Governor’s Veto: Bill Promoting Shooting of Migrants Stopped Over Vigilante Worries

DEBARYLIFE – An Arizona rancher’s ability to lawfully murder migrants who cross their property was extended by a GOP measure, which Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed on Monday.

The sponsor of the bill claimed that it closed a loophole that had allowed “increasingly larger numbers of migrants or human traffickers moving across farm and ranch land.”

However, the changes Rep. Justin Heap, R-Mesa, wanted to make to Arizona’s “castle doctrine” law would have expanded the reasons why individuals could shoot migrants who are crossing their property legally.

House Bill 2843 was vetoed by Hobbs, who described it as just another instance of radicals operating within the Arizona legislature.

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“The current draft of this legislation prioritizes property over human lives and encourages vigilantism,” the veto letter read. “This plan would change long-standing self-defense laws to permit the needless use of lethal force and further encourage a culture of armed vigilantism and violence with impunity.”

The use of lethal force must be justified by the property owner feeling threatened by an intruder inside their house, according to current legislation.

Heap’s measure, however, would have expanded the situations in which lethal force can be justified and deployed by permitting it to be used even if the invader was only on the owner’s land and the owner felt endangered.

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Heap has now denied, as do many of his Republican colleagues, that the law was meant to have an effect on migrants. However, Jack Litwack, a criminal defense lawyer, stated to the Arizona Mirror in February that the new law would provide a far wider protection to those who use lethal force.

“The idea behind the Castle Doctrine is that you should be able to protect your home and your house,” he explained. “This seems to imply that you can shoot someone who is only on your property,”

According to Litwak, Heap’s measure would expand the definition of self-defense to include instances of using force to defend actions akin to those that resulted in a migrant’s death close to Nogales. For second-degree murder, the rancher in that instance is awaiting trial.