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Accused murderer Theodore Wafer, 54, of Dearborn Heights.
Even though I can understand the natural urge to find lessons and symbolism in death, especially one as high-profile and as tragic and as needless as Renisha McBride’s, I’m perplexed by those who want to turn her shooting into Exhibit A for the repeal of Michigan’s stand-your-ground law.
The Free Press, for instance, joins this chorus in an editorial that, rightly, praises the decision to charge McBride’s killer:
To claim self-defense under Michigan’s stand-your-ground law, Worthy explained, a person must have an honest and reasonable belief of imminent death or great bodily harm for themselves or another person. On Friday, Worthy said she does not believe Wafer acted in lawful self-defense. She also said race wasn’t relevant in the decision to press charges.
In light of the known circumstances of McBride’s death, the charges announced by Worthy are appropriate, and give a jury a range of options for conviction. Wafer’s attorney has said his gun discharged accidentally. A jury will decide whether that claim is credible.
No matter the outcome of Wafer’s trial, it’s time to take a serious look at Michigan’s stand-your-ground law. Scattered efforts to repeal Michigan’s law in recent years have been unsuccessful, but this should be a wake-up call. The taking of a human life always carries consequences. The ability to fire at will, on the flimsiest of perceived threats, is a destructive empowerment that benefits no one. Repealing, or at least amending, Michigan’s stand-your-ground law should be a top priority for Michigan legislators and Gov. Rick Snyder.
Without question, I agree with the overall point that Worthy (IMO, the most competent elected official in all of southeastern Michigan, if not the state) did the right and strategic thing in in charging Theodore Wafer, 54, with a range of crimes.
A Leap Too Far
But it's tough seeing how the McBride case relates to stand-your-ground.
It’s not even that I disagree with the Free Press position on the repeal talk. I’m for dumping any law that would allow someone to target another innocent person and then kill him/her for nothing. And I do believe that Florida’s SYG law allowed George Zimmerman that latitude.
But Wafer isn’t Zimmerman, and Renisha McBride isn’t Trayvon Martin. And while I do recognize both of their deaths as maddening illustrations of how America too often cheapens black life, the urge to transform McBride into “Detroit’s Trayvon” — instead of dealing with her death and her killer on their own merits — never seems more forced than when the SYG debate is raised.
Yes, McBride was young and black and, just as we feared with Martin, may have been gunned down for no other reason than how she looked.
Yes, she was killed in an area with an ignominious history of racial strife, not unlike Sanford, Fla.
But the senselessness that claimed her young life shouldn’t be tagged as the same brand of legal crazy that permitted an overzealous law-enforcement wanna-be to hunt down a boy armed with candy and tea.
Shooting at Imagined Threats
As she did throughout her presser Friday, Worthy got it right when she repeatedly rebuffed efforts to turn McBride’s shooting into a referendum on SYG.
For what it’s worth, SYG asserts a citizen’s right not to have to retreat in the face of imminent danger. And while we can debate whether it serves basically as a license to hunt human beings (I think it does in many applications), whether Wafer should have “retreated” isn’t the question.
He was at home. Some might contend, he couldn’t have retreated any further, and legally didn’t have to.
No, Wafer wasn’t standing his ground in the way bad Florida law allowed for Zimmerman. He didn’t go hunting for trouble.
Rather, Wafer was defending a castle that wasn’t under attack. He was shooting actual shells at imagined threats.
Even with SYG as the law of this land, how can a man justify firing a shotgun at a girl who was just standing there?
There’s no evidence McBride tried to force her way into his home, nothing to suggest she meant him harm. And while Wafer has already claimed he felt threatened, legal experts figure he'll be hard-pressed to prove that was a “reasonable” fear.
Little Ground to Stand On
In truth, it appears he has little ground to stand on. As Worthy pointed out, MCL 780.972, the amended self-defense act, requires that an individual “honestly and reasonably believes that the use of deadly force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or to another individual.”
Sure, there will be those who will use McBride’s toxicology report — her blood-alcohol level was nearly three times the legal limit — to somehow give legs to Wafer’s alleged “fear.” But how can we reasonably suggest that being drunk merits so grisly a death? How can we honestly say that, even in those circumstances, a young lady deserved to die?
Fortunately, Worthy isn’t trying to hear that either: “We do not believe he acted in lawful self-defense,” she explained succinctly.
And really, that’s what needs saying most, over and again. Whatever the current gun laws, Renisha McBride didn’t have to die and Theodore Wafer had no right to kill her.
Neither his life nor his castle needed defending. And her death needn’t be cast unfairly to fit an argument — no matter how righteous — in what seems, so far anyway, to be a tangential debate.
