A 33-year-old woman could end up in prison for 60 years when she’s retried for firing a shot in the direction of her estranged husband and two of his children.
Marissa Alexander was convicted in 2012 on three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and sentenced to 20 years — three counts served concurrently. An appeals court tossed the conviction, saying the judge made a mistake in shifting the burden to Alexander to prove she acted in self-defense.
Assistant State Attorney Richard Mantei told the Florida Times-Union the state is simply following sentencing laws in seeking 60 years. The same court that ordered Alexander’s retrial ruled that when a defendant is convicted of multiple counts from the same crime, judges must make the sentences consecutive.
Critics say it’s outrageous to seek triple the original sentence.
Melissa Harris Perry wrote an open letter to Florida’s Prosecutor Angela Cory – the same Angela Cory who sent Marissa Alexander to jail for 20 years for firing a warning shot to scare off her abusive husband, and the same Angela Cory whose prosecution team allowed George Zimmerman to walk free after killing Trayvon Martin.
And in her letter, Perry shed some light on a little nugget that I’m sure many have missed, that Angela Cory appears to penalize the victims more than she does the perpetrators. Melissa focused her letter on Cory’s prosecution on Merissa, but her words could have very well be for Cory’s failure in finding justice for Zimmerman’s victim, Trayvon Martin.
There is nothing like being home for the holidays with your loved ones. So I can only imagine that this Thanksgiving is particularly bittersweet for Marissa Alexander, who was granted a special pre-trial release at 10:30 PM on Wednesday – Thanksgiving Eve – after spending more than 1000 days in jail, and barely seeing her youngest child who just recently turned three.
But my letter is not to Marissa. Sis, I am saving that one for when you are finally freed for good. No, my letter this week is to the woman that worked to put you in jail in the first place: Florida State Attorney for the fourth judicial circuit, Angela Corey.
Dear Angela Corey, It’s me, Melissa.
Angela, there are few times in life that we get second chances to right our wrongs. Well Angela, this is yours.
You have been called a fierce victim’s advocate, so it is way past time that you start acting like it.
Because a woman who was hospitalized in 2009 after being shoved into a bathtub and hitting her head – she is a victim.
A woman whose estranged husband has admitted to abusing all five mothers of his kids – she is his victim.
And when that woman, that victim, who has just recently given birth, fires a warning shot near the man that has cornered her in her home – she is a victim who feels she has no other recourse.
But that is part of the problem, Angela. You never saw Marissa as a victim. You saw Marissa as the aggressor and even justified why the infamous “Stand Your Ground” law was not applied in Marissa’s case.
Because, as you put it, she was not fleeing from an abuser, even though Rico Gray, her estranged husband, has admitted telling Marissa that he would kill her if she ever cheated on him.
You have said that the shot fired was not consistent with a warning shot because it was at adult head height. Marissa is three inches shorter than Rico Gray.
And according to you she didn’t have to get 20 years in jail. That also was her fault, right Angela? You said to NBC’s the Grio back in May: “She didn’t have to get 20 years, because I took into account their prior domestic history and her lack of a [criminal] record, and we offered her the three year mandatory minimum.”
Marissa is a mother of three. And she is a victim of abuse.
Any mother knows that one day away from her child is 24 hours too long.
And when you are an abuse victim, you have to believe that the courts will finally free you from the cycle of violence instead of criminalizing you for trying to protect yourself.
If nothing else, the last two years should have shown you that an aggressive prosecution is not always the best one.
So while I know Marissa is thankful this holiday to be home with her family while she awaits her new trial on March 31st, 2014, maybe you should spend this holiday being thankful that you have a second chance to right this obvious wrong.
Marissa Alexander used Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law in her case to fight off her abusive husband. She was prosecuted by Angela Corey, whose prosecution team was responsible for putting on the lack-luster event in a Florida courtroom, that allowed George Zimmerman to walk free after he murdered Trayvon Martin. In Marissa’s case however, Angela Corey put on her best show and got Marissa sentenced to spend 20 years in jail for shooting a gun into the air in an attempt to scare off her abusive husband.
On Wednesday, Marissa Alexander was freed from jail. She will spend Thanksgiving with her family and will stay at home under house arrest while she awaits a new trial ordered by the 1st District Court of Appeals.
Marissa Alexander, the African-American woman who was sentenced to 20 years for discharging a firearm in Florida despite pleading Stand Your Ground against her husband, will get a new trial. Alexander, 32, said she fired a bullet at the ceiling because she was afraid of her husband. No one was injured. It took 12 minutes for the jury to convict her.
“We reject her contention that the trial court erred in declining to grant her immunity from prosecution under Florida’s Stand Your Ground law,” wrote Judge James H. Daniel, “but we remand for a new trial because the jury instructions on self-defense were erroneous.”
Alexander, who had given birth the week before, testified that after an altercation regarding texts from her ex-husband, she locked herself in the bathroom. Her husband Rico Gray broke through the door, grabbed her by the neck, and shoved her into the door. She ran to the garage, found she couldn’t get the door open, and returned with a gun. When Gray saw the gun, he said, “Bitch, I’ll kill you.” Alexander testified that firing the gun into the air as a warning shot was “the lesser of two evils.”
The jury rejected her self-defense argument, and instead Alexander was sentenced under the “10-20-Life” law, which carries a series of mandatory minimum sentences related to gun crimes. The prosecutor in her case was Angela Corey, who also prosecuted George Zimmerman who was acquitted in the death of Trayvon Martin. After an outcry at the apparent racial double standard in the application of Stand Your Ground, Corey told the Washington Post, “I think social media is going to be the destruction of this country.”
The appeals court judge ruled that the lower court judge improperly put a burden on Alexander to prove that the firing was in self-defense. “The defendant’s burden is only to raise a reasonable doubt concerning self-defense,” Daniel wrote. “The defendant does not have the burden to prove the victim guilty of the aggression defended against beyond a reasonable doubt.” He ordered a retrial. A separate proceeding would determine whether Alexander could be released on bail pending that trial.
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