PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has welcomed the passage of the stand your ground legislation, even as opposition legislators last night voted against the bill.
Parliament on Wednesday night approved the Home Invasion (Self-Defence and Defence of Property) Bill 2025, commonly known as “stand your ground legislation”, with 23 government legislators supporting the measure and 10 opposition members voting against. There were no abstentions. It now goes before the Senate.
(File Photo)
In a statement posted on X, Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar said she was “pleased” with the passage of the bill, noting, “regrettably – though unsurprisingly – the Opposition voted against this critical legislation, once again failing to put the safety of our people first.”
She said that under the legislation, home invasion now carries a TT$500,000(One TT dollar=US$0.16 cents) fine and 20 years’ imprisonment.
Persad-Bissessar said harsher penalties will be a TT$750,000 fine and 25 years’ imprisonment, which will “apply to gang members, organised criminals, or offenders acting in the presence of a child, senior, person with a disability, or other vulnerable individual”.
She said home occupants “have no duty to retreat and may use or threaten force to defend themselves or others” and that “deadly force may be justified where there is an honest belief that it is necessary to prevent imminent death, grievous bodily harm, or grievous sexual assault.
“This law puts the rights of law-abiding citizens first and sends a clear message: attacks on our homes will not be tolerated.”
Minister of Defence and Minister in the Ministry of Homeland Security, Wayne Sturge, told Parliament that it is now firmly embedded in statute “that you have no duty to retreat, that you can stand your ground and that the law will not expect you to…wait your exact measure of response and that you are entitled to respond if you honestly believe that you are under attack and that you are entitled to use whatever force that you deem necessary in that situation.
“Because, obviously, the court is not going to hold you to their own standard, because the court was not in the situation. The court was not there at 2.00 am and would say Well, he should have done something differently”.
The criminal attorney said that the court will take into account, as this bill recommends, “the level of anxiety, the stress that you are under, knowing that your children could be raped, robbed and possibly killed”.
Sturge said, “This bill seeks to strike fear into the minds and hearts of the bandit. The bandits must know when they come into your house, and very soon …the bandits must understand that when they come into your home, there will be a chance, a real chance they might not be going out.
“The bandits must know that it is better, and the homeowner must know that it is better to be judged by 12 if it comes to that and carried by six. The bandit must know that when he comes in with firepower, your firepower will be matched. The bandit must know that the citizen is protected by this law, so that when he goes in, he may not come out,” Sturge said.
Former prime minister Stuart Young warned about the legislation, recalling an incident where a man reported that a bandit had robbed him of his licensed firearm and cash at home. Although he was traumatized, he was unhurt.
“And to come here…to tell the population that these nine clauses will assist in a home invasion, the hypocrisy and the irony do not escape me, and nor will they escape the population.
“Because the same proposition you are making is that if you have a licensed firearm, you will be able to handle a home invasion, he failed. We are concerned on this side that in the continued smoke and mirrors that take place with the other side, this bill must not be looked at in isolation because the promise of firearms to persons who legitimately should and may hold firearms does not fall within the province of the government,” Young added.
Earlier, Attorney General, John Jeremie had in tabling the legislation, said it is based on a long established maxim that a man’s home is his castle and that the “doctrine is that a lawful occupant of a dwelling house has the right to use necessary force, including deadly force against an attack and invader …without retreating from that individual if the occupier reasonably believes that the invader would commit an offence against him or others in the dwelling house.”
But former junior national security minister, Keith Scotland, said that any innocent life “taken on a mistaken belief that a person is a criminal or has criminal intent” is a travesty of justice.
“In this life, it is not a dress rehearsal, and for that deceased, there is no return, there is no jury, there is no opportunity to present his or her defence, and what about the person who actually does the act.
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