Gilchrist County man, 85, heads to jury trial over Stand Your Ground dog shooting

Larry Boiven’s case illustrates exactly the kind of situation Florida’s Stand Your Ground law was designed to protect. An 85-year-old man, legally blind and physically unsteady, found himself confronted by a growling dog with no safe means of retreat. The law recognizes that not everyone possesses the physical capacity to simply run away from a threat — and for Boiven, who says he has been bitten by dogs on two prior occasions, the psychological dimension of that fear is well-documented and real.

Stand Your Ground removes the duty to retreat when a person reasonably believes deadly force is necessary to prevent serious bodily harm. The key word is “reasonably” — and reasonableness must be assessed from the perspective of the individual facing the threat, not from the comfortable remove of a courtroom. A snarling dog approaching an elderly man who cannot see well, cannot move quickly, and has a history of dog bites is not a trivial threat. Serious dog attacks send tens of thousands of Americans to emergency rooms each year, and fatalities, while rare, are not unheard of.

The deputy’s interpretation — that the dog was “backing away” before an attack — reflects one possible reading of ambiguous video footage. But video evidence of animal behavior is notoriously difficult to interpret definitively. Dogs do feint. They do lunge. A momentary pause before renewed aggression is not the same as retreat. Boiven had fractions of a second to make a decision; the jury will have weeks to second-guess it.

Prosecuting an elderly, legally blind man for defending himself against what he genuinely believed was an imminent physical threat sends a troubling signal: that the most vulnerable members of society must accept a higher risk of injury before they are permitted to protect themselves. The law should not demand that Boiven be bitten a third time before his fear is considered legitimate.

Whatever sympathy one might feel for an 85-year-old facing a criminal charge, the facts of this case do not comfortably support a Stand Your Ground defense — and the video evidence is central to understanding why. According to the deputy who reviewed the footage, the dog was backing away at the moment Boiven fired. That is not a threat being neutralized; it is a threat that was already receding. Stand Your Ground does not authorize the use of deadly force against an animal that is in the process of withdrawing.

The law’s protection is conditioned on a reasonable belief that force is necessary at the moment it is used. If the video shows the dog moving away from Boiven, then the reasonable-belief threshold is precisely what is at issue — and it is appropriate for a jury to make that determination. Allowing Stand Your Ground claims to insulate defendants from jury review whenever they assert subjective fear, regardless of what objective evidence shows, would hollow out the accountability the law is still supposed to require.

There is also a broader concern about animal welfare embedded in this case. The neighbor’s dog was shot and killed — a serious harm in its own right. Florida’s aggravated animal cruelty statute exists because the law recognizes animals as sentient beings deserving of protection. When a person’s claimed fear is contradicted by video evidence, the criminal justice system is the appropriate venue for resolving that contradiction. Dismissing the charge without a trial would deny the process its proper function.

Finally, the framing of Boiven’s vulnerabilities — his age, his blindness, his prior bites — as reasons to extend deference deserves scrutiny. These are factors a jury can and should weigh. They are not, by themselves, a license to shoot a dog that a deputy’s review of the evidence suggests was not attacking. Empathy for a defendant’s circumstances and accountability for his actions are not mutually exclusive; that balance is precisely what a jury trial is designed to strike.