A Dangerous Doctrine
St. Louis has many perks to it. There’s a phenomenal zoo, a bar on The Loop that has heavy pours for affordable prices, and if Senate Bill 666 (yes, that’s the actual number) gets passed, you can earn your own tear drop tattoo! Proponents of the bill describe it as a way to strengthen the “Castle Doctrine” — which apparently was too weak — while those in opposition refer to it as the “Make Murder Legal Act.”
In short, the law would create a presumption that people who use force against another person, deadly included, reasonably did so in order to defend themselves.
Stoddard County Prosecuting Attorney Russ Oliver has a bit of an issue with the bill. According to him:
“[T]his bill is…basically saying the 6,500 assaults that are committed every single year in Missouri — that every single one of those are automatically presumed to be self-defense,” Oliver said. “This bill takes that decision of self-defense essentially away from the jury and applies a different legal standard and it basically relies upon a court to make that decision in advance of the jury ever hearing all the evidence,”…[t]he bill “shifts that burden into a presumption that you are automatically engaged in self-defense,” he said. “So long as the person is dead…you automatically have immunity because there’s not someone else to even say what had happened.”
I would imagine that this self-defense presumption shift is a lot to take in right now — as it ought to be. ATL has done its fair share of trial-by-combat coverage, but this is admittedly a lot to wrap one’s head around. For the future prosecutors and loyal readers scratching their heads trying to fathom how this law will be applied, please take a moment to view this footage. I hope it helps.
If this becomes law it would be a hell of a problem. My mind very quickly jumped to the prosecutorial shenanigans involved in the Ahmaud Arbery lynching. Many a law classroom and journal article have discussed the potential evils of jury nullification, but the thing that really worries me is prosecutorial discretion.
It should not surprise any of us that race impacts how prosecutors charge suspects. I would imagine this law, or laws like it, would also have disparate impacts on Black self defense scenarios. I can picture it already. An ice cream store employee locks a coworker in the freezer after a squabble over workplace gossip and the prosecutor shrugs their shoulders. A bar fight goes awry and a Black person gets hit with a murder charge. The pattern continues and eventually some Amy Wax type uses the data to spread 13%/52% rhetoric from an Ivy league lectern. And I can picture it so clearly because it’s already happening — despite the novel ways people try to fight the misinformation.
Maybe the prosecuting attorney is overreacting after all. It’s not like this feels eerily like some other time in history where books were banned and penalties for killing people became lax. Not to my knowledge at least. Since you can’t teach about it Tennessee anymore. Maybe Missouri is next?
McCloskey Praises Missouri Bill To Loosen Gun Laws; Prosecutor Calls It The ‘Make Murder Legal Act’ [STL Today]
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
