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A few weeks ago, a parent asked their teenage son for a favor: to go pick up his brothers, who were playing at a friend’s house in Kansas City, Missouri.
But Ralph Yarl went to the wrong address.
Two days later in rural New York, a 20-year-old woman named Kaylin Gillis was shot and killed after she drove up the wrong driveway with friends.
Then three days after that – on April 18 in Elgin, Texas – a group of cheerleaders were leaving practice. One of them got into the wrong car by mistake, and a stranger opened fire on them, striking Payton Washington.
This string of shootings has captured the nation’s attention. In each of these cases, the accused shooters have been arrested. But prosecuting them could be complicated by laws that allow people to use deadly force in public places, if they say they were in fear for their lives – even if they could have safely retreated.
We revisit our reporting on proliferating stand your ground laws in an episode that originally aired in July 2022.
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