| Posted: August 8th, 2012 A couple of months ago my colleague
Mitch Downey and I wrote about how Stand Your Ground (SYG) laws
distort the justice system: in states with SYG laws, homicides
are twice as likely to be deemed “justified.” In the process of
writing that post, we found that there were also substantial
racial disparities in justifiable-homicide rulings. Overall,
shootings are ruled justifiable in only 1.5 percent of cases.
However, the rate goes up substantially in those cases for which
Stand Your Ground laws purport to protect innocent shooters.
Specifically, in cases where the victim and the shooter are
strangers and a handgun is used, a homicide is ruled justifiable
in about 10 percent of cases. Across the country, when the
shooter is white and the victim is white, the percentage of
shootings ruled justifiable is a little more than 11 percent.
When the shooter is black and the victim is black, about 8
percent of homicides are ruled justifiable. Now, when the
shooter is white and the victim is bl