Thank you. I don't quite see what standing your ground has to do with it, I'm afraid, since, at least as I understand the article, the degree of force you use while standing your ground has to be reasonable, and I struggle to see how it can be reasonable to use any force at all if retreating is an option.
There's a couple of tricky things here both with "stand your ground" in general and its supposed application in this case. IANAL by the way, this is just what I've picked up from hearing more legally-educated people talk about this so take that however.
Generally, in stand-your-ground cases, whether "reasonable force" means
deadly force is left to whether the shooter believed he was at imminent risk of death or serious bodily harm by their attacker. It becomes controversial because it means that someone who was objectively no threat whatsoever can still be legally killed if the person "standing their ground" simply
perceived they were a threat, for whatever reason. Needless to say this is highly problematic, considering the fact that white people tend to perceive black people as threatening in any context. This is a literally real effect that has been demonstrated:
this recent study for instance shows white people will consistently
perceive a black man as physically larger and stronger-looking than a white man of identical height and build. Black people, apparently, are
automatically scary, and that means a law that gives freedom to kill based solely on perception of threat will inevitably lead to the deaths of more innocent black men than any other kind of person. Which is just one reason IMO that Stand-Your-Ground as it exists now needs to die in a fire.
But never mind all that; the way "stand your ground" was involved in this case was convoluted and I am VERY glad the jury didn't buy it because it would've set a disastrous precedent.
There's a thing called "Castle Doctrine", that exists in most places in the US even where "stand your ground" does not. Castle Doctrine says that you have no duty-to-retreat from an attack by an intruder inside your own home. "Stand your ground", in states where it exists, is really nothing more than Castle Doctrine on steroids - it just extends its protection so that you have no duty-to-retreat from an attack not only inside your own home but
anywhere you have a legal right to be. Now you might be thinking, "Guyger had no legal right to be inside Botham's apartment, which she had essentially forced her way into uninvited" (and you would be 100% right about that, thank the gods); but Guyger's legal team was attempting to argue that since
Guyger honestly perceived that she was in her own apartment, where she would have unquestionably been protected by stand-your-ground law, that mindset made her action to defend herself just as valid as if she had been correct - much in the same way that if you
honestly perceive a person is pulling a gun on you, you can stand-your-ground and kill them in self-defense even though it turns out they were actually just pulling out their phone and there wasn't really anything there to defend yourself against.
Now you and I can argue about whether we think Guyger's claim that she "honestly perceived that she was in her own apartment" was BS or not (I certainly think it was, fight me), but the good news is that the jury's verdict didn't address her honesty. The precedent that has been set is that a false perception that you have a legal right to be where you are isn't good enough for Stand Your Ground to apply.
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