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NRA Uses New Florida Gun Law as National Model (EXCERPT)
Tuesday May 17, 2:59 am ET
Dan Christensen, Daily Business Review
Call it an educated guess, but
veteran Palm Beach State Attorney Barry Krischer figures that
when Florida's new "Stand Your Ground" law takes effect next October
the first self-defense claim he'll see will involve a road rage
shooting.
"We already see many cases like
that involving firearms. Now, they'll be more inclined to pull
the trigger," Krischer said. Under Florida's existing law, what's
known as the "castle doctrine" authorizes homeowners and residents
to shoot intruders in their homes when they reasonably believe
their safety is in jeopardy. The new law passed last month and,
pushed by the National Rifle Association, expands that authorization
to shoot at attackers "literally everywhere," Krischer said.
Gone will be "the duty to retreat"
from potentially bloody confrontations that's now built into Florida's
criminal justice statutes. Instead, the law will recognize that
everyone has "the right to stand his or her ground and meet force
with force, including deadly force" if they reasonably believe
it's necessary to avoid death or serious injury.
Under such circumstances, those
who kill or wound will have immunity from both criminal prosecution
and civil liability. The new law will give them a general legal
presumption that they acted out of "reasonable fear." And they'll
be entitled to recover reasonable attorney fees, court costs and
lost income incurred in defending any civil lawsuit filed by their
victims.
An early provision in the bill
would have put prosecutors and police on the hook to the "wrongfully
prosecuted" for damages, but that idea was dropped. Also gone
from the version that passed 39-0 in the Senate and 94-20 in the
House was a provision that prosecutors have said would have allowed
people to shoot in defense of a neighbor's property.
Sponsored by Sen. Durell Peaden,
R-Crestview, and signed late last month by Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida's
new law has become the NRA's model for legislation in other states,
according to Marion Hammer, executive director of Tallahassee-based
Unified Sportsmen of Florida, the NRA's Florida legislative affiliate.
"As [NRA] executive vice president
Wayne LaPierre has said we are going to move across the nation
from the red states to the blue states," Hammer said. "Other states
have pieces of what we now have in Florida; this is a good, reasonable
self-defense package."
To make that happen, the NRA Political
Victory Fund Political Action Committee pumped a lot of cash into
Tallahassee. State election records show that since 2003 the PAC
has contributed $55,000 to the Florida Republican Party and to
Republican Senate and House majority committees, including $10,000
to the Senate Majority 2006 Campaign in February. But Florida
prosecutors don't think the new law is reasonable or necessary.
They think it will promote more gunplay and provide more excuses
for mayhem. Leon County State Attorney Willie Meggs, president
of the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association, calls it the
"shoot your Avon Lady law."
"There are no horror stories about
someone being prosecuted unjustly for defending his home or others,"
Meggs said. "Our position is that we don't have any problem now,
so what is it we're fixing?"
"All this may do is give a legal
defense to a bad person who would otherwise be prosecuted. The
person who is dead doesn't get to say what they were going to
do," Meggs said.
Broward State Attorney Mike Satz
holds a similar view.
"We're not aware of any case in
the past in which someone who was defending himself was inappropriately
prosecuted, so I don't think the law was really necessary. It's
certainly foreseeable that someone will try to take inappropriate
advantage of this new law in the future," Satz said.
"Once the public realizes there
is no real penalty, I think they will be more apt to use guns,"
Krischer said. "People tell me, 'Krischer, what are you complaining
about? You're going to have less cases to prosecute.' That may
be true, but I still live in this society, and I just don't believe
this is reasonable."
A spokesman for Miami-Dade State
Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle deferred comment to the prosecutor's
association.
Hammer, though, says change was
needed to restore and codify centuries-old, common law rights
to self-defense in the home and elsewhere that courts have eroded.
She said prosecutors have gone after homeowners who shoot to defend
their lives and homes.
Hammer cites the case of a Taylor
County man named Jared L. Fowler, charged with manslaughter in
February. The Tallahassee Democrat reported that Fowler told deputies
that Don J. Bain came to his mobile home in Perry shortly after
midnight on Feb. 20, shouting and spoiling for a fight. When Fowler
refused to go outside, the paper reported, Bain forced his way
inside, started beating Fowler and threatened to kill him before
Bain was shot as the pair struggled over a shotgun.
On April 18, a Taylor County grand
jury refused to return an indictment against Fowler.
"Prosecutors are always looking
for somebody to prosecute and too often it's the victim. They
are part of the problem," Hammer said.
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