Case Explained: Kansas Stand Your Ground law also should stand trial as C.J. Lofton civil suit returns to court • Kansas Reflector – Legal Perspective

Five Sedgwick County Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center officers held a 135-pound, 17-year-old Cedric “C.J.” Lofton face down, pressure on his back, until he died in 2021.

Can anyone reasonably believe these five officers considered themselves at great risk of bodily harm, part of the “stand your ground” standard Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett used in declining to prosecute them?

As Lofton’s civil case returns to Sedgwick County District Court, “stand your ground” likely won’t occupy the plaintiff’s arguments, but for those who watched helplessly as the district attorney refused to charge officers citing this law, the wound has not healed.

Stand-your-ground laws feel like an extension of qualified immunity — which protects law enforcement from virtually all deadly force claims — to the gun-carrying public, expanding legal protections to people choosing deadly force and then claiming self-defense. They rose to prominence following the killing of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin at the hands of George Zimmerman, who’d been ordered by a police dispatcher not to engage the teen.

Zimmerman ignored those commands, and overwhelmed by the youth, shot and killed him.

A jury freed Zimmerman on the state’s stand-your-ground law, essentially deciding that he had the right to create a deadly confrontation, shoot the youth he accosted and then claimed self-defense.

Since then, states across the county — including Kansas — have written similar laws into their books, arguing a right to escalate potentially dangerous situations and yet claim as aggressors they were at great risk of bodily harm. This “shoot first,” or “choose violence,” law benefits men who measure their virility by firearm gauge or caliber rather than by character.

According to a post by the ACLU of Kansas, these laws can even shield police from accountability in deadly force incidents against people in custody, as in the case of C.J. Lofton.

People and groups who have studied the law’s ill effects continue to lobby for repeal.

Journalist and author Radley Balko, a former Washington Post columnist, has said white defendants using deadly force against Black victims are more likely to have their actions deemed justified than Black defendants in similar situations. Balko also has said the laws encourage vigilantism and reveal a startling alignment between the “warrior cop” philosophy of aggressive policing.

Brady United Against Gun Violence, the organization that backed the landmark Brady Bill following the assassination attempt on President Ronald Regan, has offered more concerning statistics.

It argues that these laws increase homicides by up to 11%; that in any given month, approximately 30 to 50 people nationwide die because of them; and that deterrence, burglary, robbery and aggravated assault aren’t affected by stand-your-ground laws.

Brady United also observed racial disparities.

According to its website, the odds of a white person killing a Black person and it being ruled justified is 281% greater than a white person killing a white person. No matter the perpetrator’s race, they were twice as likely to be convicted if the case involved white victims.

It’s worth mentioning again that Donald Black’s “The Behavior of Law,” written in 1976, said the offender-victim combination typically drives such decisions. Black argued legal system behavior was “quantifiable, predictable, and follows deducible general rules.”

The most prosecuted cases? In descending order: Black-on-white crime, white-on-white crime, white-on-Black crime and Black-on-Black crime.

Lofton can be counted among the system’s valueless Black victims.

Detention officers Jason Stepien, Brenton Newby, Karen Conklin, William Buckner and Benito reportedly restrained Lofton for nearly 45 minutes, roughly 10 minutes longer than Bennett’s report noted. One employee restraining Lofton told police he’d applied weight to the teen’s back.

Where’s the threat of great bodily harm? A slight 17-year-old boy held on his stomach for 45 minutes? This doesn’t qualify even under the unjust law’s own standard.

Court of Appeals Judge Carolyn McHugh, writing for Judges Richard Frederico and Allison Eid of the 10th Circuit last year, put it this way: “Defendants had sufficient control over (Lofton). At that point, a reasonable officer would have perceived the threat had passed, and that the use of deadly force was no longer reasonable. Instead, five officers continued to subject Mr. Lofton to a prone restraint while his legs were restrained, and he appeared not to move for prolonged periods.”

Bennett used “stand your ground” in defense of the detention officers.

But this system, the community and this state, must stand up for Lofton while stamping out this heinous law.

Mark McCormick is the former executive director of the Kansas African American Museum, a member of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission and former deputy executive director at the ACLU of Kansas. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.