U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that he strongly condemns Florida’s Stand Your Ground laws and the time had come to question laws that expand the concept of self-defense and sow dangerous conflict in neighborhoods.
Holder made these observations at the NAACP 104th Annual Convention in Orlando, to loud cheers and background music and against the backdrop of the not-guilty verdict of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teen in February 2012.
“These laws try to fix something that was never broken,” Holder said at the Orange County Convention Center. “There has always been a legal defense for using deadly force if — and the ‘if’ is important — no safe retreat is available. But we must examine laws that take this further by eliminating the common sense and age-old requirement that people who feel threatened have a duty to retreat, outside their home, if they can do so safely.”
Describing the murder of Trayvon Martin as an “unnecessary shooting” which has caused a lot of pain, Holder said the Department of Justice has an open investigation into the case and “all available information [will be gathered] before determining what action to take.”
Holder told the gathering that, recent events provided an opportunity for a respectful and open dialogue on the difficult issues at the heart of the Zimmerman case – justice and equality – and called for a renewed resolve to “combat gun violence especially directed toward our children to prevent future tragedies.”
“The list of resulting tragedies is long and — unfortunately — has victimized too many who are innocent,” Holder said. “It is our collective obligation — we must stand our ground — to ensure that our laws reduce violence, and take a hard look at laws that contribute to more violence than they prevent.”
“We must confront the underlying attitudes…. and unfortunate stereotypes that form the basis of police action and private judgements,” he added.
Holder also told the Convention it is the “same issues” that at the core of the case that led his father to sit down with him to talk about how as a young black man I should interact with the police, what to say, and how to conduct myself if I was ever stopped or confronted in a way I thought was unwarranted. I’m sure my father felt certain — at the time — that my parents’ generation would be the last that had to worry about such things for their children.”
He also said Trayvon’s death caused him to sit down and have a conversation with his own 15-year-old son as his father did with him. “This is a sad reality in a nation that is changing for the better in so many way,” he added. He recounted too, the two times he had been pulled over and stopped by police, on the second occasion when he was simply running to catch a movie in Washington, D.C., and when he was at the time a federal prosecutor.
Zimmerman’s acquittal last Saturday by a mostly all white, all female jury, following his killing of Martin, has led to largely peaceful protests across the country.
