The state’s “Stand Your Ground” law for claiming self-defense only applies to alleged crimes after the law took effect in 2021.

The state’s “Stand Your Ground” law for claiming self-defense only applies to alleged crimes after the law took effect in 2021.

The Supreme Court of Ohio ruled today that the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law for claiming self-defense only applies to alleged crimes that happened after the law took effect in April 2021.

In a 5-2 decision, the Supreme Court affirmed an Eighth District Court of Appeals decision, which found Jaidee Miree and Desmond Duncan received the proper jury instructions on self-defense in their June 2021 murder trials. The Stand Your Ground law changed the circumstances in which a person using deadly force could claim self-defense, and the jury in the pair’s trials were instructed on the law prior to the 2021 change. Both were sentenced to 15 years to life for the murder of Ramses Hurley in 2019.

Miree and Duncan were teenagers when they asked Hurley to join them in their friend’s car so that they could buy marijuana from him. A dispute arose over the sale, and Miree and Duncan grappled with Hurley. Hurley was pushed out of the vehicle while it drove down a residential Cleveland street. Hurley suffered a head wound and died.

Writing for the Court majority, Justice Michael P. Donnelly stated the trial court correctly applied the law on self-defense and the duty to retreat before using deadly force that was in effect at the time of the murder. State lawmakers changed the standards on the duty to retreat in April 2021, two months before the teens’ trial, Justice Donnelly explained. Miree and Duncan argued the revised standard applied to them, reducing their obligation to retreat to avoid danger before acting in self-defense.

The Court explained lawmakers made two changes to R.C. 2901.09. Before April 2021, R.C. 2901.09(B) provided “no duty to retreat” only when the person was lawfully in their own residence or lawfully inside their own car or the car of an immediate family member. The revised version of R.C. 2901.09(B) stated that a “person has no duty to retreat before using force in self-defense, defense of another, or a defense of that person’s residence if that person is in a place in which the person lawfully has a right to be.” The legislature added a new provision, R.C. 2901.09(C), which states, “A trier of fact shall not consider the possibility of retreat as a factor in determining whether or not a person who used force in self-defense … reasonably believed that the force was necessary to prevent injury, loss, or risk of safety.”

The Court wrote the two sections cannot be read in isolation. Even though the wording of the new section in R.C. 2901.09(C) appears to apply to any trial held after the change, the law at the time of the murder applied, not the revised law. The jury hearing the case was given the instructions on self-defense that existed without R.C. 2901.09(C) and without the change to R.C. 2901.09(B), which the Court concluded was the correct way to proceed.

Chief Justice Sharon L. Kennedy and Justices R. Patrick DeWine, Jennifer Brunner, and Joseph T. Deters joined Justice Donnelly’s opinion.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Melody Stewart characterized the revision to the Stand Your Ground law as a significant change, and wrote that the new section limiting what a trier of fact could consider could be applied to the pair’s case because the trial occurred after the law took effect. She wrote it was possible for the trial court to instruct the jury on the duty to avoid the use of deadly force under the law as it existed in 2019. But the jury should have been told that under the new law, it could not consider the possibility of whether the two could have retreated before they reasonably believed the need to use deadly force.

Justice Patrick F. Fischer joined Justice Stewart’s opinion.

2022-1449 and 2022-1458. State v. Miree, Slip Opinion No. 2024-Ohio-5714.

View oral argument video of this case.

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