The Castle Doctrine

Just how far should one be able to go to defend their private property?

Bo Morrison, 20, was shot and killed by homeowner Adam Kind back in March after when Morrison ran away from a party that was held a neighbor's garage next door to Kind and hid on Kind's enclosed porch. Kind called police earlier about loud music coming from a car parked in the neighbor's driveway and actually went to the car himself and asked a woman that was inside to cut down the music, to which she refused to comply.

Police notified the mother of the girls that were hosting the party; she called her husband (who was home, sleeping), and the husband stormed the garage and forced everyone to leave. Morrison (who had previous run-ins with the law and had a blood alcohol content twice the legal limit) was among those that fled the house after the party was broken up.  Morrison fled to Kind's porch where Morrison's life ended with a single shot from Kind's handgun. Kind told police that he got his handgun after hearing noises on the porch. At the time of the shooting, Kind, his wife, his two children, and guest were at home.

Some are comparing this to the Trayvon Martin shooting considering both Martin and Morrison were both young black men (Morrison is technically biracial) gunned down while being unarmed at the hands of white men (Zimmerman is also biracial). However, race really has little to do with the underlying question.

While Zimmerman was charged with murder, Kind was cleared by authorities under Wisconsin's stand your ground/castle doctrine law. Police believed that Kind acted in simple defense of his home. Naturally, Morrison's friends and family did not believe the shooting to be justified. His family started a petition on Change.org to push for a complete repeal Wisconsin's law in regards of defending private property.

More evidence was eventually released, including Morrison being on the phone with police shortly before the shooting; the shooting taking place with police near by, and Kind yelling "stupid fucking kid".

The Castle Doctrine law and the Stand Your Ground law variant are laws that basically say that an individual is not required to retreat before using deadly force if they feel that they are being threatened. A vast majority of states, from the most progressive to the most conservative, have this law including here in Texas. The Castle Doctrine generally supported by most Americans; here in Texas, it enjoys overwhelming support.

Why? Because people feel that they have the right to defend their home or their property. But there's of course the moral quandary to that it can empower some property owners to feel that they have a license to kill anybody that they perceive to be a threat to their property.

There's two ways to look at what happened to Morrison:

The first way, obviously, is that Morrison should have exercised better judgment -- by either not attending the party, by not getting intoxicated, or not running away and hiding on Kind's porch.

The second way, taken on by many of those that are opponents of the Castle Doctrine laws, is that Kind acted unreasonably and the shooting of somebody that was unarmed was unnecessary. In addition, they feel that the additional evidence shows that Kind acted in aggression and not self-defense, largely in anger of the party next door.

As I stated before, the downside to the Castle Doctrine/Stand Your Ground laws is the potential for an unreasonable reaction to a given situation. However, the majority of the time, people that choose to defend their property or defend themselves using deadly force have a split second decision to make and almost always, its shoot and then ask questions later. Why? It's the abyss of the unknown -- I could say fear, but abyss is really a more accurate term. The individual does not know if an intruder may or may not be armed and what kind of intentions an intruder may or may not have. Risk is always involved on all parties.

People do make mistakes, yes, and I really do not believe Morrison should have lost his life. He was not armed, he was scared, and he was running away. That's all it was. Kind's actions were far too aggressive as to what the Castle Doctrine / Stand Your Ground laws were designed for. Morrison was on Kind's porch, not in Kind's house. If Morrison entered into Kind's house, it would be a different story.

Yet, I believe that the majority of the time that whenever a property owner does use deadly force to defend their property, it is not out of zeal.

I firmly believe that people have the right to their own lives, so as long as they do not maliciously move to intrude upon and violate the rights of others to have their own lives. As a corollary, I believe that you have the right to defend your own life, within reasonable limits, 

if you are faced with a situation where you may have someone standing in front of you that is aiming to maliciously violate your rights.

So the question is, could overzealous reactions, such as what happened with Morrison and Kind and even further back to Joe Horn and the two illegal immigrants here in Pasadena back in 2007 should lead to repeals of Castle Doctrine / Stand Your Ground laws? To all due respect to those involved, I will have to say no. If it's clear that somebody is threatening me or my household, then I have the right to use whatever force necessary to abort that threat, even if it renders the threatening presence dead. However, the laws need to be clear that deadly force should be used when the danger or threat is imminent and demonstrated. 

Buying into political messages

The Democratic Party believed that Scott Walker's demise in the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall election -- which seemed like a reality after the standoff between the Walker administration and pro-union Wisconsinites -- was all but a given. Too bad Tom Barrett, the Milwaukee mayor who Walker beat for the job back in 2010, was burned even worse by Walker this time around.

Amongst the numerous things that I deal with on a daily basis -- you know, the web design thing, being a caretaker, and being a college student -- I even had time to ponder what took place in Wisconsin. The dejected left are calling it a case of not enough strong organization, grassroots and financially, against the Walker's Republican Machine; those on the right are championing it as a victory that justifies their small government, personal responsibility ideology.

I'm not really against the idea of unions. I'm not very crazy about paying union dues, but I support the premise behind unions in that they're basically advocating better pay and conditions for its member workers. Of course, there's additional tenets to union mechanism that turns into a shenanigan of semantics (i.e., the United Auto Workers being blamed, and partially rightfully so, for nearly destroying the American automotive industry), but when it comes to premise, I only mean it from the bottom line. However, this post is not about unions. This post is not even specific points about ideology.

Leading progressive writer Robert Scheer wrote on his website Truthdig.org that the triumph of Scott Walker is more or less an indictment against the Democratic Party's inability to create a message that contradicts the Tea Party.

I'll disagree and agree. I'll disagree on the fact that the Tea Party is still a relevant, unified political movement in the way that a lot of political pundits and the media portray it to be. Personally, I think the Tea Party movement has morphed into simply being the hard-right sector of the Republican Party because some of the Tea Party's favorite sons and daughters make their tubthumping be as much about social conservatism as it is about fiscal conservatism, the original core advocacy of and source of passion for the Tea Party. I'll agree on the fact that the Democratic Party doesn't have a viable alternative message against hard-right conservatism.

Chris Bridges, who is indeed a socialist and also a writer on Truthdig.com, wrote a critical piece a few months ago about the Democratic Party accosting the Occupy movement, and hoping to mold it into an analogous response to the Tea Party Movement in the Republican Party. Not only it didn't work, but the Occupy movement became its own worst enemy -- "Occupiers" being "Occupiers" for the sake of being "Occupiers", and not in the interest of coming up with a coherent, unified political message where there was an actual end to justify its means. The Democratic Party's response to the Tea Party movement was more or less dashed -- not to mention, the Occupy movement was not only neoliberal and progressive in nature; there was enough of it that could be considered classically liberal in nature and it can be said that quite a few of those that subscribed to the Occupy movement probably identified themselves as libertarians.

Now to the point of this whole post: if you have a message and the means of that message has ends that justify that message, then people will buy it. In a way, it goes back to American romanticism -- if you work, you will prosper; hand outs unnecessary. Granted, I could have put that in a more poetic way, but this is a blog and not a book, and I have no intention on writing a book.

How the means of a political message is justified by its ends is the main difference between American (neo)conservatism and its apparent acceptance and American neoliberalism and its apparent standing as a political pejorative: anybody can accept the conservative message, no matter the socioeconomic standing or educational level; not everybody can accept the neoliberal message (or classical liberal/libertarian message even), except by those of a certain socioeconomic standing or educational level.

So what does all of this mean? What transpired in Wisconsin was not so much a validation of Walker's policies amongst Wisconsinites, but more of a case of more people on one side (in this case, conservative Republicans) that bought into a message and was mobilized against Barrett. The same thing could be said in the late April to mid May delegation fireworks amongst Ron Paul supporters.

The irony of it is, that despite the prevalent cynicism in the United States politically, it was people buying into a message and being mobilized by it that put Barack Obama into the White House. For the first time in a while, the Democratic Party actually had a coherent, clear message. Indeed, that clear message raised expectations astronomically, and unrealistically, and thus far the President is paying for it heavily, as expected.

But don't take it from me -- it's how politics work. Always has, always will.