Stand Your Ground and Castle Doctrine Laws
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Stand Your Ground and Castle Doctrine Laws
Florida's Use of Force and Self Defense Immunity Provision
The main objective of this Florida Gun & Self-Defense column is to educate gun owners about gun law and self-defense law. When considering gun ownership, it is imperative to know that ignorance of the state and federal laws is not an excuse for unintentionally breaking those laws. It is the purpose of this weekly column to inform and educate gun owners of their personal responsibility as defined under the law.
I strongly suggest before you handle a gun, to learn and implement Colonel Jeff Cooper’s Four Rules for Safe Firearms Handling; One, treat all guns as if they are always loaded with a round in the chamber, even when the gun is empty. Two, never point the muzzle at anything you ‘don’t’ want to destroy. Three, keep your finger off the trigger until your gun sights are on the intended target. Four, always be sure of your target and what is beyond it. In addition, I would like to add a fifth point, “when you pull the trigger, think of all bullets as having a prosecutor and a very expensive lawyer attached to them, so hit what you aim at.”
Firearms are extreme tools designed for lawful usage, originally and primarily to save lives when under an unlawful lethal threat of death or grave bodily harm and then secondarily to hunt for food, and for sport shooting, and lastly for recreation.
With those points in mind, today’s firearms focus will be on the Florida Stand Your Ground (SYG) and Castle Doctrine (CD) laws, found in Florida State Statute 776.013. “Home Protection” and the use or threatened use of deadly force when at any time there is a presumption of fear of death or grave bodily harm. There are five sections to this law.
One: A person who is in a dwelling or residence, in which the person has a right to be, has no duty to retreat, and has the right to stand his or her ground and use, or threaten to use; (When one of the following two subsections occur)
A. Non-deadly force against another, when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to defend himself or herself or another against the other’s imminent use of unlawful force.
B. Deadly force if he or she reasonably believes that using or threatening to use such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself, herself, or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony.
Two: A person is presumed to have held a reasonable fear of imminent peril of death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another when using or threatening to use defensive force that is intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm to another if: (Any of the following two subsections are true)
A. The person against whom the defensive force was used or threatened was in the process of unlawfully and forcefully entering, or had unlawfully and forcibly entered, a dwelling, residence, or occupied vehicle, or if that person had removed or was attempting to remove another against that person’s will from the dwelling, residence, or occupied vehicle.
B. The person who uses or threatens to use defensive force knew or had reason to believe that an unlawful and forcible entry or unlawful and forcible act was occurring or had occurred.
Three: The presumption set forth in section two does not apply if: (Any of the following four subsections are true)
A. The person against whom the defensive force is used or threatened, has the right to be in or is a lawful resident of the dwelling, residence, or vehicle, such as an owner, lessee, or titleholder, and furthermore there is not an injunction for protection from domestic violence or a written pretrial supervision order of no contact, against that person or.
B. The person or persons sought to be removed is a child or grandchild or is otherwise in the lawful custody or under the lawful guardianship of, the person against whom the defensive force is used or threatened or.
C. The person who uses or threatens to use defensive force is engaged in a criminal activity or is using the dwelling, residence, or occupied vehicle to further a criminal activity; or
D. The person against whom the defensive force is used or threatened is a law enforcement officer, as defined in s. Fl. Statute 943.10(14). Who enters or attempts to enter a dwelling, residence, or vehicle in the performance of his or her official duties and the officer identified himself or herself in accordance with any applicable law or the person using or threatening to use force knew or reasonably should have known that the person entering or attempting to enter was a law enforcement.
Four: A person who unlawfully and by force enters or attempts to enter a person’s dwelling, residence, or occupied vehicle is presumed to be doing so with the intent to commit an unlawful act involving force or violence.
Five: As used in this section, the terms: A. “Dwelling” means a building or conveyance of any kind, including any attached porch, whether the building or conveyance is temporary or permanent, mobile or immobile, which has a roof over it, including a tent, and is designed to be occupied by people lodging therein at night. B. “Residence” means a dwelling in which a person either resides, temporarily or permanently, or is visiting as an invited guest. C. “Vehicle” means a conveyance of any kind, whether or not motorized, which is designed to transport people or property.
Self-Defense Facts: When a use of force, self-defense event has occurred, there is a Pretrial Immunity Hearing available in FL Statute 776.032, to the defendant for the purpose of determining if the use of force was indeed a lawful self-defense event.
The defendant has available the option of requesting a pretrial ‘Immunity from criminal prosecution’ hearing before a judge. A duty to retreat or Stand Your Ground Law does not come into play unless there is evidence the defendant chose to use deadly force when it was not necessary. SYG is an element evaluated within the immunity hearing but is only one of five legal elements required for the defendant to be granted pretrial immunity from prosecution.
Self Defense Immunity and Stand Your Ground are often confused and conflated and even considered or explained as being the same thing. They are not the same legal provision. They are completely separate statutes.
SYG simply means you are relieved from the legal duty to retreat. However, in Florida, there is a wildcard factor of “Reasonableness” involved. Meaning if there was a clear and completely safe avenue of escape or path of avoidance present, and any reasonable person would have chosen it, but the defendant did not, then the element of reasonableness comes into play in that the element of imminence was not present, thereby making ‘self-defense’ unavailable as a legal defense.
The determination is argued from two viewpoints. First, the ‘subjective view’ experienced in the moment of the event as defined by the defendant, and second, from the ‘objective analyses’ of the prosecutor, judge and jury as they evaluate the evidence produced in court.
If the evidence in court disproves any one of the five legal elements of self-defense, the argument of self-defense is lost. The legal crux of the SYG matter is; if the threat is in fact imminent, then it means there is no safe retreat available and the element of avoidance is off the table, i.e., you must Stand Your Ground to save your life. If the threat is truly imminent, avoidance is not possible. The evidence must prove this fact.
Note that within the Castle Doctrine, there is no element of Avoidance, because it is automatically, reasonably presumed, that a threat is imminent and therefore no duty to retreat is possible. Many states do not provide this law, but Florida does. (Fl. Statute 776.013 see section four.)
Article Sources: Andrew Branca’s Five Element of Self-Defense, Massad Ayoob various publications, Mitch & Evan Vilos’s Self-Defense Laws of All 50 States.
Today’s article published online at davidpdouglass@substack.com Highlands Guns & Self-Defense