Nevada murder trial is latest to test interpretations of ‘stand your ground’ laws across US

Scott Sonner for the Associated Press reports:

The idea that a person’s home is their castle and they have the right to kill trespassers has been widely accepted in the U.S. for more than a century. But that broad legal premise has been put to the test in several states amid cases that stretched the boundaries of “stand your ground” self-defense laws.

The latest high-profile case is in Nevada, where a man is on trial on murder charges after opening fire on two trespassers — not in his home but at a vacant rental unit he owns.

In neighboring Utah, a man was hailed as a hero after he intervened in a would-be carjacking outside a grocery store, gunning down the suspect. Months earlier, a jury convicted a Montana man who shot and killed a German exchange student trespassing in his garage….

In Reno, Wayne Burgarello, 74, insists he was justified in fatally shooting one unarmed trespasser and seriously wounding another after confronting them in a rundown duplex in February 2014.

Washoe County prosecutor Bruce Hahn said the former schoolteacher angry about past burglaries acted out of revenge — not self-defense — when he entered the darkened duplex and unleashed a barrage of gunfire on a man and woman beneath a comforter on the floor.

Read the full story at U.S. News and World Report.

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