A Q&A with Caroline Light, a historian of Stand Your Ground laws, about the trial in Ahmaud Arbery’s killing.
during a Wall of Prayer event, Thursday, Nov. 18, 2021, in Brunswick, Ga. Last week Sharpton's attendance in the trial of Greg McMichael and his son, Travis McMichael, and a neighbor, William"Roddie" Bryan prompted defense attorney Kevin Gough to object to his presence and other Black pastors in court. | AP Photo/Stephen B.
So this makes the United States unique: A, all these laws saying that you may claim self-defense when you’ve killed somebody, and B, the capacity to carry deadly weapons in public space in the interest of self-defense. There’s no other nation where we have this legal landscape in combination with the availability of guns.
But let’s look at a different case. When we look at the case of Cyntoia Brown, a 16-year-old Black girl who had been hired for sex by a middle-aged white man. In 2004, she used his firearm to shoot and kill him. Her attorneys argued that it was self-defense. And the courtroom saw her as guilty of murder and she was sentenced to prison. She spent 15 years in prison.
The laws were initially produced in the context of coverture and of settler-colonial violence. So indigenous people living in North America were not allowed to defend their homes — their castles — from encroaching European-descended settlers. Indigenous people were not seen as possessing a right to their own home and thus excluded from the Castle Doctrine.
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