Florida’s ‘stand your ground’ law used as a cloak for murder: Fix it or repeal it

Dear Editor,

Florida’s stand your ground law is designed to protect citizens from what they believe to be an imminent danger to their physical person by another person or persons. This includes a spouse and parent being granted the right to protect their family in their home and in the public at large.

The law must rightly apply to Markeis McGlockton when he sought to protect girlfriend, Brittany Jacobs, and his children from Michael Drejka, who approached his girlfriend in her car and provoked an argument with her over a handicap permit, thereby, posing a physical danger to them while armed with a lethal weapon.

What is relevant in regards to the stand your ground law, in this case, is that a white older male took it upon himself to self-police a handicap parking space and confront a black woman and young children with a verbal tirade and threatening body language. The family had every right to believe they were possibly in danger of his irate, erratic behavior and the probable ascension of the situation escalating to physical assault equivalent to “road rage” in a parking lot.

Under Florida’s stand your ground law, McGlockton, understandably, had every right to protect his girlfriend and children from the irate behavior being exhibited from an aggressive stranger unknown to them.

McGlockton didn’t use a lethal weapon to defend his family from imminent danger from the ranting and raving of what well may have been a racial standoff from a die-hard racist or a fanatical person with a history of a definitive pattern of aggressive, threatening behavior.

While Mr. McGlockton was “standing his ground” to protect his family, the person who presented the threat was unrelenting in provoking the confrontation with supreme confidence, unafraid of any harm to himself because he knew he was armed with a concealed weapon.

Yet, Florida’s stand your ground law refuses to take into account that a citizen can’t bring a gun to a situation that they create and purposely approach other citizens with a threatening confrontation to bait a response from them, only to shoot them.   Then, evoke self-defense under the Florida stand your ground law after they kill the very person that the law was intended to protect. This constitutes a monumental flaw and fallacy in the law.

Six years following the February 12, 2012, Trayvon Martin murder, this monumental legislative flaw remains a deadly fallacy in the law, which hampers and binds the hands of state attorney offices, the state attorney general and law enforcement officers to correctly ascertain and evaluate via immediate investigations whether the shooter is taking advantage of and cloaking their murder under the Florida stand your ground law.

Additionally, this removes the albatross from law enforcement officers in their arbitrary interpretation of the existing law through the discretion of their eyes. Thus, preventing those who seek to invoke the use of the law as a defense for being exonerated!

The National Christian League of Councils officially requests that all Floridians support and join the call on their respective legislators to repeal or repair Florida’s stand your ground law. Additionally, NCLC officially requests the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Commission On Civil Rights to investigate the killing of Markeis McGlockton and Florida’s stand your ground Law.

On March 31, 2012, the NCLC sponsored “NCLC’s I Am Trayvon Martin March for Justice” in downtown St. Petersburg.

On April 4, 2012, the NCLC organized the first Repeal Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law March on the Florida State Capitol.

On April 30, 2012, the NCLC officially requested the U.S. Commission On Civil Rights to conduct federal hearings at the Florida State Capitol on the Florida stand your ground law.

Respectfully,

Sevell C. Brown, III, National Director

National Christian League of Councils