Murder conviction affirmed - another premature "stand your ground" case
In State v. Bolin, the South Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed the defendant's conviction over a claim that the jury should have been charged under S.C.'s new stand your ground law. Like the defendant in State v. Dickey, Bolin did not receive the benefit of the new law because the incident happened four months before the law took effect.
South Carolina's Protection of Persons and Property Act, found at S.C. Code Sec. 16-11-410, expanded self defense, and it essentially says that, if you are where you have a right to be, you do not have a duty to retreat when attacked, and can use deadly force to defend yourself:
A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in another place where he has a right to be, including, but not limited to, his place of business, has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force, if he reasonably believes it is necessary to prevent death or great bodily injury to himself or another person or to prevent the commission of a violent crime as defined in Section 16-1-60.
Prior to the passage of the Protection of Persons and Property Act, there was a duty to retreat except when in your own home or place of business (the Castle doctrine), unless to do so would place you in greater danger.
In a nutshell, Bolin was at a friend's house, some people came over to fight, they fought, Bolin thought he heard gunfire, and he fired a pistol into the car as it was pulling off. If the stand your ground law applied to his case, arguably he would have gotten a jury instruction on it - he was in a place where he had a right to be, and if the jury believed that he heard gunfire as the group left the jury could have found that it was reasonable to return fire to protect himself.
Although charged with murder, the jury found Bolin guilty of voluntary manslaughter, assault and battery high and aggravated, and discharging a weapon into an occupied vehicle, and he was sentenced to 30 years.
