For Kyle Rittenhouse, George Zimmerman, and others in high-profile homicide cases, claims of self-defense led to acquittals. Will the same be true for a young Black man who killed a white teen in Georgia?
Who is protected by such laws often depends on race, say the laws’ critics. In 2020, the United States Commission on Civil Rights released aof racial disparities in Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, finding that homicides in which the shooter is white and the victim is Black were ruled to be justified 11.2% of the time, compared to just 1.2% of the time when the shooter is Black and the victim is white.
After fatally shooting a Georgia construction contractor who had threatened his son with a knife in 2005, John McNeil was convicted on murder charges and sentenced to life in prison. He wasJohn White was convicted of manslaughter for the 2006 fatal shooting of a teenager who was part of a group of young white people yelling racial slurs and threatening White’s son in the driveway of his home in Long Island, New York.
When officers asked if they had any idea why someone would shoot at them, they said they didn’t know. But all four said that they believed that one of the people in the sedan was a classmate named Marijane — DeLoach said he was “1,000% sure” it was her, according to police records. They had encountered Marijane, who is white, earlier that night in a convenience store with her boyfriend, who is Black.
The morning after the shooting, the Statesboro Police Department issued a press release seeking information about it. Later, they received a call from a woman who said her friend Emma Rigdon had told her about an incident that might be related: the woman conveyed that Rigdon told her the shooting had come after the teens in the truck “started using racial slurs and racial signs,” according to the police report.
“With everything going on right now,” Rigdon told police, referring to the 2020 racial justice protests across the nation, Wilson “honestly thought that they were trying to run him off the road, and I was like, ‘Marc, I’m scared.’”
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