Marissa Alexander Gets 20 Years For Firing Warning Shot
By MITCH STACY 05/19/12 01:07 PM ET AP
Marissa Alexander
TAMPA, Fla. -- Marissa Alexander had never been arrested before she fired a bullet at a wall one day in 2010 to scare off her husband when she felt he was threatening her. Nobody got hurt, but this month a northeast Florida judge was bound by state law to sentence her to 20 years in prison.
Alexander, a 31-year-old mother of a toddler and 11-year-old twins, knew it was coming. She had claimed self-defense, tried to invoke Florida's "stand your ground" law and rejected plea deals that could have gotten her a much shorter sentence. A jury found her guilty as charged: aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Because she fired a gun while committing a felony, Florida's mandatory-minimum gun law dictated the 20-year sentence.
Her case in Jacksonville has drawn a fresh round of criticism aimed at mandatory-minimum sentencing laws. The local NAACP chapter and the district's African-American congresswoman say blacks more often are incarcerated for long periods because of overzealous prosecutors [see Wollard and Corey below] and judges bound by the wrong-headed statute. Alexander is black.
It also has added fuel to the controversy over Florida's "stand your ground" law, which the judge would not allow Alexander to invoke. State Attorney Angela Corey, who also is overseeing the prosecution of shooter George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin case, stands by the handling of Alexander's case. Corey says she believes Alexander aimed the gun at the man and his two sons, and the bullet she fired could have ricocheted and hit any of them.
At the May 11 sentencing, Alexander's relatives begged Circuit Judge James Daniel for leniency but he said the decision was "out of my hands."
"The Legislature has not given me the discretion to do what the family and many others have asked me to do," he said.
The state's "10-20-life" law was implemented in 1999 and credited with helping to lower the violent crime rate. Anyone who shows a gun in the commission of certain felonies gets an automatic 10 years in prison. Fire the gun, and it's an automatic 20 years. Shoot and wound someone, and it's 25 years to life.
Critics say Alexander's case underscores the unfair sentences that can result when laws strip judges of discretion. About two-thirds of the states have mandatory-minimum sentencing laws, mostly for drug crimes, according to a website for the Families Against Mandatory Minimums advocacy group.
"We're not saying she's not guilty of a crime, we're not saying that she doesn't deserve some sort of sanction by the court," said Greg Newburn, Florida director for the group. Rather, he said, the judge should have the authority to decide an appropriate sanction after hearing all the unique circumstances of the case.
U.S. Rep. Corinne Brown, D-Jacksonville, has been an advocate for Alexander. Brown was present at the sentencing, where she and Corey had a brief, terse exchange afterward as sign-toting supporters rallied outside the courthouse.
"The Florida criminal justice system has sent two clear messages today," Brown said afterward. "One is that if women who are victims of domestic violence try to protect themselves, the `Stand Your Ground Law' will not apply to them. ... The second message is that if you are black, the system will treat you differently."
Victor Crist was a Republican state legislator who crafted the "10-20-life" bill enacted in 1999 in Gov. Jeb Bush's first term. He said Alexander's sentence – if she truly did fire a warning shot and wasn't trying to kill her husband – is not what lawmakers wanted.
"We were trying to get at the thug who was robbing a liquor store who had a gun in his possession or pulled out the gun and threatened someone or shot someone during the commission of the crime," said Crist, who served in the state House and Senate for 18 years before being elected Hillsborough County commissioner.
On Aug. 1, 2010, Alexander was working for a payroll software company. She was estranged from her husband, Rico Gray, and had a restraining order against him, even though they'd had a baby together just nine days before. Thinking he was gone, she went to their former home to retrieve the rest of her clothes, family members said.
An argument ensued, and Alexander said she feared for her life when she went out to her vehicle and retrieved the gun she legally owned. She came back inside and ended up firing a shot into the wall, which ricocheted into the ceiling.
Gray testified that he saw Alexander point the gun at him and looked away before she fired the shot. He claims she was the aggressor, and he had begged her to put away the weapon.
A judge threw out Alexander's "stand your ground" self-defense claim, noting that she could have run out of the house to escape her husband but instead got the gun and went back inside. Alexander rejected a plea deal that would have resulted in a three-year prison sentence and chose to go to trial. A jury deliberated 12 minutes before convicting her.
"The irony of the 10-20-life law is the people who actually think they're innocent of the crime, they roll the dice and take their chances, and they get the really harsh prison sentences," Newburn said. "Whereas the people who think they are actually guilty of the crime take the plea deal and get out (of prison) well before. So it certainly isn't working the way it is intended."
Alexander was also charged with domestic battery four months after the shooting in another assault on Gray. She pleaded no contest and was sentenced to time served.
Her family says that doesn't erase the fact that a relatively law-abiding person – a woman with a master's degree – who was making positive contributions to society will endure prison for two decades over a single violation in which no one was hurt.
"She had a restraining order against him. Now Marissa is incarcerated and he's not," said her father, Raoul Jenkins. "I'm wrestling with that in my mind and trying to determine how the system worked that detail out. It's really frustrating."
Newburn says Alexander's case is not an isolated incident, and that people ensnared by mandatory-minimum laws cross racial barriers.
In central Florida, a white man named Orville Lee Wollard is nearly two years into a 20-year sentence for firing his gun inside his house to scare his daughter's boyfriend. Prosecutors contended that Wollard was shooting at the young man and missed.
He rejected a plea deal that offered probation but no prison time. Like Alexander, he took his chances at trial and was convicted of aggravated assault with a firearm. Circuit Judge Donald Jacobsen said he was "duty bound" by the 10-20-life law to impose the harsh sentence.
"I would say that, if it wasn't for the minimum mandatory aspect of this, I would use my discretion and impose some separate sentence, having taken into consideration the circumstances of this event," Jacobsen said.
George Zimmerman's case exposes the joke of stand-your-ground laws .. excerpt ..
Sweeping as the stand-your-ground laws are, however, the one area where they might actually be of some use – providing cover for victims of domestic violence who kill or injure abusive partners before they are killed or injured themselves – is the one area .. http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/05/01/474652/stand-your-ground-anti-woman/ .. where the laws frequently prove to be of no use at all. This says a lot about how stand-your-ground laws work. They have less to do with making sure people whose lives are in genuine danger can take action to protect themselves and more to do with letting people who could evade danger, if they wished, take the law into their own hands. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=89529239
.. emphasis adjusted to suit the travesty of Marissa Alexander's sentence .. mandatory-minimum sentences laws are a disgrace .. as are "overzealous prosecutors" ..
Teresa Sopp, a veteran criminal defence lawyer based in Jacksonville, Florida, said prosecutors overreached with a second-degree murder charge and said lead prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda lacked the evidence he needed for a strong case.
"I've never seen Bernie in court with such a mess," said Sopp, who has done battle with de la Rionda many times in the courtroom. "I've never seen him in such straits."
Florida's stand-your-ground law at centre of Marissa Alexander's retrial
Appeals court grants a new trial for woman sentenced to 20 years for firing a gun into the air during a domestic dispute
Adam Gabbatt and agencies theguardian.com, Friday 27 September 2013 04.48 AEST Jump to comments (25)
Marissa Alexander 'does not have the burden to prove the victim guilty of the aggression', according to the appeals court. Florida Photograph: CNN
A Florida .. http://www.theguardian.com/world/florida .. woman sentenced to 20 years in prison after she fired a warning shot during a dispute with her husband has been granted a retrial.
Marissa Alexander, 32, said she fired into the ceiling because she was afraid of her husband. She invoked Florida's controversial stand-your-ground law but was found guilty of aggravated assault. The judge at her trial said that conviction carried a mandatory 20-year sentence under state law.
On Thursday an appeals court ruled that Alexander would get a new trial, however. Judge James H Daniel said that the burden had been improperly placed on Alexander to prove that the firing was in self defense.
"The defendant does not have the burden to prove the victim guilty of the aggression defended against beyond a reasonable doubt."
A separate hearing will decide whether Alexander can be released on bail pending the retrial.
Despite ordering a retrial, Daniel said that the judge in Alexander's first hearing was right to block her from using the stand-your-ground law to defend her actions. "We reject her contention that the trial court erred in declining to grant her immunity from prosecution under Florida's Stand Your Ground law," Daniel said. "But we remand for a new trial because the jury instructions on self-defense were erroneous."
It took just 12 minutes for the jury to find Alexander guilty in May 2012. She was sentenced to 20-years imprisonment under Florida's "10-20-Life" law, MSNBC reported, which carries a series of mandatory minimum sentences related to gun crimes.
Alexander argued that she had acted in self-defense after her husband Rico Gray attacked her at their home on 1 August 2010 .. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/may/17/stand-your-ground-marissa-alexander . Gray grabbed her by the neck, Alexander said, after finding texts from her ex-husband on her phone. She said she ran to the garage, returned with a gun and fired the gun into the air as a warning shot.
The case provoked outcry at the apparent double standard between Alexander's case and that of George Zimmerman .. http://www.theguardian.com/world/george-zimmerman , who killed Trayvon Martin and initially avoided arrest after invoking Florida's stand-your-ground law.
During her trial, lawmakers in Florida argued that the controversial law was entirely applicable in Alexander's situation.
"The stand-your-ground law was legislated and implemented to protect people like Ms Alexander," said state senator Gary Siplin. "She did not have a history of criminal or violent behavior; instead, she had a history of being physically and emotionally abused."
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
AI
