Marissa Alexander, the Florida woman who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for firing a warning shot at her abusive ex-husband, was released from jail yesterday after a nearly five-year ordeal. In August of 2010, just nine days after giving birth to her daughter, Alexander, now 34, was assaulted and threatened by her estranged husband Rico Gray.
She went to her garage to get her legal firearm during the altercation, returned to the house, and fired what she called a “warning shot” at Gray that
hit the wall.
After the confrontation, Alexander was arrested, charged and convicted on three counts of aggravated armed assault and sentenced to 20 years in prison under Florida’s mandatory minimum sentencing law. The verdict was overturned, due to faulty jury instructions, but prosecutor Angela Corey, who failed to secure the conviction of George Zimmerman, pressed on with a new trial where Alexander faced even more time—up to 60 years—in prison. Prosecutors argued that because Alexander had to exit the house to retrieve the gun from her car in the garage, she was no longer in any imminent danger and thus not afforded immunity under Florida’s Stand Your Ground defense. Furthermore, Alexander’s warning shot hit the wall, as opposed to the ceiling, and prosecutors insisted that this put Gray and his children in physical danger.
http://www.peopledemandingaction.org/component/k2/item/235-how-stand-your-ground-laws-failed-marissa-alexander
