Madam Speaker, let me take this opportunity to do one or two things. First, I acknowledge my colleague, Congresswoman Slotkin and her district, to offer to her and the people of Michigan my deepest concern and sympathy for the loss of…
Madam Speaker, let me take this opportunity to do one or two things. First, I acknowledge my colleague, Congresswoman Slotkin and her district, to offer to her and the people of Michigan my deepest concern and sympathy for the loss of those precious children.
No parent should ever expect to send their child to school and there would be a loss of life. Murdered. And for too long we have had a roll call of children being murdered. Students at Columbine High School, those college students at Virginia Tech, high school students at Parkland, high school students at Santa Fe, and of course, in Connecticut, little babies. It brought a President to tears.
Tonight, my message is sometimes the Federal Government has to step in.
For example, as it relates to this tragedy of gun violence, we are long overdue for dealing with the appropriate reaction. Many of us have discussed legislation that I had, some 20-plus years ago in Texas, that sometimes--although I am a champion of parents, I am one--I want to see parents front and center in their children's education, PTO meetings, I know where to go to get action parents.
When a little one--and I will say a little one--gets a gun from a parent that bought the gun a few days ago and winds up taking the lives of three precious little ones and others now fighting for their lives in hospitals, I would make the argument that something has to be done. Something has to be done and the Federal Government needs to step in in a tragedy like this.
We will all be working with our colleagues to do better. Before I start this theme that I have, as a member of the Judiciary Committee now for two decades, I have seen the success stories of making things better. I remember the joy of the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act in 2007 and 2008 when we went as a bipartisan Congress--98 votes in the United States Senate and 400 plus in the House, and the bill was signed by George W. Bush. The Voting Rights bill, the one that is now being held hostage.
That is something that the Federal Government does better--voting rights. That is what I want to talk about tonight, what we need to do better.
Just a moment, before I do that, let me deviate just for a moment and let me do it because I am pained. I am hurt. This has not been directed at me, but a sister Congresswoman.
This has not been directed at me, but a sister Congresswoman. And when I say sister Congresswoman, I am looking at the landscape of women because it has not been easy for women, Madam Speaker, to get to the United States Congress. We have not been here long in large numbers. We have been one or two. We can go back to the 1800s and beyond to know that women did come into the United States Congress but very few-- certainly women of color, very few.
Then might I add something else, Madam Speaker, the wonderfulness of the multiculturalism of faith, the different faiths that are in this place. It is finally a recognition of America as the unusual experiment, different languages and different cultures under one flag that you sit directly in front of, Madam Speaker, the United States of America. And then as I stand here right above your head, Madam Speaker, it says, In God We Trust.
So whatever way you craft your faith, our Constitution says that you are recognized and welcome under the First Amendment, freedom of religion and freedom of access. That is one of the reasons that, although imperfect, America has been able to go into faraway places and find connection because they have citizens who are connected to those places.
Then why would we have the trash of discourse?
Why would we disgrace our positions and the oath we take by suggesting that a person of a different faith, who wears her own faith, a hijab, is a terrorist?
Madam Speaker, there were times when I first began to wear braids that I was looked at askance. I, frankly, believe there are opportunities that I did not get because I wore braids. But it does not in any way even equal to being called a terrorist or black heart, to be made light of, to have a faith made light of, to not understand that the words in this hallowed ground, this most powerful lawmaking body in the world, is heard around the world.
As we speak today, someone is wondering what Americans are saying. The easy way to do it is to tune in, as we may not think, to the floor of the House; or the aftermath the words of a Member of Congress or a Member of the United States Senate or the President carry great weight, make a lot of noise, and are listened to. And the billions of Muslims around the world should not be denigrated for tomfoolery.
But what about, as I have been told, our own Member, Ilhan Omar, receiving deaths because of someone's ugly words?
It is time for the Federal Government to step in. Lives can be lost. Or we used to have that old phrase, sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me. And that is the context of yesteryear when the words were, in essence, light.
But, Madam Speaker, when you begin to play with the minds of those who came on January 6, we just heard testimony that said: I came because the former President called me to come.
Then who is safe when we say words?
This is not chatter. It is vile, and it can hurt people.
Can it hurt the innocent Muslim woman on a street in America, or Muslim man, or Muslim family, or Muslim child going to school because it has a megaphone?
Can it endanger our colleagues no matter who they are?
It is appropriate for the action of this House or the time for the Federal Government to step in.
I offer my concern, love, and affection for my colleagues and my sister Congresswomen. But I cannot and we should not tolerate dastardly language and non-humorous insults and threats to people's lives.
How dare you?
As I said, I want to talk about the idea of when the Federal Government should come into action.
Madam Speaker, let me ask you how much time do I have remaining?
Madam Speaker, the Federal Government is an umbrella on a rainy day. So the context of my remarks today will be about criminal justice issues and the unequal results that have come about through State laws.
Let me say that the juries have spoken in two important cases. As a trained lawyer I will say it again: The jury has spoken. But it does not mean
that I have to accept in one instance the ultimate decision based upon the context of that trial and all of the trappings: The judge, the prosecutors, the defense, and the law.
So let me begin very briefly.
What is self-defense?
It is a legal justification for the otherwise illegal use of force. You have killed someone in most instances. In the instance of self- defense that results in a death, although an unlawful killing did occur, it is considered a justified killing.
Do you know how many lives are lost, particularly people of color, by being defined as a justified killing?
To succeed on self-defense grounds, an unprovoked attack, the killer was not the aggressor, the killer reasonably believed that they were in imminent danger, the use of force was reasonable. This duty also requires the individual claiming self-defense to retreat prior to using deadly force.
In the wake of Kyle Rittenhouse's behavior, two men are dead, and they have families. Joseph Rosenbaum, 36; Anthony Huber, 26. Their families are hurting. And then one was drastically injured; Gaige Grosskreutz was drastically injured. And yet we find the self-defense law was used for the alleged interpretation of justifiable homicide.
Shameful. The law needs to be reviewed.
Someone said: Was he not even guilty of a traffic ticket?
Could you frame the case, Madam Speaker, in a young person who left their home and secured an AK-47?
The representation is that I came to protect.
Then why wasn't the question asked to the young man: Did you not land in the midst of protests?
Did you not head directly to where the police were?
Or did you surround yourself where protesters under the First Amendment had a right in this instance to be angry and agitated but nonviolent?
They were unarmed.
So if your reasoning was to go to protect, then go to the protectors. That was not the case. This was a false narrative ill-conceived. And although 17 or 18, he had the wherewithal and should have been held accountable for not going to where he said he was going to go.
The prosecutor in the Ahmaud Arbery case had it right. You can't come to provoke and then declare self-defense. That is what happened in the Rittenhouse case. Tragedy of the killing--of the shooting of Jacob Blake; those there were agitated, some might say rightly so. Some were there to do other things.
But the real issue was: Did they deserve to die?
Was this gentleman anywhere near police?
No. He came to provoke and then claimed self-defense. I believe there should be a Federal review of self-defense laws across America, and I will share with you why: Because Anthony Huber is dead, because Joseph Rosenbaum is dead, and because Gaige is severely injured.
But yet this is supposed to be the picture of someone who only came to help. He didn't get to the party of police that were down the street technically. He didn't make a beeline--as some of our parents would say, make a beeline for home. He didn't make a beeline to get to right where the police were and get instructions from the police. He was in the midst of those who rightfully could be protesting with some dispute as to what they might have been doing, but that was the charge of law enforcement. To my knowledge, that night law enforcement did not kill anyone, and ultimately the protesters left the area.
Self-defense laws across America need to be reviewed because too many people are dying under this false premise that everybody can use self- defense.
What about the castle doctrine?
That is an expansion of self-defense both statutory and common law, in which removes the duty to retreat for self-defense on individuals inside their home. This principle has been codified and expanded by the majority of State legislatures in a variety of ways. However, the boyfriend of Breonna Taylor who was defending her and the home was arrested, an African American.
These laws need to be reviewed. They are State laws, but they are unequally applied. Enough is enough.
Stand your ground laws. Stand your ground laws are an extension of the castle doctrine to areas outside of an individual's home such that there is no duty to retreat for self-defense. The name is derived from statutory language found in several States.
This results in the imbalance, if you will, of justice. Racial disparities are much larger as White on Black homicides have justifiable findings; 33 percentage points more often than Black on White homicides. So as Whites--as the father and son thought that they could kill Ahmaud Arbery, they were hoping for the odds that they would be found not guilty because they killed a Black man and they claimed self-defense.
Stand your ground laws appear to exacerbate those differences as cases overall are significantly more likely to be ruled justified in stand your ground States than non-stand your ground States. We will talk about one of the most notorious cases.
With respect to race controlling for all other attributes, the odds a White-on-Black homicide is found justified in 281 percent greater than the odds of a White-on-White homicide is found justified. So if you happen to be White and kill a Black person, 281 percent of the time you are innocent. You are innocent. By contrast, a Black-on-White homicide has barely half the odds of being ruled justifiable relative to White on White homicides.
Let me be very clear. I want all lives to be saved. I want Black lives to be noticed and known and matter. I want to make sure that the justice system is fair. Justice should have no color. The scales of justice, Lady Justice, that is what the Judiciary Committee has been advocating and working for the decades that I have had the privilege of serving.
Statistically Black-on-Black homicides have the same odds of being ruled justifiable as White-on-White. White men are more likely to successfully invoke the use of stand your ground laws for their defense after shooting than Black Americans or women, especially Black women.
Nationally the likelihood of a homicide being ruled justified is 281 percent greater than when the defendant is White and the victim is Black.
Need for Federal intervention and review. In contrast, the likelihood of a homicide being ruled justified when the defendant is Black and the victim is White is 49 percent lower compared to cases where both the defendant and victim are White.
In 68 percent, according to the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, of successful stand your ground law claims in Florida, the person was unarmed.
Let me quickly move to these cases.
As I do so, let me add to my discussion, and that is the citizen's arrest, the citizen's arrest law that was used by the defendants in the Ahmaud Arbery case.
And let me offer my sympathy to those killed by Mr. Rittenhouse and to the family of Mr. Arbery. Let me give sympathy to the families of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber because their loved ones are dead.
But in this case of, one has always said, a praying mother, a praying family, the citizen's arrest law cited in Arbery's case dates back to the Civil War. This case that was used, as the prosecutor indicated, was a Civil War-era State law to justify the killing.
Since 1863, Georgia has allowed its residents to arrest one another if they witnessed a crime and the police were not around. Similar laws have existed in nearly every State.
The citizen's arrest laws in Georgia in 1863 were utilized on the pretense of getting freed slaves. They were free. But by their color, there were those who said: You are not free. I am arresting you. You are violating the law. You escaped.
How horrible to have this kind of bounty.
I include in the Record an article from The New York Times, ``The Citizen's Arrest Law Cited in Arbery's Killing Dates Back to the Civil War.''
[From New York Times, May 13, 2020]
The Citizen's Arrest Law Cited in Arbery's Killing Dates Back to the
Civil War
After Ahmaud Arbery was shot dead by two white men on a
quiet residential road in
coastal Georgia, a prosecutor cited a Civil War era state law
to justify the killing.
The same law was invoked last year in suburban Atlanta
after a white woman chased down a black man who left the
scene of a car accident and killed him after starting a
confrontation.
Since 1863, Georgia has allowed its residents to arrest one
another--if they have witnessed a crime and the police are
not around. Similar laws exist in nearly every state, and
have been raised in courtrooms over the decades to account
for actions in a range of criminal cases, including assaults
and murders.
But after Mr. Arbery's death, a growing chorus of critics
are calling for the laws to be repealed. They say the laws
are outdated, relics of the Wild West, and are ripe for abuse
by untrained civilians in an age in which 911 is widely
available and police response times are generally within
minutes.
Like ``stand your ground'' and ``castle doctrine'' laws
that allow people to use force to protect themselves or their
homes--as in the case of a neighborhood watch volunteer in
Florida who shot to death Trayvon Martin in 2012--citizen's
arrest statutes have generated considerable controversy and
cries of racism.
``Namely, a member of the public doesn't know--and likely
cannot understand--the nuances of citizen's arrest,
particularly when it comes to the use of deadly force,'' Ira
P. Robbins, a law professor at American University who wrote
an academic paper on the issue, wrote in an email.
``That's why it is so dangerous for people to take the law
into their own hands.''
Citizen's arrest laws date back to medieval times. Absent
an organized police force, in the late 1200s, King Edward I
needed help fighting crime. The legal concept carried over to
the United States, when in the country's modern infancy, it
could take days for a law enforcement agent to travel to a
crime scene.
The use of the law, while not altogether common, is
generally less problematic in its more frequent use by
shopkeepers detaining shoplifting suspects, for example, or
by trained security guards and police officers operating
outside their jurisdiction, Mr. Robbins wrote.
Supporters of the law point to instances in which people
who are committing crimes are thwarted and then held until
the police arrive, such as muggers or shoplifters. They are
relied upon by crime watch groups like the Guardian Angels to
anti-immigrant patrols on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Still, Dana Mulhauser, a former civil rights lawyer at the
Department of Justice who now runs the conviction integrity
unit in St. Louis County, said citizen's arrest laws had
outlived themselves.
``These laws were created in a different time,'' she said.
``We are not in a time where we are lacking in police
responsiveness in this country. You are asking for situations
that cause trouble.''
In the case in suburban Atlanta, Hannah R. Payne, 22, is
awaiting trial on murder charges for the shooting death of
Kenneth E. Herring, a 62-year-old mechanic who left the scene
of a fender bender last May. Ms. Payne, who was not involved
in the crash, chased Mr. Herring in her Jeep.
Witnesses told police in Clayton County, Ga., that Ms.
Payne blocked Mr. Herring's truck, approached the open
driver's-side window of his vehicle and punched him with her
left hand as she pointed a 9-millimeter firearm with her
right.
A 911 dispatcher told her to stand down, but the police
said the call recorded Ms. Payne's demands: ``Get out of the
car,'' she yelled, using a vulgarity. A single shot was
fired, and Mr. Herring stepped out of the truck and died.
Ms. Payne, described by her lawyer as an ``all-American
girl'' who ``thought she was helping out,'' is now facing a
long prison term for a killing that shares eerie similarities
to the shooting death of Mr. Arbery, who was killed in
February after a father and son told the authorities they
thought he was the suspect of a rash of recent break-ins in
their neighborhood.
``When I saw that Arbery case, I thought, `Here we go
again,' '' Mr. Herring's widow, Christine Herring, said in an
interview.
To Ms. Herring, people like the young woman who killed her
husband feel empowered by the law to handle criminal matters
on their own.
A Georgia prosecutor, George E. Barnhill, cited the state's
citizen's arrest law as the reason Gregory McMichael, 64, and
his son, Travis McMichael, 34, should not be held responsible
for Mr. Arbery's death.
In a letter to the Glynn County Police Department, Mr.
Barnhill, who eventually recused himself from the case, wrote
that the men were in ``hot pursuit'' of Mr. Arbery, and that
they had ``solid first hand probable cause'' that he was a
``burglary suspect.''
There is no evidence that Mr. Arbery had committed a
burglary, and he was not armed when he was chased down.
The McMichaels were arrested last week and charged with
aggravated assault and murder, more than two months after the
shooting death and after a different prosecutor asked the
Georgia Bureau of Investigation for assistance.
According to Mr. Robbins' research, some states do not
allow citizen's arrest of misdemeanors unless the misdemeanor
involves a ``breach of the peace.'' Others only allow
citizens to make the arrest if they witnessed the crime
themselves. The laws vary across the country regarding the
level of probable cause that is required, and how long a
person is allowed to detain someone.
In Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, an arrest is
allowed if a citizen personally witnesses a felony.
California allows a citizen's arrest of a misdemeanor even if
the person did not directly witness it.
Statutes also differ on how certain the citizen has to be
that the crime was committed, Mr. Robbins wrote. In Arkansas,
the citizen can be ``reasonably sure,'' but in New York, if
the felony was not actually committed, someone who wrongly
takes a person into custody can wind up liable for false
arrest.
In Gary, Ind., last fall, a city councilman who apprehended
a teenager he believed had stolen his car days earlier was
charged with kidnapping.
``It can get messy,'' said Ronald L. Carlson, a law
professor at the University of Georgia. ``A citizen who is
being arrested is much less inclined to be cooperative if
it's not somebody with a blue uniform on.''
In Georgia, the law states that a private person may arrest
someone if a crime is committed in his presence or ``within
his immediate knowledge.''
But if it is a felony, the citizen can stop someone from
escaping if the citizen has ``reasonable and probable grounds
of suspicion.''
The current Georgia law is about a decade old, but versions
of a nearly identical statute have existed in the state since
1863.
In the Clayton County case, leaving the scene of an
accident with no injuries is a misdemeanor, so Georgia law
would not have authorized Ms. Payne to chase down Mr.
Herring.
Further, Mr. Herring initially stopped at the accident
scene, but he apparently was having a diabetic episode and
got back in his car and left, his wife said, so it was
unclear whether he would have been charged with any crime at
all.
Ms. Payne and her lawyer, Matt Tucker, did not respond to
requests for comment.
At her bond hearing last year, Mr. Tucker said his client
was ``not a menace to society as people want to portray
her.''
``She's a young individual that got on the phone with 911
and thought she was helping out,'' the Clayton News Daily
quoted him saying. ``At her age, she learned a very valuable
lesson.''
In the killing of Mr. Arbery, someone called 911 beforehand
to say that a man was inside a house under construction. If
that man was Mr. Arbery, and he was there without permission
but stole nothing, then he could have been charged with
trespassing, a misdemeanor, said Lawrence J. Zimmerman, the
president of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense
Lawyers. That means, Mr. Zimmerman said, the men who went
after him would not have been authorized to give chase.
Force can only be used to prevent a violent felony, Mr.
Zimmerman said, adding, ``What is not lawful is, you can't
detain somebody and then use force.''
But a person making a citizen's arrest who is then attacked
could try to claim self-defense, he said, as the McMichaels
have claimed--although it would not necessarily be
successful.
On Tuesday, Georgia lawmakers said they would move forward
with proposals to strip that protection from state law.
``The citizen's arrest has to be abolished in this state,''
State Representative James Beverly, a Democrat, said at a
news conference in Brunswick on Tuesday. ``We can't have this
happen again in this country and certainly not in the state
of Georgia.''
Ms. Herring said she would love to see the law abolished.
``The law is protecting them for some reason,'' she said of
those who had cited it as a defense. And of the woman accused
of killing her husband, she added, ``What gives her the
right? Let me tell you, she is not the police.''
So the citizen's arrest laws should be very clear. The defendants were wrong. The case resulted in a conviction because the case says that you have to witness the crime, and they did not.
I include in the Record an article titled ``Ahmaud Arbery and the case for getting rid of citizen's arrests.''
[From the Vox, Nov. 10, 2021]
Ahmaud Arbery and the Case for Getting Rid of Citizen's Arrests
Nearly two years after Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black
man, was shot and killed in a suburban Georgia town while
jogging, the three white suspects accused of the slaying--
Greg McMichael, his son Travis McMichael, and their neighbor,
William ``Roddie'' Bryan--are now on trial. They face charges
on a total of nine counts, including malice murder, felony
murder, aggravated assault, and false imprisonment.
Arbery's killing in February 2020 ignited national outrage.
When a video Bryan recorded from his vehicle while following
Arbery went viral online, viewers called it an unequivocal
lynching. The graphic footage shows the McMichaels, both
carrying guns, pursuing Arbery in a truck after he ran down
their street in the mostly white Satilla Shores neighborhood
near Brunswick. Following a short chase, the men corner
Arbery, and a confrontation between Arbery and Travis
McMichael ensues. During the struggle, Arbery is shot three
times, twice in the chest, after which he slumps to the
ground. It took 74 days after Arbery's death for the men to
be arrested and charged.
Defense attorneys will likely argue that the men's actions
were protected by Georgia's citizen's arrest law, which at
the time
allowed a person to detain someone whom they believe just
committed a crime. The attorneys may claim the men acted in
self-defense while attempting to carry out a legitimate
citizen's arrest of Arbery, whom they suspected of burglary.
Georgia's outdated and dangerous citizen's arrest law--one
that was created in an era of slavery and emboldened citizens
to act on their worst biases--has since been repealed. The
law was replaced with a bill that limits who can detain
citizens and when (business owners and workers who witness
someone shoplifting or dining and dashing, for example.) But
most states still have a version of these laws on the books,
and as long as they endure, advocates say they could
ultimately have tragic consequences.
Citizen's arrest laws are ubiquitous, with old roots
Georgia's citizen's arrest statute had its origins in the
Civil War era. Passed in 1863, when slavery was still
considered legal by Southerners despite the Emancipation
Proclamation, the law stated that a private person could
``arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his
presence or within his immediate knowledge.''
``It was a slave-catching law for slaves that attempted to
flee,'' Joe Margulies, an attorney and professor of law and
government at Cornell Law School, told Vox. ``It gave
citizens the power to grab them. [The law] derives from a
racist past.''
Every state has some version of a citizen's arrest law,
though they vary based on the type of crime and whether the
citizen must witness the crime directly or just be aware that
it happened. In many states, the laws are unclear about how
long a citizen is permitted to detain someone, how much
probable cause is necessary, and how much force can be used,
said Ira P. Robbins, professor of law and justice at American
University and the author of an article on citizen's arrest
laws for the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. Many
of the laws also don't specify what it means to carry out a
citizen's arrest or to detain someone while making one.
The laws, according to Robbins, date back to medieval
England, where citizens helped the king maintain order by
enforcing the laws. The common law doctrine of citizen's
arrest was further developed in the early 19th century, and
such statutes have remained on the books even as states laid
out more modern systems of law enforcement.
In Alabama, for example, a private person can make a
citizen's arrest ``where a felony has committed''--even if
they didn't witness it--and when they have ``reasonable cause
to believe that the person arrested committed it.'' The law
specifies that the arrest can be made ``on any day and at any
time,'' outlines the steps that must be taken for a legal
arrest, and gives citizens permission to break open doors or
windows to capture the alleged offender.
California allows citizen's arrests if the citizen
witnesses a perpetrator committing a misdemeanor, or when a
felony ``has been in fact committed, and he has reasonable
cause for believing the person arrested to have committed
it,'' according to the state's penal code.
In New York, a citizen can arrest another person if they
believe the suspect committed a felony such as murder, first-
degree manslaughter, or rape. It also lays out the
circumstances where deadly physical force may be justified:
when the citizen believes it is necessary to defend
themselves or a third person against physical force in the
course of the crime. (They may not if they know that they
``may avoid the necessity of so doing by retreating.'')
``I thought that the uproar over Arbery's murder would lead
other states to revisit their statues, but there has not been
much [movement],'' Margulies said. ``It certainly has not
prompted a wholesale reexamination of citizen's arrest
laws.''
Citizen's arrests can go horribly wrong
Arbery's killing isn't the first involving Georgia's
citizen's arrest law. In 2019, Kenneth Herring, a 62-year-old
Black man, was killed by Hannah Payne, a 21-year-old white
woman, after he left the scene of a car crash because he was
experiencing a diabetic emergency. Payne pursued Herring in
her vehicle and ordered him out of his car. It's unclear what
happened immediately after that, but Payne shot and killed
him. She was indicted on charges of felony murder and malice
murder, among others, and is still awaiting trial. Critics
say she racially profiled Herring.
``Given what we know about implicit and explicit bias,
allowing people to chase after someone and seize them based
on what they believe was a felony is a recipe for some
predictable number of cases just like this,'' Margulies said.
``With the automatic association between blackness and crime,
seeing a Black man run by or drive away will lead to some
predictable number of cases of folks concluding he's
committing a felony. That's the real problem.''
In 2012, neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, a
mixed-race Hispanic man, fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon
Martin in Florida after calling 911 and reporting ``a
suspicious person''; the police dispatcher instructed him not
to approach Martin. Zimmerman, who was later acquitted of
second-degree manslaughter, said he acted in self-defense.
``When you look at these cases, it's about people trying to
protect an area--not protecting it from a crime, but
protecting it from certain types of people,'' Rashawn Ray, a
sociology professor at the University of Maryland and a
senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told Vox.
Citizen's arrest laws can also go wrong in other ways--as
in 2014, when a man in Virginia burst into a lecture hall at
George Mason University Law School carrying handcuffs, pepper
spray, and a Taser-like device in order to execute a
citizen's arrest of a professor whom he said had controlled
his mind and sexually harassed him. In May 2020, a 22-year-
old man in Arizona was shot and killed after he witnessed a
hit-and-run and chased five people who ran from the scene in
an attempt to detain them.
But in cases with a racial element, the laws are part of
the pernicious way that ``place, space, and race'' intersect,
Ray said.
Also factoring into the Arbery trial are Georgia's open
carry law (which makes it legal to openly carry firearms in
the state with the proper permits) and ``stand your ground''
law (which allows for the use of deadly force if a person
reasonably believes it is necessary to prevent death or
severe bodily injury).
``We will likely hear from the defense attorneys a series
of dog whistles about protecting people in that particular
community from people who look like Ahmaud Arbery,'' Ray
said. ``With laws like the castle doctrine, people will
probably believe that good Samaritans have a right to also
defend their neighbors' property and that the McMichaels were
coming to the defense of others. The defense will try to
indicate to jurors that [a burglary] could have happened to
them.''
The trial judge will instruct the jury on the citizen's
arrest law as it existed at the time of the killing, though
Georgia has since repealed and replaced the law.
The protests surrounding Arbery's death--which preceded
those for Breanna Taylor and George Floyd, arguably setting
the stage for what was to come in the summer of 2020--and the
nearly two years that have elapsed since then have not
inspired a large movement to rethink citizen's arrest laws.
After the video of Arbery's killing went viral, South
Carolina state Rep. Justin Bamberg introduced legislation to
repeal the state's 1866 citizen's arrest law. Bamberg said on
Twitter that the law was no longer necessary in America's
police state.
In an effort to honor Arbery, New York lawmakers moved to
revise the language in the state's citizen's arrest statute,
calling the law a ``dangerous and historically abused
practice'' that has been ``used by racists to advance their
bigoted goals.'' The bill never advanced.
No matter the verdict, the Arbery trial could draw more
attention to the anachronistic rules of citizen's arrest
laws.
``All of these citizen's arrest cases with a racial element
are on the same continuum,'' said Ray, of the University of
Maryland and Brookings Institution. ``They end up in the
exact same way. They end up with someone being killed.''
Let me quickly say that we have the castle law, the stand your ground self-defense, and citizen's arrest. I believe all of these should be put into the mix of review, and there should be Federal law that governs how these State laws are done. Someone is going to argue the 10th Amendment and States' rights, but if you have these numbers of inequity in killing and justifiable homicides, and race is a factor, it needs to stop.
I know Trayvon Martin's mother and father. They have worked without ceasing. This is the saddest and most horrific and heinous results of stand your ground self-defense. This young man was just walking with Skittles, walking with an iced tea.
I heard the description of a young man being confronted by a grownup and fearing for his life, tumbling to the ground with the grownup and was shot point-blank. The grownup was acquitted because of the stand your ground self-defense.
The Federal Government needs to intervene. Ahmaud Arbery, with a praying mother, Georgia law requires the witnessing of a crime. I see a man running for his life, a man of dignity running for his life. But yet, it took three prosecutors to get to the point of acknowledging the human dignity, the humanity of this young man.
We have yet to get justice for this mother's child that is Trayvon Martin and many others who have fallen unnoticed under the arm of stand your ground self-defense, citizen's arrest, and the castle law.
I think we should be very clear. I am not looking to take away the rights of homeowners legitimately protecting themselves or self-defense when there is no other option. But we have allowed gun violence to take hold of the psyche and the behavior of America.
As the Giffords Law Center said, there was a 32 percent increase in rates of firearm homicide, a 24 percent increase in rates of homicide overall, and a 45 percent increase in firearm homicides among adolescents. With the extreme amount of gun violence, we need to determine whether or not every
State self-defense law should be defined specifically, and there should be a requirement of retreating where you can.
We should determine that if there are States with citizen's arrest, that the onus is on the individual seeing the crime to call official law enforcement. We hope those law enforcement are trained to not take action into their own hands, to not allow your judgment to supersede those who are trained and wear the uniform.
The castle law, stand your ground, when you have other options than to shoot point-blank and to kill people, and if you are a 17-year-old with an AR-15 and you can go into court, and there is not one aspect of your behavior that is illegal, then there needs to be a Federal review of the State law.
There was nothing to attribute to this individual that they had broken the law coming across State lines, that they provoked the incident. Yet, they were able to use, unfortunately, the stand your ground self-defense law. Gun violence continues to be a disease in this country.
I would just like to, for a moment, talk more about the citizen's arrest. For example, the Georgia citizen's arrest law that was at issue in the Arbery trial was codified in section 17-4-60, Grounds for arrest: ``A private person may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge. If the offense is a felony and the offender is escaping or attempting to escape . . . `'
None of that occurred with Mr. Arbery. It wasn't in their knowledge. They didn't see it. The offense wasn't a felony. It might have been trespass if it even existed. The defendant was not escaping or attempting to escape. He was on a Sunday jog, which you, as a free person in the United States, should be allowed to do.
``A private person may arrest him upon reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion,'' codified from the Civil War in order for citizens to really illegally detain runaway slaves. Other Southern States enacted similar laws for similar reasons during this period, nothing but a figment or an action of Jim Crow laws. It is time for the Federal Government to step in.
I question, with so many guns in America, whether it is safe to continue a relic like citizen's arrest. There are 18,000 police departments in the United States of America with the right kind of training. There is no reason why any individual could not retreat to call law enforcement or to call law enforcement appropriately.
Tonight, I came to honor those whose lives were lost and there was no response, none whatsoever. Trayvon Martin becomes singularly that symbol, even Tamir Rice or Breonna Taylor or maybe even Eric Garner.
These cases must be addressed, and I look forward to addressing these for the Nation and working to secure hearings and witnesses on how wrong these laws are, how unequal they are, how scattered they are, and how undefined they are.
As I close, we must recognize the value of our constitutional principles and that little book that is the Bill of Rights that guarantees us the freedom of access, due process, the right to vote, a constitutional presence in this Nation. These laws under a criminal unjust system have to be changed.
America needs to know that the killing of individuals with no adjusting and accountability is unacceptable. I am on the floor this evening to indicate that enough is enough and that we must proceed with the review of laws that can kill without accountability. In the names of those and the loved ones who suffer because they are gone, I commit myself to addressing with my colleagues the injustices that exist today. No more. No more. I am grateful for Ahmaud Arbery, but no more will we stand for this inequity.
Madam Speaker, as a senior member of the Committee on the Judiciary, and the author of several key legislative provisions, of H.R. 1280, the George Floyd Justice In Policing Act of 2021, I am pleased to anchor this Special Order on the importance and urgent need for reforms in the criminal justice system to several legal or judicial doctrines that that disproportionately, adversely, and unfairly affect black persons, particularly black males aged 18-35.
Specifically, the legal and judicial doctrines I will discuss this evening are: (1) self-defense; (2) stand-your-ground laws; and (3) laws empowering private citizens to make arrests.
Let me say at the outset, Madam Speaker, any questions that there continues to exist today racial double-standards, disparities, and systemic racism in policing and the administration of justice were conclusively laid to rest by what social scientists would regard as a ``natural experiment'' that took place in Washington, D.C. beginning in the summer and culminating with the January 6, 2021 insurrection and siege of the U.S. Capitol by Trump seditionists incited by the 45th President of the United States.
Mass protests and political rallies that took place in Washington D.C. started May 29, 2020, four days after George Floyd died in Minnesota, after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for more than'' eight minutes.
By the millions, Americans took to the streets in protest to affirm that no longer will the people of this country tolerate or acquiesce in horrible policing practices that include excessive and unnecessary uses of lethal force that has diminished community trust of policing practices across the country and has angered and terrified communities of color who are overwhelmingly and disproportionately its innocent victims.
Within days of the demonstrations, U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr announced that multiple law enforcement agencies, including the National Guard, Secret Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation, would ``flood the zone'' in D.C.
Thousands of law enforcement officials, armed with tear gas, rubber bullets and firearms were deployed to protect the city.
Hundreds of people were arrested, D.C. police records show.
More than 300 were arrested on June 1, 2020, the day Attorney General Barr ordered law enforcement to forcefully clear peaceful protesters from a perimeter near the White House, making room for President Trump to pose for cameras while waving a Bible in front of St. John's Episcopal Church.
It was the largest number of arrests recorded for any day during the summer of events.
Across the nation, law enforcement made an estimated 14,000 arrests in 49 U.S. cities during anti-racism protests in the summer of 2020, according to the Washington Post.
Following the November 3, 2020 election of Joe Biden and running mate Kamala Harris, large groups of Trump supporters held rallies in the city, where they clashed with counter-protesters.
Police made 20 arrests during the so-called Million MAGA March on November 14, 2020, an event in which Trump-supporters, including white nationalists, far-right extremist groups, and conservative politicians gathered in D.C. to protest the election results.
And, incredibly, only 61 arrests were made of rioters, who were overwhelming white and who used violence, that stormed the Capitol on January 6, an attack that claimed the lives of at least six persons, injured hundreds of others, caused horrific damage to property and national treasures, and inflicted emotional scars that will not heal for generations.
But most of these arrests are related to charges involving curfew violations--D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser announced a 6 p.m. curfew, though mobs had broken into the Capitol hours earlier, around 1:30 p.m.
There were only four non-curfew-related arrests, compared to 40 non- curfew-related arrests during Black Lives Matter protests on June 1, 2020.
Madam Speaker, the horrifying killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 by a Minneapolis police office shocked and awakened the moral consciousness of the nation.
Untold millions saw the terrifying last 8:46 of life drained from a black man, George Floyd, taking his last breaths face down in the street with his neck under the knee of a police officer who, along with his three cohorts, was indifferent to his cries for help and pleas that he ``can't breathe.''
The civil disobedience witnessed nightly in the streets of America in response to the killing of George Floyd were also in memory of countless acts of the inequality and cruelty visited upon young African American men and women no longer with us in body but forever with us in memory.
Beloved souls like Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky; Stephon Clark in Sacramento, California; Eric Garner and Sean Bell in New York City; Sandra Bland in Waller County, Texas; Jordan Baker in Houston, Texas; 12-year old Tamir Rice in Cleveland; and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
They remember as well the senseless killings of Ahmaud Arbery and Trayvon Martin by self-appointed vigilantes.
And the continuing need for their activism was reflected in the outrageous and senseless slaughter of Rayshard Brooks, who was simply sleeping in his car at a local Wendy's restaurant, by a uniformed officer of the Atlanta Police Department.
It was reflected again on August 23, 2020, when a Kenosha Police Department officer
shot Jacob S. Blake, a 29-year-old black man, in the back seven times-- yes, seven--as he attempted to enter his SUV where three of his young sons were in the back seat.
Indeed, the history goes back much further, past Amidon Diallo in New York City, past the Central Park Five, past Emmitt Till, past the racist abuse of law enforcement power during the struggle for civil rights and equal treatment.
Madam Speaker, the times we are in demand that action be taken and that is precisely what my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus, on the Judiciary Committee, and Congressional Democrats did in introducing and steering to passage in the House of H.R. 1280, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.
I support this bold legislation not just as a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee who also served on the House Working Group on Police Strategies, but also a mother of a young African American male who knows the anxiety that African American mothers feel until they can hug their sons and daughters who return home safely, and on behalf of all those relatives and friends who grieve over the loss a loved one whose life and future was wrongly and cruelly interrupted or ended by mistreatment at the hands of the police.
The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021 is designed to destroy the pillars of systemic racism in policing practices that has victimized communities of color, and especially African Americans for decades, is overdue, too long overdue.
This legislation puts the Congress of the United States goes on record against racial profiling in policing and against the excessive, unjustified, and discriminatory use of lethal and force by law enforcement officers against persons of color.
The legislation means no longer will employment of practices that encourage systemic mistreatment of persons because of their race be ignored or tolerated.
When the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act is finally signed into law, the government of the United States will be declaring firmly, forcefully, and unequivocally that Black Lives Matter.
It is true all lives matter, they always have.
But that Black lives matter too, and in so many other areas of civic life, this nation has not always lived up to its promise but that the promise is worthy of fulfilling.
In general, self-defense is a legal justification for the otherwise illegal use of force.
In the instance of self-defense that results in a death, although an unlawful killing did occur, it is considered a justified killing.
Typically, to succeed on self-defense grounds requires: (1) an unprovoked attack (i.e. the killer was not the aggressor), (2) the killer reasonably believed that they were in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury, and (3) the use of force was reasonable to the perceived threat.
Additionally, self-defense laws traditionally place a duty to retreat on the killer, requiring retreat prior to using deadly force, but only if retreat is reasonably possible and will not place the individual in continued danger.
The ``castle doctrine'' is an expansion of self-defense laws--both statutory and at common law--in which removes the duty to retreat for self-defense on individuals inside their own home.
This principle has been codified and expanded by the majority of state legislatures in a variety of ways, including through so-called ``stand-your-ground laws.''
Stand-your-ground laws are an extension of the Castle Doctrine to areas outside of an individual's home such that there is no duty to retreat for self-defense justification.
The name is derived from statutory language found in several of state laws that states that an individual may ``stand his or her ground.''
Laws in at least 25 states do not require the retreat from an attacker in any place in which one is lawfully present: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.
Additionally, seven states have expanded castle doctrine to motor vehicles or the workplace: Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
Stand-your-ground laws came under national scrutiny during the trial of George Zimmerman, who was acquitted in the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin.
In that case, Martin, 17, was walking home after buying Skittles from a nearby convenience store.
At the time, Zimmerman was a neighborhood watch volunteer who called police after spotting Martin.
Despite being told by the 911 operator to remain in his car until officers arrived, Zimmerman instead confronted Martin.
It remains unclear whether a fight ensued, who was the aggressor and whether Zimmerman had injuries consistent with his claims of being beaten up by Martin.
Zimmerman was the sole survivor; Martin, who was unarmed, died from a gunshot wound.
Florida's stand-your-ground law is codified in Florida Code 776.012 (2): A person is justified in using or threatening to use 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 or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony. A person who uses or threatens to use deadly force in accordance with this subsection 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.
According to the Urban Institute Report, the rate of justifiable homicides is almost six times higher in case with attributes that match the Trayvon Martin case.
Racial disparities are much larger, as white-on-black homicides have justifiable findings 33 percentage points more often than black-on- white homicides.
Stand Your Ground laws appear to exacerbate those differences, as cases overall are significantly more likely to be ruled justified in SYG states than in non-SYG states.
With respect to race, controlling for all other case attributes, the odds a white-on-black homicide is found justified is 281 percent greater than the odds a white-on-white homicide is found justified.
By contrast, a black-on-white homicide has barely half the odds of being ruled justifiable relative to white-on-white homicides
Statistically, black-on-black homicides have the same odds of ( being ruled justifiable as white-on-white homicides.
White men are more likely to successfully invoke the use of stand your ground laws for their defense after a shooting than Black Americans or women, especially Black women.
Nationally, the likelihood of a homicide being ruled justified is 281 percent greater when the defendant is white and the victim is Black when compared to cases where both the defendant and victim are white.
In contrast, the likelihood of a homicide being ruled justified when the defendant is Black and the victim white is 49 percent lower compared to cases where both the defendant and victim are white
States with stand your ground laws specifically are linked to a 65 percent increase in the odds of a homicide being ruled justified, driven primarily by cases where the defendant is white.
When a white person shoots a Black person in a stand your ground state, the odds that the homicide will be ruled justified increase by seven percentage points.
According to the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, in 68 percent of successful stand your ground law claims in Florida, the person killed was unarmed.
One study of cases in which stand your ground was used as a defense in Florida from 2005 through 2012 found that in 79 percent of the cases where such claims succeeded, the defendant could have retreated to avoid the confrontation.
States have deemed justified killings of victims who were facing away, retreating or even lying on the ground when they were shot.
One in three stand your ground defendants in Florida had a documented history of illegally carrying a gun or threatening others with a gun.
In nearly a third of Florida's stand your ground self-defense claims, the defendant initiated the conflict.
A number of studies examining homicide and violent crime rates consistently show that the passage of stand your ground laws increase homicides and gun injuries.
One study analyzed ten years (2000-2010) of FBI data in 21 states that passed stand your ground laws during the study period.
The authors found that there was no evidence that these laws reduce burglary, robbery, or aggravated assault.
On the contrary, this study found that the passage of stand your ground laws was linked to an 8 percent increase in the number of homicides, translating to an additional 600 homicides annually across states that adopted such laws.
A subsequent paper that examined vital statistics reported by the CDC found a similar increase of 7.5 percent in the overall firearm homicide rate as a result of stand your ground laws.
This study also found that stand your ground laws increase emergency room visits for nonfatal firearm injuries using data from State Emergency Department Databases.
Finally, according to Gifford's Law Center, lead to:
A 32 percent increase in rates of firearm homicide and a 24 percent increase in rates of homicide overall;
A 45 percent increase in firearm homicides among adolescents.
The law of citizen's arrest dates to 13th century England--a time when modern-day cops would be unrecognizable.
The practice immigrated to the American colonies and quickly became a convenient legal pretext for the persecution of the enslaved population.
Today, killings under citizen arrest speak to a key social psychological concept: subjective uncertainty, which states that when there is minimal information, people rely on stereotypes to discriminate.
The nation saw this clearly in the case of Ahmaud Arbery, whose only crime was being Black at the wrong place and wrong time, that discrimination resulted in homicide.
Beginning in the mid-1600s, enforcing the subjugation of Black Americans was a public responsibility: volunteer militias gave way to formal slave patrols, which wielded citizen's arrest statutes to brazenly and legally intimidate the Black population.
In the British colonies and the new United States, citizen's arrest melded with efforts to prevent slave escapes with the formation of slave patrols and fugitive slave ads that offered bounties for the return of freedom-seekers who, if caught, were frequently brutally punished.
Fugitive slave vigilantism was even incorporated into the United States Constitution with the agreement that all states would return captured slaves to bondage.
Following the passage of the 13th Amendment and the creation of the Ku Klux Klan, armed white vigilantes, under the cover of citizen's arrest laws, were able to terrorize Black Americans into a new form of subservience.
Through the 19th and 20th centuries, some state courts explicitly codified citizen's arrests laws; other states still rely on common law precedents. These pro-vigilante laws are in 49 of America's 50 states in one form or another.
Some might argue that the intent of citizen's arrests can be separated from its racist applications, but such a separation is impossible when the letter of the law is actively racist.
Georgia's laws were formally codified in 1861 by Thomas Cobb, a lawyer and slaveholder.
In the original code, African Americans were assumed to be enslaved unless they could prove free status.
Georgia's Citizen's Arrest statues were first entered into the Law Code of Georgia in 1863.
In 1863, Georgia law enforcement was in serious disarray-- confederates were deserting, the Union army was preparing to invade the state, and enslaved people were fleeing plantations to join Union forces.
With its criminal justice system in a state of collapse, the 1863 code revision empowered white Georgians to replace law enforcement and slave patrols to keep the enslaved Black population under control. After the Civil War, citizen's arrest supported Ku Klux Klan violence against Black Georgians.
On January 22, 1912, four African Americans in Hamilton--three men and a woman--were citizen's arrested and lynched, accused of killing a white planter who was sexually abusing Black girls and women.
On July 25, 1946, two African American couples were dragged from their car at Moore's Ford in Walton County and shot about sixty times by a mob of white men making a ``citizen's arrest.''
No one was ever charged with their murders.
Every African American parent, and every African America child, knows all too well `The Talk' and the importance of abiding by the rules for surviving interactions with the police and vigilantees.
As I have stated many times, direct action is vitally important but to be effective it must be accompanied by political, legislative, and governmental action, which is necessary because the strength and foundation of democratic government rests upon the consent and confidence of the governed.
Effective enforcement of the law and administration of justice requires the confidence of the community that the law will be enforced impartially and that all persons are treated equally without regard to race or ethnicity or religion or national origin.
As the great jurist Judge Learned Hand said: ``If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: thou shalt not ration justice.''
Equal justice is the proud promise America makes to all persons; the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021 will help make that promise a lived reality for African Americans, who have not ever known it to be true in the area of community-police relations.
And when Black Lives Matter, then and only then can it truthfully be said that all lives matter.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.