Advocates of a “stand your ground” bill meant to broaden Connecticut’s self defense law called it empowering, but opponents labeled the proposed legislation vague and hazardous, especially to minorities.
Considered by the legislature’s judiciary committee as one of several proposals to fight car crime, the bill and recent fatal confrontations in East Hartford and Litchfield offer a broad view of issues around use of deadly force in defense of person and property.
The bill added motor vehicles to Connecticut’s “castle doctrine,” which says a person may use deadly force and is not required to retreat when confronting a home or workplace intruder. Supported by dozens of gun owners and gun rights advocates in a marathon public hearing in March, the proposal did not make it to a vote in the last session.
In part, the bill said a person could use deadly force “to the extent that he reasonably believes such to be necessary to prevent or terminate an unlawful entry by force into his motor vehicle.” Testimony before the committee showed widely different views on the need for the amendment.
In support of the bill and another that would have removed the “duty to retreat” when facing intruders in houses of worship, Lauren E. LePage, state director of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, said “both pieces of legislation place the risk of initiating a criminal assault or other attack back on the criminal aggressor.”
“The current crime wave has the potential to put more and more citizens in dangerous situations without police protection,” Republican Sen. Rob Sampson, a co-sponsor of the “stand your ground” legislation whose district includes Cheshire and Waterbury, testified. “Our laws should reflect their natural right to protect themselves without fear of prosecution.”
Opponents, however, said the bill was vague and unnecessary.
Both the Criminal Justice Division and the Office of Chief Public Defender opposed adding motor vehicles to the castle doctrine law. In written testimony, state prosecutors said existing self-defense laws and jurisprudence “more than adequately ensure that only those whose belief regarding the necessity of using deadly physical force is unreasonable, or who ignore a known avenue of safe retreat, will be held criminally accountable for such use of force. Moreover, human life, even one engaging in criminal activity, is more valuable than a motor vehicle.”
Public defender’s office representative Nicole Van Lear wrote, “the language is so broad that this law would create a danger rather than act as a protective tool.”
“The logical purpose of the castle doctrine is to enable the use of physical force to defend your home when you are inside of it and cannot safely retreat,” Van Lear wrote. “This bill defies that logic and creates a scenario where a person may be justified in using deadly force to stop an unoccupied car theft.”
“The language of this proposal does not limit the use of force to a carjacking situation,” she continued. “As written, the proposal, if enacted, could allow the use of deadly force during non-violent and unoccupied car thefts. Car thefts, unlike carjackings, are not inherently violent endeavors. Allowing the castle doctrine to apply to a theft of an unoccupied motor vehicle will have unintended consequences.”
‘Presumption of fear’
Car thefts in the state spiked in 2020, but the numbers likely decreased last year, according to Ken Barone, associate director at the Institute for Municipal and Regional Planning at the University of Connecticut. Barone said preliminary figures and projections suggest a 4 to 10 percent decrease in car thefts in 2021 compared to 2020.
Still, vehicle burglaries, especially thefts of catalytic converters from cars, trucks and buses, continue to plague individual owners, businesses and school districts throughout the state. Confrontations between police officers, car owners and thieves have led to grievous injuries, including a recent face-slashing attack on a Milford man, who required about 300 stitches, and the bone crushing encounter suffered by a Farmington police officer who confronted a fleeing “cat” burglar suspect last September.
Giving car owners the right to shoot suspected thieves, however, is not the answer, social justice advocates testified before the judiciary committee. Representing the Collaborative Center for Justice, a Catholic social justice advocacy group, Dwayne David Paul and Rachel Lea Scott, wrote, “We reject any legislation that promotes vigilantism among citizens.”
“Any bill with an emphasis on empowering residents to prevent unlawful entry positions them in far too active a role,” Paul and Scott wrote. “The murders of Trayvon Martin, and more recently, Ahmaud Arbery, are examples of the dangers inherent to citizens taking the law into their own hands.”
Three white Georgia men were sentenced to life in prison earlier this year in the February 2020 fatal shooting of Arbery, who was a Black man. George Zimmerman was acquitted in the 2012 Florida fatal shooting of Martin, a Black teenager.
Adopted in 2005, Florida’s stand your ground law says people are justified in using deadly force if they reasonably believe that such force is needed to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to themselves or others or to stop “the imminent commission of a forcible felony.”
The person employing deadly force, the law says, “does not have a duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground if the person using or threatening to use the deadly force is not engaged in a criminal activity and is in a place where he or she has a right to be.”
The National Conference of State Legislatures reported earlier this year that laws in at least 28 states and Puerto Rico say there is no duty to retreat from an attacker in any place in which the targeted person is lawfully present. Also, the organization reported, some states have replaced the common law “reasonable person” standard, which places the burden on the defendant to show that a defensive action was reasonable, with a “presumption of reasonableness,” or “presumption of fear,” which shifts the burden of proof to the prosecutor to prove a negative.
Such language also was part of Connecticut’s proposed stand your ground bill, which called for “a presumption that the belief of a person who uses deadly force against someone out to kill or badly injure him “is a reasonable belief.”
“It shifts the burden,” bill sponsor Rep. Craig Fishbein said after a 16-hour hearing on a variety of gun-safety bills. “It merely creates a presumption that the action was justified. Of course, the presumption could be overturned, based on particular facts. Currently, one has to prove that their action is reasonable. This bill would put the burden on prosecutors that the presumption of the person was not reasonable.”
State prosecutors in their written testimony rejected that reasoning.
“Such a change in the law is unnecessary because it will have no effect,” the prosecutors wrote, stressing that under current law, if someone claims self-defense, the state must show it wasn’t.
Advocates, however, say stand your ground laws empower law-abiding citizens. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed a broad stand your ground bill last year that proponents said will protect people in confrontations that happen suddenly and quickly, according to Cleveland.com.
Opposing Democrats, along with some senate Republicans, said the law would bring more violence and death — particularly against minorities.
“Only cowards would pass and sign a bill that has been proven to disproportionately harm Black people,” House Minority Leader Emilia Sykes, an Akron Democrat, said in a statement. “Only cowards would support a bill that allows people to shoot first and ask questions later. The blood of the lives lost from the signing and passage of this bill rest solely on those who supported it.”
Connecticut Sen. Gary Winfield, a Democrat from New Haven and co-chairman of the judiciary committee, said such a law is unnecessary and “there are racial implications we’ve seen played out across the country.”
“I have no reason to believe people can’t protect themselves,” Winfield said. “I don’t know why some people think we’ll be safer than what we can do already. I don’t want people feeling they should have to be a hero. Thinking you have a license to be a hero gets people hurt.”
But Harwood W. Loomis, of Woodbridge, told the judiciary committee that as a disabled veteran and older adult, he believes crime has decreased overall in recent years, but the nature of criminal activity seems to be more violent.
“There is a general lack of respect and value for human life on the part of criminals,” Loomis said. “Physically, I am no match for even one younger, stronger assailant — and it appears that today, criminals don’t work alone. They travel and operate in packs. There should never be any doubt that if I am trapped in my car by an assailant or a group of assailants that I have a God-given right to defend myself.”
Recent deadly encounters
Loomis’ testimony evokes a fatal encounter in Litchfield last year, when real estate attorney Robert Fisher, 76, shot and killed a man who confronted him outside Fisher’s law office. Fisher was arrested in May on a manslaughter charge in the death of Matthew Bromley, a 39-year-old Torrington man.
Fisher told state police that he considered his own advanced age against Bromley’s relative youth and strength and said he feared for his life, according to the arrest warrant. Bromley had followed Fisher before parking and approaching the attorney as he was sitting in his car. Witnesses said the two argued before Bromley started slapping and punching the older man while saying he wanted to kill him because Fisher had ruined his life, state police have said.
“I am nearly 75 years old with physical limitations and was fearful he was going to knock me to the ground, leaving me completely helpless,” Fisher told police, according to his arrest warrant.
“I pulled my gun because I did not want him to keep attacking me and expected he would back off and stop; however, he immediately charged me again, grabbing my right forearm that held the gun,” Fisher told police, according to the warrant.
“After a brief struggle over the gun,” he continued, “I shot him. After I shot him, he stumbled back a few feet and collapsed on his back.”
But witnesses told police they did not see Bromley grab for Fisher once the older man pulled a hand gun, the warrant said. The men were about 5 to 6 feet apart when Fisher first lifted the gun and pointed it at Bromley’s neck, the warrant said.
“I’d like to add that I don’t believe that this is self-defense because the younger male did not have a weapon,” one witness was quoted as saying. “I think the older male could’ve punched the other guy and settled it that way rather than shooting him.”
In contrast with that case, an East Hartford man was inside his home early on June 16 when two teenage boys attacked him. Police say the man shot and killed both intruders.
“This case is currently being treated as a home invasion,” police spokesperson Officer Marc Caruso said Friday, “and there are no charges pending at this time.”
State law says a person is justified in using “reasonable physical force” upon another person to defend himself or a third person from what he reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of physical force. Deadly physical force may not be used unless the actor reasonably believes that such other person is using or about to use deadly physical force or is inflicting or about to inflict great bodily harm.
The question of whether deadly physical force is justified often arises in fatal encounters between police and crime suspects. An FAQ on the state Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection site offers a detailed look at the issues involved.
Factors considered when determining appropriate use of force, according to the agency that includes state police, include level of resistance, strength of the offender, knowledge of past violence, presence of weapons, immediacy of the threat, danger posed to those involved and the ineffectiveness of other techniques to control the suspect.
Jesse.Leavenworth@hearstmediact.com