For 200 years, women and girls in the US have been charged with homicide for using deadly force in self-defense against rape and abuse. Is the tide finally turning?
Take, for example, Crystul Kizer, an African-American girl who was raped and trafficked at the age of 16. The rapes were videoed by a white man twice her age. Apparently, the police knew what he was doing and never stopped him. She took matters into her own hands to stop him, herself. At the age of 17, she shot him in the head.
Kizer has been charged with first-degree homicide and faces life in prison, where she has been since 2018. Kizer, now 21, does not deny that she killed the man who was molesting and pimping her, but claims it was done in self-defense. She has never been allowed to tell the jury or judge what her trafficker did to her. However, on July 6, 2022, the Wisconsin Supreme Court made a landmark ruling determining that Kizer at least had the right to explain to a jury why she claims to have killed her trafficker “in self defense.”