The Gov­ern­ment is be­ing urged to im­ple­ment safe­guards to pre­vent abuse of any pro­posed stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion.

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj is­sued the warn­ing in a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s an­nounce­ment that Gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing the Flori­da mod­el as a tem­plate for draft­ing sim­i­lar laws lo­cal­ly.

The Flori­da “stand-your-ground” law, en­act­ed in 2005, has sparked wide­spread de­bate in the Unit­ed States. Ac­cord­ing to sec­tions 776.012 and 776.013 of the Flori­da Statutes, the law broad­ens tra­di­tion­al self-de­fence by re­mov­ing the com­mon law du­ty to re­treat, pre­sum­ing le­gal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for us­ing force in one’s home, ve­hi­cle, or res­i­dence, and of­fer­ing im­mu­ni­ty from pros­e­cu­tion if the use of force falls with­in statu­to­ry guide­lines.

While Ma­haraj sup­ports ex­plor­ing stronger self-de­fence pro­tec­tions, he stressed the im­por­tance of re­spon­si­ble im­ple­men­ta­tion.

“I think that in a coun­try which is flood­ed with crime, a gov­ern­ment has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to con­sid­er what means are avail­able in or­der to pro­tect peo­ple and to en­sure that law­less­ness is cur­tailed. I think it’s a good start in or­der to try and give peo­ple a lit­tle more safe­ty at their homes or pre­vent them from be­ing kid­napped and at least pre­vent some of the law­less­ness that oc­curs now. But we have to en­sure that it is not abused and mis­used so that in­no­cent peo­ple can al­so be killed un­der the guise of peo­ple de­fend­ing them­selves.”

He said At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie should con­vene a com­mit­tee with the Law Com­mis­sion to draft the leg­is­la­tion, which must go through pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion.

“My ad­vice to him is that the peo­ple must have a say in hav­ing an idea of what the bill is and hav­ing an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make com­ments on the bill so that the Gov­ern­ment can ben­e­fit from the in­put of the pop­u­la­tion.”

Ma­haraj added that the pub­lic must wait to see the fi­nal con­tent of the pro­posed law be­fore draw­ing con­clu­sions.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad al­so weighed in, warn­ing that pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion will be key if the law is en­act­ed.

He said most peo­ple are un­like­ly to read the leg­is­la­tion in full, po­ten­tial­ly lead­ing to mis­use or mis­un­der­stand­ing.

“You could have a sit­u­a­tion where one rel­a­tive vis­its some­body else’s house, they have an ar­gu­ment and one kills the oth­er and then they are re­sort­ing to this leg­is­la­tion as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for do­ing so or at least to af­ford them some sort of a le­gal pro­tec­tion. The thing about it is not every­body’s go­ing to have the best un­der­stand­ing of when they can ap­ply that leg­is­la­tion and when it’s in­ap­pro­pri­ate to ap­ply them. As I said you need to ed­u­cate peo­ple so they un­der­stand the cir­cum­stances.”

Seep­er­sad rec­om­mend­ed na­tion­wide cam­paigns us­ing TV skits, ra­dio ads, and fly­ers to raise aware­ness and clar­i­fy le­gal bound­aries.

How­ev­er, for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and at­tor­ney-at-law Mar­vin Gon­za­les voiced strong op­po­si­tion to adopt­ing laws like Flori­da’s.

Gon­za­les, who joined the po­lice ser­vice at 18 and grad­u­at­ed from the po­lice acad­e­my in 1995, ar­gued that such laws have failed in mul­ti­cul­tur­al so­ci­eties, cre­at­ing di­vi­sion and weak­en­ing de­mo­c­ra­t­ic in­sti­tu­tions.

“I will be sup­port­ive of any law or leg­isla­tive pro­vi­sion that will as­sist Gov­ern­ment and the cit­i­zen­ry ob­tain the up­per hand in the fight against crim­i­nals. I can­not sup­port the im­por­ta­tion of laws from oth­er coun­tries that can have a detri­men­tal ef­fect on the so­cial and cul­tur­al co­he­sion of our mul­ti­cul­tur­al na­tion. This kind of law has proven to not be ef­fec­tive in coun­tries that in­tro­duced it and in mul­ti­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties, it has sparked so­cial erup­tions that can un­der­mine a coun­try’s democ­ra­cy, erode trust in law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties and the ju­di­cial sys­tem and can cause ir­re­versible harm to the so­cial sta­bil­i­ty of na­tions like Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, when con­tact­ed, said she would “look at it and give a re­sponse AS­AP” but no such re­sponse was is­sued up to the time of pub­li­ca­tion.