In vigilantes we trust
With ‘stand your ground’ laws, parts of the US are again encouraging vigilante justice despite rampant discrimination.
The writer is an adjunct professor at the Howard University School of Law and holds a Juris Doctorate and LL.M specialising in international law. He tweets @warishusain
One of the basic elements of a democratic society is that the police have a monopoly on force; any citizen who uses force is subject to a process of punishment carried out by judges, attorneys and prosecutors. This monopoly ensures that any prejudices that exist in the society will be insulated from the use of force. However, domestically, in the United States, there has been a diversion of this monopoly with provincial laws that allow common citizens to “stand their ground” and shoot at a threatening person, rather than calling the police for assistance. Internationally, the US has its own ‘stand your ground’ policy with its unilateral vigilante drone strikes that circumvent the criminal justice process in each country they strike, killing all in their vicinity.
In perfect scenarios, both policies seem beneficial: whether it’s a citizen who rightfully defends himself or the US droning an extremist to death before he can execute a mission that kills scores of people. However, for the imperfect scenarios, like the George Zimmerman case, one begins to wonder whether the criminal justice process may be preferable to the short-cut vigilante justice that ‘stand your ground’ laws and drone wars facilitate.
Despite its long-term existence, the ‘stand your ground’ defence to murder has recently been rebuked by President Barack Obama, Secretary for the Department of Justice Eric Holder and conservative veteran Congressman John McCain, in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s death. Martin was a 16-year-old African-American who was followed through his neighbourhood by George Zimmerman and shot dead because he “looked suspicious”. Those protesting the case assert that the young man was killed because of racial prejudice, while others deny such a connection.
Though Zimmerman was found not guilty of murder based on self-defence, critics argue that ‘stand your ground’ laws allow racist citizens to kill minorities and falsely claim self-defence. Dr Cornel West, of Princeton University, recently explained that “we’ve got to keep in mind ‘stand your ground’ laws are part of the legacy of the slave patrol, which is to say it’s primarily white brothers and sisters armed to keep black people under control … So it’s very clear there’s a class and a racial bias in these laws, and therefore we ought to fight these laws”. While “stand your ground” laws may make sense in a prejudice-free society, what happens when the ‘self-defending’ shooter’s perceptions are coloured by their racism, or their latent dehumanisation of certain classes of people? The same can be asked of the CIA citing pre-emptive self-defence as a justification for assassinations of non-Americans. If one looks to the collateral damage calculations performed by CIA and military officials, it becomes clear that the lives of Pakistani civilians living in the Fata region quantifiably ‘count less’ than American lives that could be lost if a terrorist plot succeeded.
It has been reported that the American government assumes that all teenage/military-aged males killed by drones are assumed to be militants, not civilian casualties. In other missions, the CIA profiles “targets” based on their behavioural and geographical patterns and unilaterally launches signature drone strikes to kill that person. Therefore, the US government is profiling innocent teenage boys the same way Trayvon Martin was profiled and the results are just as deadly. As such, Dr West explained that though President Obama came out in support of Trayvon Martin, he is a “global George Zimmerman”. This likely means that through the drone programme, the president has used the same dehumanising aggression against perceived foes as Zimmerman, while finding legal cover behind a justification of self-defence. This equates to a national ‘stand your ground’ policy, the proliferation of which threatens the very fabric of due process rights that are essential to American democracy and international law.
Most countries have moved away from vigilante times when individuals were encouraged to take the law into their own hands to exact justice. However, with the ‘stand your ground’ laws, it seems that parts of the US are once again encouraging vigilante justice despite rampant racial discrimination in society. With the drone killing programme, the US has short-circuited the traditional methods of having a terrorist suspect arrested and tried with due process rights. Both of these forms of vigilante justice will result in the death of innocent people, especially at the hands of prejudiced triggermen.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 26th, 2013.
In perfect scenarios, both policies seem beneficial: whether it’s a citizen who rightfully defends himself or the US droning an extremist to death before he can execute a mission that kills scores of people. However, for the imperfect scenarios, like the George Zimmerman case, one begins to wonder whether the criminal justice process may be preferable to the short-cut vigilante justice that ‘stand your ground’ laws and drone wars facilitate.
Despite its long-term existence, the ‘stand your ground’ defence to murder has recently been rebuked by President Barack Obama, Secretary for the Department of Justice Eric Holder and conservative veteran Congressman John McCain, in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s death. Martin was a 16-year-old African-American who was followed through his neighbourhood by George Zimmerman and shot dead because he “looked suspicious”. Those protesting the case assert that the young man was killed because of racial prejudice, while others deny such a connection.
Though Zimmerman was found not guilty of murder based on self-defence, critics argue that ‘stand your ground’ laws allow racist citizens to kill minorities and falsely claim self-defence. Dr Cornel West, of Princeton University, recently explained that “we’ve got to keep in mind ‘stand your ground’ laws are part of the legacy of the slave patrol, which is to say it’s primarily white brothers and sisters armed to keep black people under control … So it’s very clear there’s a class and a racial bias in these laws, and therefore we ought to fight these laws”. While “stand your ground” laws may make sense in a prejudice-free society, what happens when the ‘self-defending’ shooter’s perceptions are coloured by their racism, or their latent dehumanisation of certain classes of people? The same can be asked of the CIA citing pre-emptive self-defence as a justification for assassinations of non-Americans. If one looks to the collateral damage calculations performed by CIA and military officials, it becomes clear that the lives of Pakistani civilians living in the Fata region quantifiably ‘count less’ than American lives that could be lost if a terrorist plot succeeded.
It has been reported that the American government assumes that all teenage/military-aged males killed by drones are assumed to be militants, not civilian casualties. In other missions, the CIA profiles “targets” based on their behavioural and geographical patterns and unilaterally launches signature drone strikes to kill that person. Therefore, the US government is profiling innocent teenage boys the same way Trayvon Martin was profiled and the results are just as deadly. As such, Dr West explained that though President Obama came out in support of Trayvon Martin, he is a “global George Zimmerman”. This likely means that through the drone programme, the president has used the same dehumanising aggression against perceived foes as Zimmerman, while finding legal cover behind a justification of self-defence. This equates to a national ‘stand your ground’ policy, the proliferation of which threatens the very fabric of due process rights that are essential to American democracy and international law.
Most countries have moved away from vigilante times when individuals were encouraged to take the law into their own hands to exact justice. However, with the ‘stand your ground’ laws, it seems that parts of the US are once again encouraging vigilante justice despite rampant racial discrimination in society. With the drone killing programme, the US has short-circuited the traditional methods of having a terrorist suspect arrested and tried with due process rights. Both of these forms of vigilante justice will result in the death of innocent people, especially at the hands of prejudiced triggermen.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 26th, 2013.