JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Few words carry more baggage in Florida’s legal system than “Stand Your Ground.”
By law, it simply means someone who feels threatened has no duty to retreat from violence and can “meet force with force.”
In practice, it’s complicated and often controversial – as it will likely be in the case of a 68-year-old Navy veteran beaten to death in his own home.
The person making the claim is the woman charged in his death.
Jessica Norton faces second-degree murder charges in the November 2018 incident. According to police, Norton was moving out of Rafael Sur’s Southside home when things turned violent. She began hitting Sur, investigators say, and he grabbed a samurai sword. She then beat him to death with something the size of a DVR.
Norton doesn’t dispute that she killed Sur. Her Stand Your Ground claim says she “used deadly force against Sur because Norton reasonably believed that using such force was necessary to prevent imminent danger or great bodily harm.”
The motion says Norton suffers from PTSD due to “her lengthy experience as a sex trafficking victim and her repeated physical abuse throughout her life.”
Jacksonville Criminal Defense Attorney Janet Johnson isn’t involved in the case but says the filing is unique.
“It says that the defendant, in her position, with her life experience, felt the need to use deadly force to defend herself,” she says. “This may not be enough for someone else to be fearful. But for this person, given her background, this was a reasonable fear that she had to defend herself with deadly force.”
The motion details Norton’s history of sexual abuse, starting at age 10 when she was trafficked by her mother to a neighbor. (Norton, through her attorney, gave us permission to report the details of her claim.) The motion says the abuse continued throughout her adult life. Because of that experience, the motion argues, her reaction “was reasonable given her belief that he intended to commit great bodily harm upon or kill her.”
Johnson says the idea that Norton could claim Stand Your Ground for killing Sur, in Sur’s home “might raise an eyebrow.”
“[There] used to be a presumption that if you're in your home, and someone comes to your house, you have you have the right to defend yourself.” In this case, “she can claim anywhere that she is, that she didn't have to retreat because she was afraid, and she had to use this force.”
Jackie Meredith, sexual assault program coordinator at the Betty Griffin Center in St. Augustine, says the case raises legitimate points about the impacts of childhood trauma. “A traumatic event can be different for everybody,” she said. “For her, it could very much bring up these horrible feelings. And it just makes her react.”
(Sur’s surviving son was not available for comment on the case.)
Johnson says the motion is clever, both because it raises novel legal arguments and because it puts mitigating evidence in front of the judge long before the trial begins.
“It tells the judge, here's somebody that's had a really terrible life,” she says. “It is putting in extra background information that you normally wouldn't hear in a trial that might not come up until sentencing.”
Johnson says the claim also shifts the balance in court. Whereas the defense must prove a claim of self-defense, SYG flips that obligation to prosecutors.
“If the motion on its face makes a Stand Your Ground claim, the burden then is then is on the state to prove that it wasn't self-defense.”
Stand Your Ground motions are typically handled at hearings, but nothing is yet scheduled. Norton is due back in court next week.