Joe Driver and Jeff Wentworth: Securing your castle

Bills expand protection of the innocent

08:26 AM CST on Thursday, March 8, 2007

The Dallas Morning News' editorial "Protect the Right Victim" on Friday endorsed passage of the "Castle Doctrine" or "Stand Your Ground" bills we have introduced in the Texas Legislature. So far, 104 colleagues in the House and 27 in the Senate have co-authored these common-sense measures, and House and Senate committees have approved them.

Since Florida enacted the first of these laws in 2005, 14 other states have adopted similar legislation to protect honest citizens from criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits if they use force to defend themselves against violent attacks. The popular nickname given these laws is based on the common-law doctrine that your home is your castle and you have a right to defend your castle. Some states expanded their laws to apply to your car and business, as well.

HB 284 and SB 378 amend three aspects of Texas criminal and civil law with narrowly crafted language to benefit the innocent and not hinder the prosecution of lawbreakers in self-defense cases.

First, the bills create a "presumption of reasonableness" for the use of force in response to an unlawful and forcible entry into your occupied home, vehicle or place of business or employment. A Senate panel added language to clarify that the presumption would not apply to people who provoke their attackers or engage in criminal activity themselves.

Gang members, barroom brawlers and spousal abusers will not benefit from this change if they harm someone and try to claim self-defense. But victims of home invasions, car jackings and hold-ups will know the law is on their side when responding with force to a criminal attack.

Prosecutors can still bring charges, take cases before grand juries and rebut such presumptions if evidence exists that self-defense claims are not legitimate. But if no such evidence exists, the case probably should never have gone forward in the first place. The bill levels the playing field for crime victims and may even serve to prevent politics from entering into prosecutorial decision-making. If you doubt that ever happens, ask the parents of the Duke University lacrosse players.

Second, the bills state that you have "no duty to retreat" from an attack if you are in a place where you have a right to be, did not provoke your attacker, and are not engaged in criminal activity.

This was essentially the law in Texas until the mid-1970s. Under current law, the use of deadly force to protect yourself outside your home is justified only "if a reasonable person in your situation would not have retreated." Victims should not be required to retreat simply because a criminal decided to attack them in a parking lot as opposed to waiting until they got home to perpetrate the same crime.

Third, the bills protect victims from civil actions for using force authorized by law. The thought that victims could lose their life savings defending themselves against civil lawsuits brought by their injured criminal attackers is ludicrous. If we can offer them more protection from this type of litigious devastation, we should do so.

Many opponents falsely claim that in the first year after Florida's law took effect, 13 people shot someone, claimed self-defense under the new law and got off free and clear. However, a review of those deadly force cases by an Orlando newspaper showed that authorities cleared five individuals, charged three and continued to investigate the remaining ones. Hardly the "Get Out of Jail Free" card opponents claim it is.

Opponents dub this "Shoot First" legislation that will lead to "an escalation of violence" and "shootouts in the streets." We heard the same arguments more than a decade ago when the Legislature debated the concealed handgun law – and none of those horrific predictions came true. Nor will they if these bills become law.

While it's true that Texas' use-of-force laws already favor property owners, we think the law can and should be changed further to side with the law-abiding in self-defense cases, as it has in 15 other states.

Rep. Joe Driver is a Republican from Garland. Sen. Jeff Wentworth is a Republican from San Antonio. E-mail them through www.capitol.state.tx.us.