![\"UPTOWN_marissa_alexander1\"](\"http:\/\/www.jlpp.org\/old_blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/UPTOWN_marissa_alexander1.jpg\")
<\/a>In early September, <\/a>In early September, George Zimmerman<\/a> made headlines yet again when his estranged wife, Shellie, contacted the police during a potential incident of domestic violence<\/a>. In a call to 911,<\/a> Shellie Zimmerman claimed George was threatening her and her father with a gun after a confrontation over the Zimmermans\u2019 marital separation grew heated. While charges have not been filed<\/a> against George, this latest episode in the Zimmerman saga begs a hypothetical question \u2013 if roles were reversed and Shellie had been the party threatening George with a firearm, could she invoke Florida\u2019s now-infamous Stand Your Ground<\/a> law if she faced criminal charges?\n\nIn the wake of George Zimmerman\u2019s fatal shooting of seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin<\/a>, Florida\u2019s Stand Your Ground law drew criticism<\/a> and public outcry<\/a>. Supporters attempted to defend the law and, in many cases, invoked the rights of female victims of violence as justification. In an interview<\/a> with NPR, Florida State Representative Dennis Baxley<\/a>, one of the sponsors<\/a> of the Stand Your Ground law, claimed that Stand Your Ground was intended to protect from prosecution \u201ca victim of a violent attack [who] has seconds to decide if they want to live or they want to die or they want to be a victim of violence, such as rape or a beating.\u201d Florida Senator Don Gaetz<\/a> and Representative Matt Gaetz<\/a> (father and son) reiterated this position in an op-ed piece<\/a>, claiming \u201ccalls to repeal \u2018Stand Your Ground\u2019 are anti-woman. Imposing a duty-to-flee places the safety of the rapist above a woman\u2019s own life.\u201d\n\nIndeed, protecting the rights of women victims of violence was a theme during the initial debates over Florida\u2019s Stand Your Ground law, passed in 2005<\/a>. Arguing in favor of the law, Marion Hammer<\/a>, a lobbyist for the National Rifle Association<\/a> (NRA), stated<\/a>, \u201cyou can\u2019t expect a victim to wait and ask, \u2018Excuse me, Mr. Criminal, are you going to rape me and kill me?\u2019\u201d\n\nDespite supporters\u2019 claims that Stand Your Ground helps protect women, the reality is that this law fails to work on behalf of many survivors of violence. Running counter to the rhetoric used by Baxley, the Gaetzes, and Hammer, the vast majority <\/a>of rapes and sexual assaults are committed by persons known to the victim – not violent strangers accosting a person walking alone on a dark street. Based on a “presumption of fear of death or great bodily harm,” Florida’s Stand Your Ground law exempts<\/a> this presumption if “the person against whom the defensive force is used has the right to be in\u2026the dwelling, residence, or vehicle.” Thus, it follows that if a perpetrator attempts to commit a rape within the confines of his own home, Stand Your Ground would not be available to a victim who uses deadly force against him. Since 2005, only two cases <\/a>in which defendants utilized a Stand Your Ground defense involved alleged sexual assaults; the cases ended in a plea bargain and a guilty verdict.\n\nStand Your Ground also offers little help to survivors of domestic violence. Reported <\/a>by Charles Blow, one of the columnists who initially broke<\/a> the Trayvon Martin story, out of 235 cases in Florida<\/a> in which defendants used the Stand Your Ground law in defense, \u201conly 33 of them were domestic disputes or arguments, and…in most of those cases men invoked the law, not women.\u201d\n\nAs various<\/a> sources<\/a> and<\/a> commentators<\/a> noted<\/a>, the case of Marissa Alexander elucidates the failure of the Stand Your Ground law to protect women who fight back against their abusers. Alexander found herself under arrest for firing a warning shot<\/a> at a wall when her husband \u2013 who had a documented history of abuse \u2013 allegedly threatened to kill her. In 2012, a jury convicted Alexander of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after the trial judge refused to let Alexander claim self-defense under Stand Your Ground. Alexander was sentenced to twenty years<\/a> in prison.\n\nIn language, as well as in practice, Stand Your Ground does not seem to apply to certain incidents of domestic violence. The law explicitly<\/a> exempts coverage where \u201cthere is not an injunction for protection from domestic violence.\u201d Therefore, an individual facing domestic abuse for the first time would not have Stand Your Ground as an available defense were she to use deadly force to protect herself.\n\nViolence against women is a problem that continues to plague America. Nearly twenty<\/a> women per hour are raped or sexually assaulted, and approximately three women<\/a> are killed every day<\/i> by intimate partners. Legal and societal changes are essential to stop this wave of gender-based violence. Laws like Florida\u2019s Stand Your Ground, however, are not the solution.\n\nWhat are your thoughts? Are strengthened self-defense laws the way to go in combating gender-based violence? Do harsher punishment for perpetrators deter such violence? Join the conversation in the comments section below.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Madeline Weiss discusses the applicability of Stand Your Ground laws to cases of violence against women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[499,665,719,992,1368,1426,1636],"class_list":["post-1278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-student-blogs","tag-domestic-violence","tag-florida","tag-george-zimmerman","tag-marissa-alexander","tag-self-defense","tag-stand-your-ground","tag-violence-against-women"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}