Florida Mom 20 Years In Prison infor warning shots. Case is re-exposed by media sources. OUTRAGE OF ZIMMERMAN FREE- Jury took 12 minutes!
Marissa Alexander Sentenced: Florida Mom Who Shot At Abusive Husband Gets 20 Years In Prison
Highest Trending News topic on CBS NEWS
ZIMMERMAN GOT FREEDOM - SHE GOT 20 YEARS
NO ONE HIT OR KILLED
Marissa Alexander, the 31-year-old Florida woman who fired what her family calls a warning shot at her abusive husband, was sentenced Friday morning to 20 years in prison.
Alexander was convicted of three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for firing into a wall near her husband and his two young children at their Jacksonville home in 2010. Alexander has maintained that she wasn't trying to hurt anyone and that she was standing her ground against a man who had over the course of nearly a year punched and choked her on several different occasions. Alexander says that she believed she was protected that day under the state's Stand Your Ground Law, which gives people wide discretion in using deadly force to defend themselves.
A judge and a jury disagreed.
The State Attorney's Office offered a plea bargain that would have sent Alexander to prison for three years, but she rejected it, hoping to convince a jury that she had been defending herself when she fired the weapon.
Alexander's case has become the latest battleground in a fight against what Alexander's supporters call the misapplication of the Stand Your Ground Law and Florida's mandatory minimum sentencing laws, which offer stiff sentences for crimes involving guns.
According to Florida's 10-20-Life statutes, anyone who pulls a gun during a crime receives a mandatory 10-year sentence. Firing a gun during the commission of a crime equals a mandatory 20-year sentence. Anyone convicted of shooting and killing another person during a crime is sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
Alexander, who did not have a criminal record before the shooting, was convicted of felony assault with a gun.
Gray ran out of the house with his two sons and called the police. Alexander was arrested and charged. She unsuccessfully invoked her right to stand her ground in court. Alexander's sentencing comes 435 days after the shooting. It took a jury 12 minutes to find her guilty.
Gray himself admitted in a deposition to abusing "all five of his babies' mamas except one," and to hitting Alexander. Alexander's family and supporters say that Gray's testimony should not be trusted, because he perjured himself by changing his account of events on the night of the shooting between his early depositions and later court hearings -- a claim that was not disputed by Corey, the state attorney.
Alexander’s case has drawn comparisons to the case of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black teenager shot to death in February by a neighborhood watch volunteer who claimed he shot Martin in self-defense. The shooter, George Zimmerman, was initially released after the police said he was within his legal rights to defend himself. He was later arrested and charged with second-degree murder more than 40 days later.
Both the Martin and Alexander cases have stirred controversy around Florida's self-defense and gun laws, but it wasn't until some media pivoted from the Martin case to Alexander's that her name became known outside of Jacksonville.
No comments
Post a Comment