kind of balked at the idea of any duty to retreat,” Medwed says. “What stand your ground is all about is you don’t have to retreat at all. It doesn’t matter where you are. If you are confronted with harm, you shouldn’t have to retreat.”
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There’s a reason Aliza Hochman Bloom, an assistant professor of law at Northeastern, calls these laws “a movable Castle Doctrine.” In a stand your ground state, the line where civilians can legally claim self-defense moves from the privacy of one’s home to virtually anywhere.
The rationale behind stand your ground laws is generally twofold. Medwed says it stems partially from a common criticism that the duty to retreat might make sense in theory but in reality it’s “very difficult to gauge whether you can retreat in complete safety.” In that case, stand your ground laws allow people to respond more effectively in the moment.
The other, more controversial, argument commonly used in favor of stand your ground laws is that they reduce incidents of violence, Hochman Bloom says.
It is the same ethos as a robust Second Amendment interpretation,” Hochman Bloom says. “In a world where more and more people are carrying weapons, it is this idea that those are used for protection and people have the right to protect themselves.”
In practice, that is not how things have played out, Hochman Bloom and Medwed say. Florida has become the epicenter of violent cases involving stand your ground defenses, most notably with the killing of teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012. While walking down the street, Martin was shot and killed by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman, who claimed he acted in self-defense. The case inspired a nationwide protest movement and is the cornerstone of ongoing debate around stand your ground laws.
A 2022 national survey of stand your ground laws from an inter-institutional group of researchers found cases like Martin’s and Owens’ are far from anomalies: Stand your ground laws were associated with between an 8% and 11% increase in monthly homicide rates. Meanwhile, in a 2017 Journal of Human Resources study found that at least 30 people are killed each month as a result of stand your ground laws.
“The part of it that strikes me as less principled is this idea of an increase or uptick in the acceptance of vigilante justice, that people should have a right to defend themselves at all costs and we shouldn’t second-guess those decisions,” Medwed says.
Stand your ground laws make already murky legal terrain — self-defense arguments — even more complicated, Hochman Bloom explains. The hallmarks of self-defense are a reasonable belief that someone faces an imminent threat that they respond proportionally to. However, what qualifies as “reasonable” is often very subjective, which quickly becomes problematic when it comes to preexisting biases.
“When we use this totality of circumstances — was the person reasonably believed to be under threat — we’re opening an analysis that is rife with racialized assumptions about criminality,” Hochman Bloom says.
Within reason, judges and juries should take into account a person’s life experience, Medwed adds. However, if “your life experiences or your biases are so peculiar to you, it might not be reasonable,” he says. In Lorincz’s case, the judge and jury ultimately decided she defied “reasonable” in shooting Owens. She is now serving 25 years in prison for manslaughter.
Those dynamics play out not only in who is the victim of a stand your ground-related shooting but who succeeds in using these laws as a legal defense. Medwed says it’s almost unheard of for Black defendants to get acquitted by invoking stand your ground laws.
“Incidents like Trayvon Martin … have added some ammunition, for lack of a better term, to the argument that we should have a better approach to either private or public violence, especially against people of color,” Medwed says.
