Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Is­rael Khan, SC, has backed De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge’s call for cit­i­zens to “shoot first and ex­plain lat­er” dur­ing home in­va­sions, but crim­i­nol­o­gist Dar­ius Figueira has warned that the pro­posed Stand Your Ground (SYG) leg­is­la­tion could open the door to abuse and le­galised killings.

Sturge, speak­ing Tues­day at a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion at the San­gre Grande Civic Cen­tre, said the pro­posed SYG law—mod­elled af­ter Flori­da’s ver­sion—would al­low home­own­ers to use lethal force with­out hes­i­ta­tion if they be­lieve they are un­der im­mi­nent threat.

“You don’t have to wait to see what the at­tack­er is go­ing to do,” Sturge said.

“Once you hon­est­ly be­lieve an at­tack is im­mi­nent, you can strike first—and kill first.”

Khan said he sup­ports the prin­ci­ple of de­fend­ing one’s home but cau­tioned against adopt­ing the US mod­el whole­sale.

“I don’t be­lieve we should have a Stand Your Ground law like what they have in Amer­i­ca,” Khan told Guardian Me­dia.

“I be­lieve in the Cas­tle prin­ci­ple—you have a right to pro­tect your house.”

The Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion sub­mit­ted a let­ter to the Law Re­form Com­mis­sion out­lin­ing its pre­lim­i­nary po­si­tion on the bill and will is­sue a de­tailed cri­tique af­ter fur­ther de­lib­er­a­tion.

Khan said crim­i­nals have “de­clared war on cit­i­zens” and dou­bled down on the need for strong de­fen­sive rights.

“You emp­ty the clip, as the Prime Min­is­ter said. I must give her high praise for in­tro­duc­ing that,” he said.

How­ev­er, Khan stressed that lethal force must be jus­ti­fied.

“If some­body en­ters your house or is about to en­ter and re­fus­es to leave, you are en­ti­tled to kill that per­son. But if they are in the gallery to steal a bird, you are not en­ti­tled to kill. It’s on­ly if your life is in dan­ger.”

He al­so cau­tioned that mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty—such as shoot­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer—could lead to crim­i­nal charges if the home­own­er can­not prove a rea­son­able be­lief of im­mi­nent dan­ger.

Figueira firm­ly re­ject­ed the pro­pos­al, ar­gu­ing such laws abroad have led to un­nec­es­sary deaths.

“I don’t sup­port Stand Your Ground leg­is­la­tion in any form,” he said.

“If you want to em­pow­er home­own­ers, you use the ‘Home is Your Cas­tle’ law. Stand Your Ground gives peo­ple the right to kill by trump­ing up fake self-de­fence claims against un­armed peo­ple.”

He in­stead pro­posed amend­ing the Firearms Act to al­low every adult in a house­hold to keep a pump-ac­tion shot­gun strict­ly for home pro­tec­tion.

The firearm could not be tak­en out­side the home with­out fac­ing in­car­cer­a­tion.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les was con­tact­ed for com­ment but had not re­spond­ed up to press time.