Fulfilling the viral “TikTok Door Kick Challenge” by kicking and pounding on people’s doors while wearing ski masks or carrying airsoft guns is a stupid enough idea, but doing it in Wyoming is even dumber, the Carbon County sheriff said Monday.
One of the key minds behind Wyoming’s current self-defense laws agrees.
TikTok challenges are online trends of acts people can do while being recorded to fulfill a dare.
The Door Kick challenge is an emerging social media trend that has gained popularity over the past several months in states including Texas, Florida, and Colorado, wrote Carbon County Sheriff Alex Bakken in a Monday Facebook post.
It involves “forcefully kicking and banging on homeowners’ doors while being recorded, sometimes while wearing ski-masks or carrying airsoft guns,” the sheriff wrote. “We wish we were making this up. But we’re not.”
He said in a later phone interview that he hasn’t seen these incidents in his county but issued the statement to warn people and fellow law enforcement agencies.
Bakken’s post referenced the case of an 11-year-old boy shot in Texas two weeks ago while participating in the challenge.
“For the love of whatever deity you pledge your faith to, do not do this,” Bakken wrote. These pranks can lead to serious, even deadly repercussions, he wrote, adding, “The great state of Wyoming is likely one of the worst places to dress up in ski masks and forcefully kick at doors at night.”
It Certainly Is
Former state Sen. Anthony Bouchard, a Laramie County Republican, agreed wholeheartedly.
Bouchard was a key co-sponsor of the “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law Wyoming passed in 2018.
It specifies that people in self-defense scenarios don’t have a duty to retreat from places they occupy lawfully during the conflict, as long as they’re not the initial aggressor, or committing a crime at that time.
A person using fatal self-defense doesn’t need to show his life or someone else’s was in danger, under the law.
He only needs to show that he had a reasonable belief that he or someone else was in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury.
This makes the door-knock prank even more risky, Bouchard said.
“(What about when) people play a prank and they don’t know the mindset of the person inside (the house), they don’t know what they’re going through?” asked Bouchard. “What if it’s a coincidence that someone’s called this person and threatened them (before) someone does a prank at that door?”
And I Remember …
Bouchard recalled the 2018 Wyoming Supreme Court case of State v. Jason John.
It’s a pivotal case in Wyoming self-defense history. It set the framework by which judges follow another provision of the law Bouchard helped to champion. That is, a person “shall not” be criminally prosecuted if he acted in self-defense.
In the past, courts let the jury decide whether a defendant had acted in self-defense.
Natrona County District Court Judge Catherine Wilking found herself grappling with Stand Your Ground’s new immunity provision weeks after the law became active – when a first-degree murder case with a self-defense component landed in her court.
Casper man Jason John had shot his romantic rival dead at the entrance to John’s home. The intruder, Wesley Willow, was unarmed, but had exchanged threats with John before charging into the latter’s home the night of Aug. 3, 2018.
The woman with Willow was armed with a liquor bottle with which she intended to hit John's head; and the pair also had with them a man whom John did not know, according to court documents.
Wilking let John have a pre-trial hearing, to argue that he acted in self-defense. She also let the prosecutor argue that John had, rather, acted criminally.
Why We Have These Hearings
At the end, she decided that John was right and dismissed his case altogether.
The state of Wyoming challenged that.
Yet, Wilking had followed the basic premise of the law, the Wyoming Supreme Court concluded in an April 6, 2020, opinion.
Her on-the-fly legal framework of the hearing wasn’t perfect, and the high court altered the finer workings of future self-defense hearings – which the legal community now calls “John’s hearings.”
But the high court’s mandates on framework didn’t change the outcome of John’s case, the opinion says.
Under the evidentiary standards put in place – which remain in place – the defendant argues that the evidence shows at first glance that he acted in self-defense.
If he can prove his case under that “at first glance,” or “prima facie” standard, then it becomes the prosecutor’s turn to argue back.
The prosecutor has a higher standard of proof: preponderance of the evidence. If he can prove under that standard that the defendant did not act in self-defense, then the case continues toward trial.
If he can’t, then it’s dismissed.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
