Jacksonville NAACP Rally for Marissa Alexander Highlights Justice Issues

“We want justice, not just us,” protesters chanted at a march and rally for Marissa Alexander Friday morning in downtown Jacksonville, Fla.

Alexander’s case is an example of a controversial Stand Your Ground decision that didn’t go in Alexanders favor.  Many leaders, community members and the Alexander family expressed dissatisfaction with her sentence—20 years for firing a “warning shot” near her reportedly abusive husband.

The Jacksonville chapter of the NAACP hosted the event, which included local, state and national leaders as well as Alexander’s lawyers and her mother and sister. Attendees were in the hundreds.

Rep. Corrine Brown, a vocal champion of Alexander, told the crowd that the verdict pained her. She said that at first she could not stop crying.

While Brown found Alexander’s sentence upsetting (a fact made known when Brown confronted State Attorney Angela Corey about the case), the congresswoman also said youth are being classified as adults and felons at a startling rate.  Brown said that help is needed for other victims and, “I know that the Lord has sent us help” with Alexander’s case in the form of New York based attorney, Michael G. Dowd.

Dowd told the crowd that society frequently supports battered women until they “are forced to defend themselves.”

On Alexander he said, “She didn’t even harm this animal.” According to NAACP representatives, Alexander’s sentence and other 10-20-life mandatory sentences are miscarriages of justice and “judicial lynchings.”

Jacksonville NAACP President Isaiah Rumlin encouraged supporters to vote for representatives with their best interests at heart and vote out people who didn’t deliver. He said that minorities were being overcharged and disproportionately sentenced at the state level.

Martin Luther King III echoed the need for people to use their political power. He said that people have to read the entire ballot when they vote.  ”Rarely do we see justice”, calling the criminal justice system “the criminal system.”

Alexander’s mother, Helen Jenkins, thanked the crowd for support and advocated for her daughter. “She did not commit a crime. She was protecting herself,” Jenkins said.

Alexander, a mother with a master’s degree, had no prior criminal history, but in less than 15 minutes a jury found her guilty of three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.  During her trial, she invoked Stand Your Ground and said that she fired in self-defense. Many have drawn parallels between Alexander’s case and Trayvon Martin’s shooting death at the hands of George Zimmerman. Even though a judge denied Alexander Stand Your Ground immunity, police protected Zimmerman from arrest using Stand Your Ground.

As traditional media did not initially cover Alexander’s case, she now continues to be championed across several social media platforms.

Marissa Alexander’s name is a hashtag. A Facebook group entitled “Stand Your Ground: Justice for Marissa Alexander” boasted about 1,350 likes as of press time. “Support for Marissa Alexander” had more than 1,200 likes. A Free Marissa Alexander petition on change.org includes more than 15,000 signatures.

As far as courtroom work goes, Alexander’s attorney seemed unshaken when he addressed listeners. He said that his team would walk in the footsteps of one of the “great legal lights,” Thurgood Marshall and pursue justice.

“We are going to go back into the system, twist and turn it, and make it do the right thing,” Dowd said.  If the status quo continues, Alexander’s mother reminded onlookers of the risks.

“It could be someone else tomorrow,” Jenkins said.

Marissa Alexander's Father and Step Mother Interview

State Attorney Angela Corey after Marissa Alexander's Hearing

Stand your ground" double standard in Florida? - From Anderson Cooper 360

Editor's Note: AC360's Gary Tuchman tells the story of Marissa Alexander, a woman who fired a gun in self-defense against her abusive husband. The case provides another example under which to examine Florida’s controversial “stand your ground” law. Gary's producer, Chuck Hadad, wrote the companion text piece for CNN.com Marissa Alexander, a 31-year-old mother of three, pleaded for her freedom as an inmate in the Duval County Jail in Jacksonville, Florida. "This is my life I'm fighting for," she said while wiping away tears. She added, "If you do everything to get on the right side of the law, and it is a law that does not apply to you, where do you go from there?" Alexander is referring to Florida's so-called 'stand your ground' law, a law that has come under scrutiny since the killing of Trayvon Martin. Unlike the Martin case, which involved one stranger killing another, Alexander's case involved her gun and her abusive husband. On August 1, 2010, she said her husband, Rico Gray, read text messages on her phone that she had written to her ex-husband. She said Gray became enraged and accused her of being unfaithful. "That's when he strangled me. He put his hands around my neck," Alexander said. She managed to escape his grip but instead of running out the front door of their home, she ran into the garage, she said, to get into her truck and drive away. Alexander said that in the confusion of the fight, she forgot to get her keys and the garage door wouldn't open, so she made a fateful decision. "I knew I had to protect myself," she said, adding, "I could not fight him. He was 100 pounds more than me. I grabbed my weapon at that point." She went back inside the house and when Gray saw her pistol at her side, she said he threatened to kill her, so she raised the gun and fired one shot. "I believe when he threatened to kill me, that's what he was absolutely going to do. That's what he intended to do. Had I not discharged my weapon at that point, I would not be here."

 Alexander, however, said she did not aim the gun at her husband. She said she fired into the air intending to scare him away and Gray quickly left the house with his two children. No one was hurt in the incident, but Alexander sits in jail facing a 20-year sentence on three charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Gray admitted to a history of physical abuse. In a previous incident, Alexander said he beat her so severely she ended up in the hospital and he ended up in jail. "He pushed me, choked me, pushed me so hard into the closet that I hit my head against the wall and passed out for a second," Alexander said.

In a deposition for the case against Alexander, Gray backed up much of his wife's story. "I told her if she ever cheated on me, I would kill her," he said during the proceeding led by a prosecutor for State Attorney Angela Corey's office and his wife's defense attorney. "If my kids weren't there, I knew I probably would have tried to take the gun from her," Gray said, adding, "If my kids wouldn't have been there, I probably would have put my hand on her." When Alexander's defense attorney asked him what he meant by "put my hand on her," Gray replied, "probably hit her. I got five baby mammas and I put my hands on every last one of them except for one." Alexander's attorney filed a motion for dismissal under the stand your ground law but at that proceeding her husband changed his story. Gray said he lied during his deposition after conspiring with his wife in an effort to protect her. At the hearing, he denied threatening to kill his wife, adding, "I begged and pleaded for my life when she had the gun." The motion was denied by the judge.

 Alexander was offered a plea deal by Corey's office, but she opted to go to trial. A jury found Alexander guilty in 12 minutes. She is baffled why invoking the stand your ground law wasn't successful in her case. "Other defendants have used it. What's so different about my situation that it doesn't apply to me?" she asked. The local NAACP believes race may have played a role. "There's a double standard with stand your ground," said Isaiah Rumlin, president of the Jacksonville Chapter of the NAACP. "The law is applied differently between African-Americans and whites who are involved in these types of cases," he added. Rumlin cited two shooting cases in Florida with white shooters: One had a successful stand your ground defense and the other has yet to be charged with a crime. Online blogs are also raising the question of race. Last week, a spokeswoman for the Rev. Al Sharpton confirmed he, too, was looking into Alexander's story. When asked about race as a factor in her case, Alexander declined to comment. CNN requested an interview with Rico Gray for this story. He agreed but later declined through a family friend, saying he was concerned that speaking publicly would put his life in danger. On Sunday, he resumed contact with CNN, offering an interview to "anyone who would like to pay." Monetary compensation for an interview is against CNN policy.

 Through a spokeswoman, State Attorney Angela Corey declined to comment on the case until after the sentencing. Alexander's attorney, Kevin M. Cobbin, is fighting for a new trial and that hearing is tentatively scheduled for next week. If that motion is denied, Alexander will receive a mandatory 20-year sentence with no possibility of parole.

Marissa Alexander Loop21.com's Aaron Morrison on SyndicatedNews.NET

Alexander Case Shows Need to Reform 10-20-Life Law

For Immediate Release
Date: April 24, 2012
Contact: Monica Pratt Raffanel, media@famm.org

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- FAMM (Families Against Mandatory Minimums) President Julie Stewart today called on Florida lawmakers to repeal the state’s “10-20-Life” automatic prison sentence for assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill. The call comes as Marissa Alexander, a 31-year-old mother of three, prepares to be sentenced for a 2010 incident in which she fired a gun into the ceiling of her house to persuade her abusive husband to leave.
“A lot of attention has been paid to Florida’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ law and far too little to the state’s extreme, one-size-fits-all sentencing laws,” Ms. Stewart said. “Less than three years ago, Orville Lee Wollard, a lawful gun owner, fired a warning shot in his home to chase off a young man who had been abusing his teenage daughter. After Wollard rejected a plea deal and a jury rejected Wollard’s self-defense claim, a Florida judge was forced by the state’s mandatory minimum sentencing law for assault to send Wollard to prison for 20 years. Mr. Wollard’s judge stated that he thought the sentence was excessive, but said his hands were tied.
“In the coming weeks, Marissa Alexander, who was also found guilty of assault with a deadly weapon, will likely be sentenced to the same 20-year mandatory minimum prison term. While reasonable people can disagree on whether Mr. Wollard or Ms. Alexander deserve any prison time for their conduct, no one can honestly believe that these were the types of cases the legislature had in mind when it passed the 10-20-Life automatic gun sentence,” Stewart said.
According to press reports and court records, Ms. Alexander’s husband, Rico Gray, abused her on more than one occasion before the incident that led to her conviction. Mr. Gray described one incident of abuse in a deposition, saying, “And the third incident (with Alexander) we was staying together and I pushed her back and she fell in the bathtub and hit her head and I-- you know, by the time I ran downstairs and got in my car to leave, you know, that's the time I went to jail, the police picked me up down the street.”
In that same deposition, Mr. Gray admitted that he threatened his wife’s safety on the day she fired the gun into the ceiling. He also admitted that Ms. Alexander never aimed her gun at him (or his two children who were also present). According to Mr. Gray, after she told him to leave her house and he refused, she discharged the gun into the ceiling and no one was hurt. He later called the police and told them what had happened. Ms. Alexander was arrested and charged with three counts of aggravated assault (one count related to her husband, and two more for her stepsons). Ms. Alexander strongly maintains her innocence.
Greg Newburn, director of FAMM’s Florida project, said, “Based on everything we have heard to this point, we believe that sending Marissa Alexander to prison for 20 years would be a tremendous injustice and a colossal waste of Florida taxpayers’ hard-earned money.
“This is not an issue about race – it’s about individualized justice. Ms. Alexander is black, but Orville Lee Wollard is white. Rather, this is another, powerful example of how inflexible sentencing laws prevent courts from considering highly relevant circumstances, such as whether the offender is a hardened criminal or a first-time offender and whether someone was motivated by malice or genuine fear,” said Newburn.
For more information on Marissa Alexander’s case, see news articles in the Florida Times-Union, International Business Times, and Loop 21.
For more information on Orville Lee Wollard’s case, see his profile and an op-ed by Ms. Stewart that appeared in The Washington Times. For another case involving an excessive sentence imposed under the 10-20-life mandatory gun law, see FAMM’s profile of Erik Weyant.

Marissa Alexander's Sentencing Was Delayed

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- A Jacksonville woman will have to wait to learn if she will be spending the next twenty years of her life behind bars.

Marissa Alexander was originally scheduled to be sentenced Monday morning.  However, a judge delayed her sentencing.

Alexander will have a hearing April 30th for a judge to rule on post-trial motions.  No new date has been set for her sentencing.

Marissa Alexander was convicted on three counts of aggravated assault after firing a warning shot at her ex-husband inside their home in 2010.

At the time, Alexander had already taken out a protective order against her ex-husband earlier that year when he was arrested for physically abusing her.

So when a fight started in their master bedroom, Alexander told police she feared for her life.

Alexander's attorney filed a Stand Your Ground motion before the trial, but the judge denied her immunity.

Alexander is looking at a mandatory sentence of 20 years.

Marissa Alexander Faces Jail Time Despite 'Stand Your Ground' in Florida - From News.Gather.com

Marissa Alexander Faces Jail Time Despite 'Stand Your Ground' in Florida

April 19, 2012 11:01 PM EDT

2 people recommend this | comments: 5

Marissa Alexander stood her ground against domestic violence, but she still faces jail time. The Trayvon Martin murder has brought Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law to the forefront over the past several months.

The woman did not even hurt anybody during the incident, and yet she still faces three counts of aggravated assault. Marissa Alexander is actually in jail right now, and she faces up to 20 years in prison, which is astonishing especially considering that George Zimmerman was not even arrested until weeks after shooting Trayvon Martin.

In 2010, Alexander fired a warning shot at her ex-husband inside her home to keep him from advancing on her. She had a protective order because he had abused her in the past, and that did not keep him from coming back and threatening harm. He was not hurt, and nobody else was either. It seems unbelievable that she has been jailed over something like this especially since the gun was registered to her, it was her own house, and nobody was injured.

Marissa Alexander's sister Helena Jenkins said, "She did what she had to do to live, and I believe if she didn't do that, my sister wouldn't be sitting in jail today, she would be sitting in a coffin."

Thank goodness she protected herself. She did not shoot this man, and it is unbelievable that she could spend two decades in jail over this. What do you think? Was this an example of "Stand Your Ground?" Also, should this law be reexamined given the recent issues with it?

What Happened to Trayvon Martin? Slain Teen’s Family Demands Answers

THURSDAY MAR 8, 2012 – BY BRITNI DANIELLE

It’s been over a week since 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was murderedoutside of his father’s Sanford, Florida home, but his family is still looking for answers.

According to his father and stepmother, the teen was visiting from Miami when he walked to the store. Upon returning to their gated community he was confronted by George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch leader, and ended up shot to death just steps from his father’s home.

Police officials say Zimmerman turned himself in after the incident, but have yet to charge him in the teen’s death. They claim they are still investigating the slaying, but Trayvon’s family wants answers.

Man shot and killed in neighborhood altercation: MyFoxORLANDO.com

“My son left Sanford, Florida in a body bag George Zimmerman went home to sleep in his own bed. Its senseless and the police in Sanford Florida isn’t giving any answers,” Trayvon’s father Tracy Martintold the local Fox News affiliate.

The Martins have hired Ben Crump, an attorney, and are pressuring Sanford police to release the 911 tapes that may lead to more answers.

“We are here to demand that the state attorney charge this home owner’s association loose cannon with murder,” said Crump. “We all deserve answers. The police department simply has to release those 911 tapes so we won’t have to speculate further.”

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