Stand-your-ground law
As a stand-your-ground Laws ( English stand your ground as "not depart from the site") are colloquially laws of currently more than 30 US states designated that allow a person to apply in extreme cases, deadly force, to guard against an unlawful To fight back attack . They override the obligation established in American law to step back from a burglar or attacker before resorting to "defensive measures which are intended to kill or seriously injure another person or which can cause this".
Florida
Florida became the first state to enact such a law on October 1, 2005. The law was drafted with the help of Marion Hammer, who was a lobbyist for the National Rifle Association (NRA) and was its former president. Violent clashes over looting in Florida as a result of the destruction caused by Hurricane Ivan served as justification . Florida's statutes allow anyone who has the reasonable assumption that they are threatened with a "violent crime", the use of violence up to and including lethal violence for self-defense. What is special about this law is the so-called Castle Doctrine :
“A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony. "
“A person who is not involved in an unlawful act and is attacked in a place where he or she has the right to reside is not obliged to step back, but is entitled to stand firm and use counter-violence, including lethal force, if that person is reasonable believes this is necessary to protect her life or that of others or to protect himself or others from serious physical injury or to prevent the commission of a violent crime. "
These statutes grant anyone who has acted in such a justified assumption, civil and criminal impunity.
Chapter 776.08 of the Florida Statutes, Section 16, defines violent crimes as “ forcible felony ” , including crimes such as treason , murder , manslaughter , sexual assault , carjacking, grave trespassing, robbery, burglary , arson , kidnapping , aggravated assault (various criminal offenses in the StGB, therefore no direct equivalent), grievous bodily harm , "serious" stalking , aircraft hijacking, unlawful throwing, placing or unloading of destructive devices or bombs and any other crime that involves the use or threat of physical violence. Treason is defined in Chapter 876.32 of the Florida Statutes, Section 16, as treason in which one gives help to one's war enemies, which would correspond to treason in the German criminal code .
reception
After the successful legislative process in Florida, Hammer passed the legislative text on as a model to the Criminal Justice Task Force of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). In the following years, ALEC campaigned for the implementation of such laws in the legislative bodies of all American states. After Trayvon Martin's death and the resulting social pressure on ALEC, the organization declared in April 2012 that it would no longer support such laws in the future.
Many proponents of these laws, including the National Rifle Association (NRA), refer to them as "Stand Your Ground" laws because they allow citizens to defend themselves and their property from attack without the fear of prosecution or civil lawsuits to have to. Wayne LaPierre , executive director of the NRA, said it was wrong to make a second victim of the law to someone who has been attacked by criminals.
Critics of this legislation fear, however, that such laws encourage vigilante justice and the preventive use of firearms and thus lead to an increase in killings with firearms. In particular, there would be no differentiation from self-provoked self-defense situations. According to Zach Ragbourn, a spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence , laws like the one in Florida should be referred to as snap-shot laws because they would allow someone to open fire in public simply because he or she believed they were anything could happen.
Other US states
Since the law went into effect in Florida, South Dakota , Georgia , Kentucky , Mississippi , Michigan , Oklahoma, and Indiana have enacted similar laws. In other states ( Alabama , Alaska , Arizona , Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri , New Hampshire , Pennsylvania , Washington and Wyoming ) there were considerations to enact their own “Stand Your Ground” laws.
In some of the states that passed “Stand Your Ground” laws or had the intention to do so - including Washington, Indiana and Georgia - there were also “Stand Your Ground” judgments before, but without express immunity rules in the self-defense laws. The adoption of the “Stand Your Ground” laws resulted primarily from the fear that the previous procedure could be replaced by an “obligation to withdraw”.
In Utah , the principles of “Stand Your Ground” have always been in place: Utah state law expressly allows the use of lethal force to protect one's property. The law also explicitly states that there is no “duty to withdraw” from a place that a person has lawfully entered or where they are lawfully resident.
Effects
According to a study by Texas A&M University , the stand-your-ground laws have "no deterrent effect". Instead, in the states that introduced the Castle Doctrine , an additional 500 to 700 deaths annually are to be mourned, according to the comparative study of crime data between 2000 and 2009 commissioned by the National Bureau of Economic Research .
Legal situation in Germany
Contrary to popular belief, the German law of self-defense is comparable to that of Florida. In principle, it also allows deadly force against any current illegal attack, if this is necessary and necessary, as this is not only about protecting the absolute legal interests of the attacked person, but also normally defending the legal system . As a rule, there is no obligation to step back (“the right does not have to give way to the wrong”). In any case, the imperative is lacking if the legal order does not want to be defended with this sharp sword. In many cases, the right to self-defense only applies to a limited extent, for example if the attacker is a child or a mentally ill person and it is safe to evade. Anyone who deliberately provokes someone to attack, only to then injure them by way of “defense”, cannot invoke the right of self-defense according to the current case law. In certain cases, especially if the attacker is not completely guilty, only a protective defense, but no defensive defense, is allowed. Even if there is a significant disproportion between the attacked and the defended legal interest, the right to self-defense can be restricted. Apart from these exceptions, it should be noted that it is not necessary to weigh up the opposing legal interests of the attacker and the defender.
If the subjectively assumed self-defense situation did not objectively exist, putative self-defense may exist in certain cases , which then excludes punishment for an intentional offense. Of course, the right to self-defense does not protect against criminal proceedings , but only declares the act to be justified in the course of these proceedings; this is checked by the public prosecutor and, if necessary, in court .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Marc Fisher, Dan Eggen: Stand Your Ground laws coincide with jump in justifiable-homicide cases. In: Washington Post. April 7, 2012, accessed July 13, 2013 .
- ↑ http://www.cga.ct.gov/2007/rpt/2007-R-0052.htm
- ↑ Eric Lichtblau: Martin Death Spurs Group to Readjust Policy Focus. In: The New York Times. April 17, 2012, accessed July 13, 2013 .
- ↑ Legal text Title 76 Chapter 2 Section 405 Utah Code ( Memento of October 12, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), le.utah.gov, accessed November 19, 2013.
- ↑ Peter Gruber: License to Kill . In: Focus . tape June 25 , 2012 ( online at: focus.de [accessed on July 15, 2013]).
- ↑ KNA agency report in Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung from June 16, 2012.
- ^ "Does Strengthening Self-Defense Law Deter Crime or Escalate Violence? Evidence from Castle Doctrine " , NBER Working Paper No. 18134, June 2012, full text preview version
- ↑ Thomas Meyer / Martin Ulbrich: The “dashing” right of self-defense or: fatal use of firearms for self-defense only in Florida? , JA 2006, 775.
- ^ Stefan Seiler: Criminal Law, General Part I. Facultas, Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-7089-0758-1 , Rz 375.
- ^ Stefan Seiler: Criminal Law, General Part I. Facultas, Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-7089-0758-1 , margin no.367.
