Stand Your Ground Convictions Reveal Clear Racial Bias - Pacific Standard
Can you shoot someone, claim self-defense, and get away with the murder? Maybe, maybe not—but your odds are a lot better if the person you attack is black.
That’s the chilling implication of a newly published study, which examines 204 cases involving Florida’s controversial “stand your ground” law. It reports that, once a series of variables are taken into account, defendants in these cases were twice as likely to be convicted if their victim was white.
“Our results depict a disturbing message,” writes a research team led by Melody Goodman of Washington University in St. Louis. “Stand-your-ground legislation in Florida has a quantifiable racial bias that reveals a leniency in convictions if the victim is nonwhite.”
The study, which is published in the journal Social Science and Medicine, utilizes a database of Stand Your Ground cases created by the Tampa Bay Times newspaper. (It also updates some of the information found there.)
“A suspect is twice as likely to be convicted of a crime if the victim is white.”
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