JEFFERSON CITY (KMOX/AP) - A "stand your ground" bill in Missouri –which some law enforcement officials labeled the “Make Murder Legal Act” – has failed to pass out of a senate committee.
SB 666, which sought to give shooters and other assailants the benefit of the doubt that they were acting in self-defense, was voted down by the Transportation, Infrastructure and Public Safety Committee on Thursday. If passed, it would mean prosecutors could not bring charges against people who reasonably believed they were acting in self-defense.
The bill, sponsored by Republican Sen. Eric Burlison stated, "This act provides that there shall be a presumption of reasonableness that the defendant believed such force was necessary to defend him or herself or a third person."
Stoddard County Prosecuting Attorney Russ Oliver, of the Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, called the measure the “Make Murder Legal Act. He said the changes would “make it impossible to convict a great number of people of assault.”
“An exponential number of violent criminals who should be in prison, they’re going to walk free because of the procedural postures that this bill would put cases in,” Oliver told a Missouri Senate committee Tuesday.
Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Tennessee have laws similar to the Missouri proposal that limit police from making arrests if defendants claim self-defense, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
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St. Louis-area Democratic Sen. Brian Williams, the only Black member of the Senate public safety committee, called the Missouri proposal racist, offensive and “a personal attack on people who look like me.” He said it would have legally sanctioned the 2020 fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia.
Among those who support the measure is Mark McCloskey — a Republican U.S. Senate candidate who, along with his wife, made headlines in 2020 by waving guns at racial injustice protesters. He and his wife's law licenses were put on probation this week.
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“If this bill is a threat to you, it can only be because you’re intending to pose a threat to our citizens," Mark McCloskey said.
The Rev. Darryl Gray, a St. Louis activist who led the protest that went by the McCloskeys’ house, said demonstrators could have been shot.
“If I had been killed that day, you’re telling me that there shouldn’t exist a process with a person that committed the murder, who took a sacred life, should not be questioned?” he asked the Senate committee.
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