Marissa Alexander, the Florida woman who was sentenced to 20 years in jail after firing a warning shot, despite claiming self-defense and citing Florida’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ law will get a new trial. Alexander fired a single bullet into the ceiling during an altercation with her husband. No one was injured by the bullet.
The case came into the spotlight around the same time as the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin shooting case, which also brought Florida’s gun and mandatory minimum laws and ‘Stand Your Ground’ into the national focus.
Alexander testified that her current husband became enraged by a text she received from her ex-husband. She locked herself in the bathroom when her husband, Rico Gray burst through the door, grabbed her throat and pushed her into the door.
She got away from Mr. Gray, ran into the garage, couldn’t gain access. Gray saw the gun, told Alexander “Bitch, I’ll kill you.”, at which point she fired the gun into the air, claiming it was “the lesser of two evils”.
In handing down the decision for a new trial, Judge James H. Daniel wrote, “We reject her contention that the trial court erred in declining to grant her immunity from prosecution under Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, but we remand for a new trial because the jury instructions on self-defense were erroneous.”
Read more here.
Source: MSNBC
Photo Source: JusticeForMarissa
