‘Stand-your-ground’ law heads to Parliament today

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Home In­va­sion (Self-De­fence and De­fence of Prop­er­ty) Bill, 2025, oth­er­wise known as the stand-your-ground law, will be in­tro­duced on the House’s agen­da to­day for fu­ture de­bate.

This was con­firmed by Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day.

Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the House, Bar­ry Padarath, did not re­ply to Guardian Me­dia ques­tions on the agen­da’s items. How­ev­er, the Vir­tu­al As­sets and Vir­tu­al As­sets Ser­vice Providers (VAVASP) Bill is list­ed on Par­lia­ment’s Or­der Pa­per for its “sec­ond read­ing” to­day. Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials con­firmed it will be de­bat­ed.

The Vir­tu­al As­sets and Vir­tu­al As­sets Ser­vice Providers Bill was not­ed re­cent­ly when Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo pi­lot­ed the Counter Pro­lif­er­a­tion Fi­nanc­ing Bill, 2025, and the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (FATF) Com­pli­ance Bill, 2025. Both were geared to meet Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (FATF) rec­om­men­da­tions to help pre­vent mon­ey laun­der­ing, ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing, and cor­rup­tion. The VA/VASP Bill is al­so ex­pect­ed to pre­vent fi­nan­cial crimes.

The Home In­va­sion Bill is list­ed on Par­lia­ment’s Or­der Pa­per for “in­tro­duc­tion”.

This Bill seeks to ful­fil the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment’s elec­tion cam­paign promise of a stand-your-ground law. The UNC pro­posed this while in op­po­si­tion, fol­low­ing kid­nap­pings which were oc­cur­ring, and when deaths of some oc­cu­pants had al­so tak­en place.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s web­site, a pol­i­cy pa­per on the bill was pro­duced by the Law Re­form Com­mis­sion in Ju­ly, af­ter the com­mis­sion was in­struct­ed to un­der­take a com­pre­hen­sive ex­am­i­na­tion of stand-your-ground laws, es­pe­cial­ly the Flori­da mod­el, which ad­dressed self-de­fence op­tions for oc­cu­pants to pro­tect them­selves from home in­vaders.

The draft law seeks to crim­i­nalise home in­va­sion and to give oc­cu­pants of dwellings the abil­i­ty to law­ful­ly de­fend them­selves, oth­ers, and their prop­er­ty.

It re­quires a spe­cial three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty vote for pas­sage in the House and Sen­ate.

Gov­ern­ment, with its 26 MPs and po­ten­tial sup­port from the two To­ba­go MPs, would have the nec­es­sary votes need­ed for pas­sage in the Low­er House (24). In the Sen­ate, the Gov­ern­ment needs two votes from ei­ther the Op­po­si­tion or In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors for the re­quired 18 votes there.

The Ju­ly pol­i­cy pa­per stat­ed that the of­fence of home in­va­sion al­so in­cludes in­stances where a home in­vad­er:

• In­ten­tion­al­ly caus­es in­jury to oc­cu­pants, in­clud­ing griev­ous bod­i­ly harm, griev­ous sex­u­al as­sault, rape, and death.

• Steals, de­stroys prop­er­ty with or with­out the use of in­tim­i­da­tion, threats, or vi­o­lence.

• Us­es a weapon, a firearm, or an ex­plo­sive de­vice in or­der to cause griev­ous bod­i­ly harm, per­ma­nent dis­abil­i­ty, per­ma­nent dis­fig­ure­ment, or death.

• Is a gang mem­ber or a par­tic­i­pant in or­gan­ised crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

• Un­der­takes ac­tiv­i­ty in the pres­ence of a child, se­nior cit­i­zen, dif­fer­ent­ly abled, or vul­ner­a­ble per­son.

The Bill al­so pro­vides that a per­son who acts in good faith in aid of an oc­cu­pant dur­ing a home in­va­sion, or who acts on the di­rec­tion of an oc­cu­pant dur­ing a home in­va­sion, may use the same de­gree of force against a cul­prit that an oc­cu­pant may use. It fur­ther pro­vides for in­stances in which an oc­cu­pant may not be able to re­ly on self-de­fence or de­fence of prop­er­ty where a home in­va­sion has oc­curred.