For­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan SC says crit­ics of the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed Stand Your Ground law should give up their US visas if they are se­ri­ous about op­pos­ing the leg­is­la­tion.

Speak­ing at a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion at the Fyz­abad of­fice of MP Dave Tan­coo on Fri­day night, Ram­lo­gan said, “To all those per­sons who are go­ing to speak against this bill, if you so against Stand Your Ground leg­is­la­tion, give back your US visa. Stop go­ing Mi­a­mi and Flori­da to shop and say on prin­ci­ple, I do not sup­port Stand Your Ground leg­is­la­tion. So I'm not go­ing by Un­cle Sam.”

He added, “All of them peo­ple crit­i­cis­ing this leg­is­la­tion, give them a chance, they lin­ing up from the two nights be­fore to get their visa to go and want to live [in] Amer­i­ca… where this law ex­ists… where they will feel safer… where they will find a peace of mind. But why? You know why? Be­cause of laws like this.”

The Flori­da law Ram­lo­gan ref­er­enced has been wide­ly de­bat­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter it was cit­ed in the 2012 shoot­ing death of un­armed Black teenag­er Trayvon Mar­tin. Crit­ics of Stand Your Ground laws say, es­pe­cial­ly in the US they of­ten lead to un­even out­comes, par­tic­u­lar­ly against mi­nori­ties.  

Ram­lo­gan de­scribed the Bill as a di­rect re­sponse to the pub­lic's fear of crime and a ful­fil­ment of the UNC’s cam­paign promise. He ar­gued that the cur­rent self-de­fence laws in Trinidad and To­ba­go un­fair­ly place the bur­den of proof on vic­tims. “The cur­rent state of the law… is that if some­one in­vades your home, your ve­hi­cle or your pri­vate per­son­al space, the law of self-de­fence sup­plies. That means that you have to prove that you did not use ex­ces­sive force… but the bur­den of proof is [on] the vic­tim.”

He il­lus­trat­ed this with the sto­ry of his cousin in Clax­ton Bay, who hes­i­tat­ed to act against armed in­trud­ers out of fear of pros­e­cu­tion. “I stand up with my gun in my hand, and I'm think­ing, if I shoot and I kill this fel­la, they can come and charge me for us­ing ex­ces­sive force.”

He al­so re­called the case of a Freeport moth­er who used her hus­band’s li­censed firearm dur­ing a home in­va­sion, on­ly to face months of un­cer­tain­ty over whether she would be charged. “For six months, they ter­rorised that poor moth­er… So you know when they say the law is an ass? That is it!”

Ram­lo­gan said the pro­posed Stand Your Ground law would re­move the re­quire­ment for vic­tims to re­treat or prove self-de­fence in such sit­u­a­tions. “Stand Your Ground leg­is­la­tion rev­o­lu­tionis­es the law of self-de­fence. What it does… it elim­i­nates the du­ty to re­treat.”

“You are no longer un­der a du­ty to re­treat and put your­self in a po­si­tion where you feel your life un­der threat and you're us­ing self-de­fence,” he said. “The law will pre­sume that you had a le­gal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to use force against that per­son.”

He ex­plained that un­der the pro­posed law, “No more will the vic­tim have to prove that he act­ed in self-de­fence. Now, the law will pre­sume that the vic­tim act­ed with law­ful jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. In oth­er words, the law will say, you come in this man house, we eh ask­ing the man no ques­tion.”

He added, “By pre­sum­ing le­gal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion in favour of the in­no­cent vic­tim, the law will be rad­i­cal­ly, rad­i­cal­ly changed in favour of the cit­i­zen… It's a kind of im­mu­ni­ty from pros­e­cu­tion.”