Ajike “AJ” Owens, a Black 35-year-old mother, lived with her children in an apartment complex in Ocala, Florida. Her four children, ages 3 to 10, regularly played in a field between the apartment buildings in their complex. Though it was a common area, one of Ms. Owens’s neighbors, Susan Lorincz, a then 58-year-old white woman, claimed the field was hers and harassed the neighborhood children who played there.
For two years, Ms. Owens and Ms. Lorincz had argued about Ms. Lorincz’s pattern of verbally accosting, waving firearms, and harassing and abusing Ms. Owens’s children as they played outside, according to reports. The police were called on several occasions. Witnesses reported and Ms. Lorincz acknowledged that she assaulted the children with racial insults, called Ms. Owens’s children the n-word, told them to “get away from my house, you black slave,” and said to them, “This isn’t the underground railroad, slave.”
On June 2, 2023, Ms. Lorincz escalated her harassment of Ms. Owens’s children. She threw a pair of skates that hit one of the children, law enforcement said, and swung an umbrella at two of the children playing in the field. When Ms. Owens heard what Ms. Lorincz had done, she and her 10-year-old son walked to Ms. Lorincz’s apartment and knocked on the door. Ms. Lorincz did not open the door but argued with Ms. Owens through her door. Ms. Lorincz called 911 at 8:54 pm and claimed that neighborhood children were trespassing on her property and threatening her, CBS News reported.
Minutes later, without waiting for police to arrive, Ms. Lorincz aimed her .380-caliber handgun through her locked and dead-bolted door and shot Ms. Owens in the chest, according to law enforcement. Ms. Owens was unarmed. Her son stood next to her as she died.
Seventy miles away and over a decade later, the echoes of George Zimmerman’s killing of Travyon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager in Sanford, Florida, in 2012, reverberate in Susan Lorincz’s killing of AJ Owens. Like Trayvon Martin, AJ Owens was an unarmed Black person who posed no threat to the life or physical safety of her killer. Yet, like Mr. Zimmerman, Ms. Lorincz claimed her fear of her Black victim justified the killing.
Florida Extends “Stand Your Ground”
In 2005, Florida enacted a so-called “stand your ground” law providing that a person cannot be convicted of a crime if they “reasonably believe” deadly force is necessary to protect themselves or someone else from imminent death or serious injury, or to prevent a person from committing a “forcible felony.”1 Fla. Stat. Ann. § 776.012.
This law dramatically expanded the traditional scope of “justified” self-defense killings. For centuries, the common law rule adopted by most states in the U.S. authorized an individual to use deadly force only when it was objectively and reasonably necessary to avoid death or serious injury.
Under the common law rule, a killing would not be considered self defense if the shooter could have avoided the threat by walking away from the confrontation. The sole exception to this “duty to retreat” was if a person faced a deadly threat in their own home.
But Florida’s “stand your ground” law essentially eliminated the duty to retreat by allowing a person in any place where they are legally permitted to be to use deadly force without an obligation to retreat.
If prosecutors determine the shooter acted under the protection of the law, the shooter may not be prosecuted.
Florida legislators made clear that the law was designed to authorize civilians to respond to criminal activity with force. A sponsor of the bill, Rep. Dennis Baxley, said that “[s]ome violent rape will not occur because somebody will feel empowered by this bill . . . [s]omebody’s child will not be abducted,” and because of the law, someone will “prevent a murder.”
Following Florida’s lead, most states have enacted some version of a “stand your ground” law. Thirty states permit individuals to use deadly force to defend themselves or others without a duty to retreat from certain locations where they are lawfully present.2
Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Of those, 26 states permit individuals to use deadly force to prevent a felony.3 Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.
Invoking “Stand Your Ground” in Court
Florida’s “stand your ground” law hung over Marion County’s prosecution of Susan Lorincz from the outset. Like George Zimmerman, Ms. Lorincz invoked the law to avoid arrest and prosecution.
There was no doubt she shot and killed Ms. Owens, but Marion County Sheriff’s deputies did not arrest her.
When she was questioned by investigators, despite being behind a locked and bolted door, Ms. Lorincz said she thought she was in “mortal danger.” She claimed she heard Ms. Owens yelling that she was going to kill her even though there is no dispute Ms. Owens was unarmed. Based on these statements, Ms. Lorincz was released without charges.
Four days after the shooting, deputies conducted a second interview with Ms. Lorincz, during which she admitted to “researching Stand Your Ground and self-defense laws in the recent past.” The Sheriff’s Office determined Ms. Lorincz’s killing of Ms. Owens was not justified under the law and arrested her.
Marion County prosecutors decided not to prosecute Ms. Lorincz for murder (which requires proving that the defendant intended to kill the victim when they caused the victim’s death) and charged her instead with manslaughter (which requires only proof that the defendant acted unreasonably when they caused the victim’s death). Ms. Owens’s family felt this decision was unjust and unfair, NPR reported.
As the case proceeded to trial, Ms. Lorincz asked the judge to prevent the jury from hearing about the racial slurs and other racially derogatory language she had directed at neighborhood children. The judge agreed and ruled this evidence would not be admitted into evidence.
Ms. Owens’s mother, Pamela Dias, expressed shock at the ruling. She told NPR that “[r]acism is key and paramount to me in this case.”
On August 16, 2024, after a four-day trial, a jury found Ms. Lorincz guilty of manslaughter, but many Black residents remain shaken and troubled by the case.
“Stand Your Ground” Laws Shield Racial Bias
AJ Owens’s death is part of a pattern of racially disparate vigilante killings exacerbated in recent years by “stand your ground” laws.
In Georgia, three white men, Greg McMichael, Travis McMichael, and William Bryant, invoked the state’s “stand your ground” law after they shot and killed Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was jogging through their neighborhood in February 2020.
And in Missouri, in April 2023, an 84-year-old white man, Andrew Lester, sought the protection of his state’s “stand your ground” law after he shot and severely injured Ralph Yarl, a Black teenager who rang Mr. Lester’s doorbell, believing it was a different address.
Law enforcement initially declined to charge any of these four white men with a crime because they believed “stand your ground” laws could immunize them from prosecution.
These “stand your ground” laws have drawn intense scrutiny and criticism from defense lawyers, prosecutors, judges, police officials, civil rights advocates, and social scientists who say the law encourages white vigilantism and violence. The criticism is supported by a growing body of research.
In states with “stand your ground” laws, more Black men, women, and children are killed in homicides than in states without such laws. And researchers have studied how the mere presence of “stand your ground” laws change the rates at which private citizens are found to have committed no crime when they kill a person who they believed was committing a felony. They found that in “stand your ground” states, law enforcement determined that white defendants who killed Black victims committed no crime more often than all other self-defense cases involving other race pairings, regardless of whether the white defendant argued that they were protected by the “stand your ground” law.
According to a 2015 review of empirical studies on the topic by the American Bar Association’s National Task Force on Stand Your Ground Laws, a white defendant who kills a Black person is 350% more likely to be found to have committed no crime than if he killed a white person.
The killings of AJ Owens, Trayvon Martin, Ahmaud Arbery, and too many other Black people demonstrate how deadly “stand your ground” laws have proved to be for people of color, especially young Black men, who are seen as inherently or presumptively threatening based on their race.
The presumption of dangerousness and guilt is why Black people are considered threatening and criminal when they engage in ordinary activities like playing outside, knocking on a neighbor’s door, or going for a jog.
“Stand your ground” laws protect those who use lethal force because they believe they face an imminent threat—if that belief is “reasonable.” In deciding whether a belief is “reasonable,” law enforcement, judges, and juries often rely on the presumption of dangerousness to find it was reasonable to believe a Black person posed an imminent threat, even if they were unarmed, knocking on a locked door, or even running away. In this way, shared racial bias serves to justify killings of Black people under the law.
Evidence that demonstrates the defendant’s perception of a threat was clouded by racial animosity is often suppressed in “stand your ground” cases. Like the Marion County judge in Ms. Lorincz’s case, judges and prosecutors across the country have refused to allow jurors to consider text messages, videos, witness testimony, and other evidence of racial bias by white defendants who claim they killed a Black person in self defense.
Prosecutors acknowledged there was a “racial component” to Andrew Lester’s shooting of Ralph Yarl, but they declined to include evidence of Mr. Lester’s racial motives in the charging documents.
And in the murder trial of Travis and Gregory McMichael and William Bryan for killing Ahmaud Arbery, the prosecution chose not to introduce the defendants’ text messages and social media posts containing racial slurs, a video showing that the truck Travis drove during the offense had a Confederate flag vanity plate, or testimony that Travis used a racial slur immediately after shooting Mr. Arbery.
These kinds of decisions prevent jurors from considering the full scope of the harm in individual cases. They also hide how “stand your ground” laws deem racial bias “reasonable” and seek to protect it.
“Stand your ground” laws insulate those who kill Black people under the influence of implicit or explicit racial bias, protecting them from criminal prosecutions and convictions as well as related civil suits. The evidence of racial disparities in the impact of these laws is so strong that the American Bar Association’s National Task Force on Stand Your Ground Laws has recommended they be repealed.
Experts and advocates urge reform because “stand your ground” laws remain a serious threat to Black community members and continue to perpetuate our nation’s legacy of racial injustice.