Teen’s death puts spotlight on ‘stand your ground’ law

TOPEKA, KAN. >> Kansas lawmakers were thinking of homeowners facing down burglars and people attacked on the street when they wrote a “stand your ground” law more than a decade ago allowing use of deadly force in self defense. They didn’t envision it applying to police officers, jail guards or government employees.

Now even some Republicans in the GOP-controlled Legislature who support the idea behind the law want to revisit it.

The reason: A prosecutor said this week that it prevented him from criminally charging employees of a juvenile intake center in Wichita in the death of a Black teenager who’d been restrained on the ground on his stomach, shackled and handcuffed for more than 30 minutes.

Police took 17-year-old Cedric Lofton to the center after a foster care agency said he needed a mental health exam for increasingly erratic behavior.

Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said any criminal charges were likely to be dismissed by a judge because Bennett concluded that the juvenile center’s employees believed they were acting in self-defense during the Sept. 24 altercation with Lofton. He said that Kansas courts have expanded self-defense rights to the point that, “How could any cop ever be prosecuted, then, for shooting somebody?”

While other legal experts and supporters of the law don’t think Bennett is correct, critics of stand your ground laws in about 30 states say they’re increasingly being used by law enforcement to shield officers who use deadly force.

“I don’t know how you apply stand your ground to that scenario,” said Senate President Ty Masterson, a Wichita-area Republican who voted in 2010 for the law currently on the books. “It’s meant to be for self-defense, to allow you to protect yourself.”