Supreme Court of Florida Deems Evidence of Defendant’s PTSD Admissible in Stand Your Ground Cases
Florida is famous, some would say infamous, for being the progenitor of the “stand your ground” defense, dispensing with the duty to retreat before using deadly force. See Section 776.102 of the Florida Statutes. So, should a defendant seeking a “stand your ground” defense be allowed to present evidence that he suffers from PTSD? That was the question addressed by the Supreme Court of Florida in its opinion yesterday in Oquendo v. State, 2025 WL 2858352 (Fla. 2025).
In Oquendo, “Juan Javier Oquendo was charged with first-degree murder for the fatal shooting of James Cason in 2015 outside a bar in Pinellas County where Oquendo’s sister worked.” After Oquendo was convicted,
One of the major issues raised by Oquendo on appeal was whether the trial court properly denied his request to present expert testimony from clinical and forensic psychologist Dr. Jethro Toomer, who would have opined that Oquendo suffered from PTSD. During a pretrial proffer, Dr. Toomer testified that he reached this conclusion after interviewing Oquendo and evaluating him using a number of tests, in addition to observing Oquendo’s behavior and examining his personal history, which included familial abandonment in childhood, having witnessed three people he knew being killed, having been kidnapped, and having been mugged at least twice. Dr. Toomer opined that Oquendo had suffered from PTSD “for some time,” including the night of the shooting.
Dr. Toomer also explained that PTSD results when an individual is exposed to stressors, situations, or an environment “that is threatening and that may, at times, create[ ] risk and the threat of harm and loss of life.” PTSD causes an individual’s overall functioning to be impaired “cognitively, behaviorally, [and] emotionally,” so these individuals “don’t weigh alternatives,” “project consequences,” “manage conflicted data,” or “learn from past experiences.” This means that behaviorally, these individuals are “impulsive” and “unable to … assess situations appropriately and come to rational conclusions,” and their “instinct for survival remains elevated and is easily triggered.” Dr. Toomer explained that, under substantial stress, an individual suffering from PTSD is more likely to perceive a situation as threatening and to act on impulse and without thinking.
On appeal, the Supreme Court of Florida agreed with Oquendo, concluding
that because section 776.012(2) identifies both an objective reasonable person component and a subjective component to self-defense, state-of-mind evidence such as PTSD evidence can be relevant to the subjective component, even though it is irrelevant to the objective component. Such evidence may tend to show that a defendant with PTSD actually believed that he was in imminent danger. Our finding is also supported by Florida Standard Criminal Jury Instruction 3.6(f), which instructs jurors to consider the “actual belief” of the defendant.