The trial of a Black veteran will test PA’s ‘Stand your ground’ law

Maurice Byrd knows how to handle firearms. In the early 2000s, the U.S. Army deployed him to Afghanistan and Iraq. As a civilian and owner of a barber shop in the Philadelphia suburb of Hatboro, Pennsylvania, he has a license to carry his 9mm Smith & Wesson semiautomatic handgun, but never had a reason to use the weapon.

That is, until Saturday, June 8, just before 6 p.m. 

Byrd, 41, who is Black, was standing in a parking lot next to his barbershop making a 911 call to report that the man who lived in the apartment above his shop had verbally assaulted him, calling him a “dirty (N-word).”

Stephen Strassburg, 37, who was white, grabbed Byrd by the front of his shirt, causing him to start backing away. Strassburg pursued him and angrily asked, “What you gonna do, shoot me (N-word)?” according to witnesses and a recording of the 911 call.

Strassburg threw three punches before Byrd pulled his handgun from a holster and squeezed off seven shots, striking Strassburg twice. One bullet entered his right cheek and exited from the base of his neck. The second entered at the center of his back near the spine and traveled upward, lodging in his brain.

Throughout the incident, Byrd’s phone remained connected to 911. “I just had to shoot him, I had to shoot him. He was after me. … There are witnesses,” Byrd frantically said, according to the 911 recording. “He’s down, please. He’s down.”

Stephen Strassburg died. Maurice Byrd was charged with first-degree murder. Their clash – the latest in a series in which Strassburg used racist language, according to police and neighbors – underscores the troubling intersection of guns and race, and raises questions about when self-defense stops and murder begins. It’s a nexus that received national attention in the slayings of Ahmaud Arbery and Trayvon Martin, and during the double murder trial of Kyle Rittenhouse.

Strassburg’s slaying, the second this year in Hatboro, shook the town of 8,200 some 20 miles north of Philadelphia. News outlets covered the shooting, but quickly moved on.

Locals now find themselves discussing what constitutes self-defense at a time when “stand your ground” laws are proliferating across the country. Pennsylvania is one of more than 30 states that have such laws, which allow people to use deadly force to protect themselves and others, in many cases without first retreating.

In Hatboro, there’s no consensus as to whether what Byrd did was justifiable homicide or a crime. Some, including members of Philadelphia’s legal community, have questions about whether Byrd has been overcharged given the totality of the circumstances leading up to his opening fire.

After hearing the gunfire, Christoper Lafferty, a driver for Hatboro Pizza, bolted down the block. He started snapping cellphone pictures. On his camera roll: an image of Strassburg lying on the ground with his arms outstretched, an officer walking a handcuffed Byrd away from the body and toward a police car.

“We heard the first five shots quick. Then, there was a pause of about two or three seconds and two more shots,” Lafferty said. “It felt like something happening in a movie, not in Hatboro. When I took those pictures, I didn’t realize the guy was dead or was going to die. Just shocked.” 

Maurice Davis, president of the NAACP Willow Grove, Pennsylvania chapter, said Byrd is a member of the organization – and also his barber. He’s troubled but not surprised by the racial slurs Byrd endured leading up the shooting. “It’s happening all over. The climate, with the political environment that’s brewing, I’m not shocked,” he said. “I would have hoped that he would have walked away from it, but who knows what’s in his head when his emotions get involved.”

Who gets to stand their ground? 

As of 2011, Pennsylvania’s self-defense law no longer includes the duty to retreat in most cases. That means that when someone is outside their home, a person has a right to stand their ground and use force – including deadly force –  against an armed assailant if they believe it is immediately necessary to do so to protect from death, serious bodily injury, kidnapping or sexual intercourse by force or threat.

In a public setting, the law states, a person does have a duty to retreat before resorting to force if the assailant is not armed with a deadly weapon.

Nationally, despite the attention high-profile self-defense cases get, the number of homicides found to be justified is small. In 2019, according to the FBI, private citizens committed just 316 gun homicides that were justified – about 3% of the 9,610 criminal gun homicides that year. Race appears to play a role in how courts determine a killing to be self-defense versus homicide, according to an Urban Institute study. When the shooter is white and the victim is Black, the rate of justifiable homicide is 34%, the study found. But when the shooter is Black and the victim is white, as was the case with Byrd and Strassburg, the rate of justifiable homicide plummets to just 3%.

Veterans of Philadelphia’s legal community said that while Byrd’s case is not typical because he was provoked – he had a permit for his gun, called police before shooting and stayed at the scene – proving his innocence will not be easy. Temple University Law School Professor Jules Epstein said that although there is a factual basis for the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office to charge Byrd with first-degree murder, prosecutorial discretion may also be appropriate. 

“This was not a planned execution. This was a human emotion explosion with provocation in a matter of seconds. And it would have been at least as fair and reasonable if the prosecutor decided not to charge first-degree murder,” Epstein said. “Maybe it’s third, maybe it’s manslaughter.”

Retired Judge Benjamin Lerner, who presided over the Homicide Trial Division of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas from 1996 to 2019, said the case could go either way. “This is a case in which, technically, the elements of first-degree murder are present. It’s a charge that is justified by the facts and circumstances,” he said. “On the other hand, there are facts and circumstances that could reduce this case to manslaughter or even provide a (determination of) possible self-defense.”

A Block in Shock 

The block where Byrd shot Strassburg includes a 1950s-style diner, a smoke shop, a laundromat, a handful of hair and nail shops. There’s also a state historical marker commemorating another deadly gun battle – from the Revolutionary War. 

First Lady Jill Biden spent part of her childhood in Hatboro, which was solidly middle-class then, as it is now. About 7.9% of the population lives below the poverty line, less than the national average of 11.5%. The population is 78.3% white, 8% Black, 6.5% Latino, 4% Asian, and 3.2% multiracial. Montgomery County, with a population of 860,600, has had nine homicides this year, according to the District Attorney’s Office.

Right next door to Byrd’s barbershop, Tiflisi Nail Spa’s security camera caught the incident; authorities played the footage at Byrd’s preliminary hearing on July 11. “We don’t talk about it,” a spa employee, who didn’t want to be named, told The Trace.

Her neighbors were more outspoken. “That was self-defense, absolutely,” said Jerry Boggs, who has run nearby Boggs Printing for 45 years. Boggs said he did not see the shooting, but from what he has learned, he believes Bryd should be cleared based on his fraught history with Strassburg, who had three DUI convictions, including a vehicular homicide charge in 2009 for which he pleaded guilty and served a few years in prison.

“There’s no way he should be going to jail for this,” Boggs said.

Tiano Hair & Beauty Salon borders the parking lot where the shooting took place. Denise Tiano Costello, who’s owned the business for eight years, was chatting with a customer at the salon’s open doorway when the shots rang out. The moment was captured by her store’s security camera. Costello had heard about Strassburg’s history of using racial epithets. “Apparently, there were a lot of racial slurs over the years, and I guess that day that the shooting took place it was going on again,” she said. 

Immediately after the shooting, she peeked around the corner. “I wasn’t sure if Maurice was the shooter because, normally, they run away,” she said. “But he was just standing there.”

Costello, whose parents are retired Philadelphia police officers, said she feels bad for both men and their families. She’s confused about why Strassburg expressed such racial animus toward Byrd, and why Byrd responded as he did. “Words hurt, but bullets kill, and this is an example of that,” she said. 

Byrd’s business, Razor Reese’s Salon, has sat empty since officers took him away in handcuffs and lifted Strassburg’s lifeless body from the parking lot into an ambulance. There, Hatboro Sergeant Brett Paul testified at the preliminary hearing, one of the bullets fell from Strassburg’s body to the floor.

‘My Son Is a Peaceful Businessman’

Byrd, who sustained a leg injury while serving in the Army, had no trouble with the law before the shooting. He had previously worked as an adjunct college instructor, according to those who know him.

“He’s out on military disability. He’s not in a position to try to defend himself against a guy like that, who was obviously out of control,” James Lyons, his attorney, said. “I believe he was well within his rights to act the way that he did.”

Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney Samantha Cauffman said during the preliminary hearing that even though the racial slurs Strassburg called Byrd were “absolutely inexcusable,” those words did not justify the shooting. She forcefully argued that Byrd knew that Strassburg was unarmed because he told the 911 dispatcher that fact, and he could have gone inside his shop to wait for police. But, she said, he remained outside “egging on” the argument. Seconds before pulling the trigger, the 911 call recorded him threatening, “I’ma shoot at you.”

“His intent was very clear,” said Cauffman, who declined to elaborate outside court. 

Defense attorney Lyons said Byrd did attempt to get away from Strassburg, who was bearing down on him, and only fired to protect himself. “The video shows Mr. Byrd, basically, trying to run away but he has a bad leg, he really can’t,” Lyons said during an interview. “But he’s backing up, backing up, all the way to the other side of the parking lot. That’s where this man was shot.”

When the case goes to trial, Lyons said he plans to argue that Byrd acted in self-defense. “This guy is pursuing him, yelling these racial epithets at him. He was clearly very aggressive. Clearly, he meant to do harm to Mr. Byrd,” he said. “You have a right, in Pennsylvania, to defend yourself if you have a reasonable fear that you are in danger.”

Under Pennsylvania’s Stand Your Ground law, a person acting lawfully in a public place who is attacked by someone without a weapon must first attempt to retreat before using deadly force.

After shooting Strassburg, Byrd placed his handgun on the ground and waited for police to arrive. That night, he voluntarily gave a statement to detectives, who charged him with first-degree and third-degree murder and possession of an instrument of crime. In Pennsylvania, bail is denied to those charged with first-degree murder, and a conviction carries a mandatory life sentence with no chance for parole.

At the hearing, the video was played on a small laptop for the lawyers. Magisterial District Court Judge Todd Stephens affirmed the charges, as a dozen of Byrd’s relatives and friends and four relatives of Strassburg looked on in the packed, tiny courtroom.

An enhanced version of the video shows Strassburg throwing three overhead punches, and landing one of them, Lyons said a week after the hearing.

Lauren Wicker, a first cousin who grew up with Strassburg, left the courtroom before Stephens’ ruling because of the testimony’s graphic nature. “It was very hard to hear,” she said. Her cousin, she said, was a father to a young daughter and would have turned 38 three days after he was killed.

She was aware that her cousin and Byrd had spent about two years bickering over a parking spot in the lot where one shot the other. Wicker, however, said she was surprised that Strassburg used racial slurs against Byrd. “They were both hard-headed, I do believe that,” she said. “Two hard-headed men that just couldn’t communicate well. They both were obviously loved and were assets to their community.”

Clad in a burgundy Montgomery County jail jumpsuit, Byrd looked upbeat and smiled at his supporters when an officer led him into the courtroom with his wrists handcuffed in front of him. After the hearing, he sounded hopeful. “I have full confidence in the letter of the law, and in my attorney,” he told The Trace after being led from the courtroom. Moments before an officer placed him in a vehicle for the drive back to jail, he said he would not discuss “the facts of the case.”

His father, Maurice Byrd Sr., stood nearby. He also wouldn’t discuss the case beyond offering his sympathies to Strassburg’s family and affirming his support for his son. “My son is a peaceful businessman,” he said. “He’s a good man, he’s nonviolent, and he served his country honorably. That’s all.”

Mensah M. Dean is a staff writer at The Trace, where this story first appeared.