Although possession of a firearm by a convicted felon is illegal, it does not prevent a defendant from invoking the state’s Stand Your Ground law, a Florida appeals court ruled. A three-judge panel held that the controversial law immunized Aaron A. Little from second-degree murder charges, after he shot dead a man who threatened him during an encounter on the street.

The Stand Your Ground law, which gained notoriety after the tragic killing of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, authorizes the unfettered use of deadly force in self-defense. One provision of the law explicitly limits the use of deadly force without a duty to retreat to those “not engaged in an unlawful activity.” But the judges held that this provision need not apply, because other provisions are silent on whether or not the activity must be lawful.

Little’s particular self-defense probably could have been justified under other, less expansive self-defense laws because he both attempted to retreat and entered his home, protected in many states by the “Castle Doctrine” (although there is no evidence that he or others at the scene attempted to call law enforcement).

But this is not required by Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, modeled after ALEC and NRA-backed language that has now been adopted by at least 15 other states, and declaring that a person “has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground” to prevent great bodily harm or even the commission of a felony. This decision, if upheld would ostensibly allow individuals to claim immunity for deadly force even if used while committing a crime. The intermediate appeals court will not have the final word on this question, as the judges asked the Florida Supreme Court to review the case. But the court is not entirely to blame for this perverse result. The statute is confusing, to say the least, and the court rightly states that a statute should be interpreted most favorably to the accused. The best solution to this problem — in addition to more stringent background checks at both the state and federal level — may be through the state legislature, which has thus far declined to make any substantive changes to the law, in spite of significant empirical evidence that the law is dangerous and ineffective.

The New Hampshire House of Representatives is on a criminal justice roll. Last week, legislators voted to prohibit private prisons. This week, they passed a bill to repeal the ALEC-sponsored Stand Your Ground law, which authorizes the unfettered use of deadly force in self-defense. The NRA-backed laws, also known as “Kill at Will,” gained notoriety after the tragic killing of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin. Police cited Florida’s Stand Your Ground law as the reason for not initially arresting the suspect in that case. Reuters reports:

The National Rifle Association and gun rights supporters had campaigned to defeat the bill repealing the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law, arguing the change would embolden criminals and lead to greater violence against women.

The bill passed by a roll call vote of 189-184 after a heated debate. The proposed change may face tougher odds in the state Senate, which is narrowly controlled by Republicans.

If repealed, the state would return to the so-called “castle doctrine” under which there is a duty to retreat from a threatening situation unless it occurs inside a person’s home. […]

New Hampshire passed a number of laws loosening control on gun usage in 2011, when Republicans commanded large majorities in both chambers. Since regaining control of the House, Democrats have sought to push back on some of these measures.

In the wake of the Trayvon Martin tragedy, a Florida committee to reform the bill stacked with lawmakers who first proposed the law did not recommend any substantive changes, in spite of empirical research finding these laws were associated with a significant increase in homicides. Some 21 states have laws establishing that there is no duty to retreat, and at least nine include language stating that one may “stand his or her ground,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The NRA has gone so far to offer insurance to cover the costs of a Stand Your Ground defense.

A Florida man defended his decision to shoot an impatient pizza customer over the weekend, citing the state’s infamous “Stand Your Ground” law.

Michael Jock, a 52-year-old resident of St. Petersburg, was standing in line behind 49-year-old Randall White at a local Little Caesars on Sunday when Jock grew angry over White’s complaints about the speed of service. The two began to shove one another, prompting Jock to pull out a .38 Taurus Ultralight Special Revolver that had been concealed on his person and fire twice, hitting White both times in the lower torso.

The Tampa Bay Times has more:

After the shooting, both men went outside and waited for police. Jock told officers the shooting was justified under “stand your ground,” [police spokesman Mike] Puetz said.

“He felt he was in his rights,” Puetz said. “He brought it up specifically and cited it to the officer.”

He told officers he feared for his life. He mentioned that he thought White had an object in his hand, then backed off that when officers pressed him. Florida’s “stand your ground law” says people are not required to retreat before using deadly force.

Police, however, disagreed with Jock’s interpretation of the law and arrested him on charges of aggravated battery and firing a weapon within a building.

The Stand Your Ground law that Jock referenced came under intense scrutiny this year after George Zimmerman invoked it to justify his shooting of teenager Trayvon Martin. Multiple studies have found that Stand Your Ground laws increase the number of homicides in a state. Still, such laws are a crown jewel for the National Rifle Association, which has been working tirelessly for years to spread them from state to state.

In the months since the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin drew national attention to Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law and others like it that authorize the unfettered use of deadly force in self-defense, several empirical studies have found these laws are associated with a significant increase in homicides, have a disproportionate impact on African Americans, and do not appear to deter crime at all.

But you wouldn’t know any of this from the draft report coming out of a Florida task force commissioned by Gov. Rick Scott. Following a six-month review, not one of these studies were even incorporated into the task force’s recommendation that the NRA-backed Stand Your Ground law remain largely unchanged. Instead, the recommendation states:

[A]ll persons have a fundamental right to stand their ground and defend themselves from attack with proportionate force in every place they have a lawful right to be and are conducting themselves in a lawful manner.

The task force did recommend that the Legislature review some of the law’s language to clarify what the law means for police, who can claim self-defense, and whether it encourages vigilantism. But for the most part, the recommendation stood as a strong defense of the law that arguably gives perpetrators more authority to shoot and kill than U.S. troops have in war.

The recommendation surprised few stakeholders — among the six lawmakers on the 19-member panel selected by Gov. Scott were two who helped draft the original law, another two who voted for it in 2005, and the chief sponsor of a law prohibiting doctors from asking patients about guns. Three are members of corporate front-group ALEC, which backed the law. Others who have supported gun control legislation say they were excluded from the task force.

In a column published just before the release of the task force’s findings that cites the various academic studies on “Stand Your Ground” laws, Harvard Injury Control Research Center Director David Hemenway, ironically, implores the task force not to “ignore the evidence,” writing:

I was pleased to hear that one of its monthly meetings would be devoted to scholarly research about the effects of the law since its passage in 2005. This was the Task Force’s chance to take scientific evidence into its assessment of what has understandably become an emotionally charged issue.

The Task Force asked the University of Florida to conduct research on the impact of the state’s Stand Your Ground law. Not surprisingly the researchers were unable to draw strong conclusions given the data and the short time frame they were allowed. But frighteningly, the Task Force seemed to take the researchers’ incomplete report as evidence that Stand Your Ground is a good law. Task Force member and Stand Your Ground bill sponsor Rep. Dennis Baxley even went so far as to assert that the data supported his contention that the law is not associated with an increase in violent crime. Contrary to that claim, the best available research evidence indicates that Stand Your Ground laws are dangerous, with few redeeming benefits to society.

The task force still has until March to submit its final recommendations to the Legislature, although the incoming House speaker has already said he would not support major changes to the law.

When police investigated the death of Brian Epp, they determined that John McNeil was merely acting in self-defense when he shot Epp for allegedly loitering on his property, threatening him and his 19-year-old son with a knife. They didn’t charge him with any crime. But 274 days later, McNeil was prosecuted and sentenced to life in prison, theGrio explains:

The case relates to events on December 6, 2005, when McNeil received a distress call from his teenage son that a man was lurking around in their backyard.

“John called 911 and told the police he was on his way home,” said his wife, who is living with advanced stage cancer. According to testimony, the man, Brian Epp, a hired contractor with whom McNeil had past disagreements, had already pulled out a knife on McNeil’s 19-year-old son.

When McNeil returned home, Epp, who is white, refused to leave, despite being asked several times. McNeil and eye-witnesses testified that he fired a warning shot but when Epp charged towards him with his hand in his pocket he shot out in self-defense.

Witnesses corroborated this account, as well as McNeil’s fear of Epps. A couple who had also hired Epps testified at trial that they carried a gun around him because of his threatening behavior. Nevertheless, McNeil, a black property owner who has now been in jail for almost six years for the death of a white trespasser, lost his appeal before the Supreme Court in 2008.

McNeil’s case is, in many respects, the mirror image of the infamous shooting of Trayvon Martin earlier this year. In Florida, a “Stand Your Ground” law that often enables shooters to literally get away with murder initially protected George Zimmerman from prosecution, although he has since been charged with second-degree murder, and Zimmerman could still escape justice because of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. McNeil, on the other hand, has now lost six years of his life in spite of what appears to be a much clearer case of self-defense under Georgia’s “Castle Doctrine,” a more limited law that permits the use of deadly force to defend one’s own property.

Civil rights groups are now calling for McNeil’s immediate release, pointing to the Trayvon Martin case to show that laws intended to apply equally to all races discriminate against African Americans whether they are the alleged perpetrator or the victim.

“We are victims at both ends of the gun,” said Marcus Coleman, who leads the Atlanta chapter of the National Action Network.

The mayor of McNeil’s hometown, Wilson, N.C., has also joined in calling for McNeil’s release. In a letter to Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, he said, “I have read the entire trial transcript and I believe it’s clear that John only acted to protect his family.”

In the Georgia Supreme Court’s opinion, the one dissenting justice, Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears, wrote unequivocally that McNeil should have been protected by Georgia’s “Castle doctrine,” writing: “the evidence was overwhelming in showing that a reasonable person in McNeil’s shoes would have believed that he was subject to an imminent physical attack by an aggressor possessing a knife and that it was necessary to use deadly force to protect himself from serious bodily injury or a forcible felony.”

McNeil, who had no other criminal history, has a second appeal pending. If he loses that, he will have to file a clemency request with the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles.

“The John McNeil case is unique in the Southern and American criminal justice system,” said Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP, in an interview with theGrio. “You just can’t find a case where a black man on his property shoots a white armed aggressor and the black man is defended by two senior white detectives, white eyewitnesses, a black female Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court, all who challenge the conclusion of and prosecution by a white DA.”