The Marissa Alexander case

I feel I need to speak out about the Marissa Alexander case. While I feel the legislation in Florida is egregious, and needs to be changed, Marissa is not a victim of racial bias. To compare her case to Trayvon Martin’s is just wrong.

When I first read the headline I was equally shocked and outraged. ‘Mom gets 20 years for shooting a warning shot at her abusive husband’. It seemed like a ludicrous miscarriage of justice.  However, after being misled by other sensational half stories before, I decided to take a deeper look at the facts of this case before raging.

Here are facts often admitted from the story:

Marissa left the room where the argument was taking place went to the garage where she claimed she was going to take her car and drive for help. When she got into the car she realized she forgot her keys and claimed the garage door got stuck (there is no evidence to back up that statement, as it was working when police arrived on the scene). So she took her gun and instead of leaving through the front door, if you look at the floor plans of her house was closer to the garage then the living room, went into the living room where her husband Gary was with his two children. “She shot in the direction of the three of them. The shot was fired at “adult height,” (6”) directly at Gray, who was standing in the adjacent living room with his sons, who were aged 9 and 13 not in the air”.

And for me this is the clincher. If she feared for her life around this man why under ANY circumstances would she, when she was out on bail, go to his house for any reason?

Four months after Alexander was released on bail, on orders to have no contact with Gray, got into an altercation with him at his home that gave him a black eye, Corey said. Alexander was arrested and charged with battery, to which she pleaded no contest.

Corey said that Alexander's actions -- engaging with a man of whom she claimed to be deathly afraid, and assaulting him -- "didn't show much of her being remorseful" or "being a peaceful person."

 "Everybody is still ignoring that she got out on bond and chose to go back over there and hit him a second time," Corey said. "That was kind of an indication of where putting her on probation, where you might have been able to do that before, was off the table since she disregarded a judge’s order."

 After this incident the possibly of probation was off the table. She went to his house and end up punching him in the face.

Should she be in jail for 20 years? Absolutely not! Should she have gotten probation for shooting at three people two of whom where children? Yes, but she violated her bail hence making it impossible to offer her that option.

All I am saying that she is not just an innocent victim who got 20 years in jail defending herself from and abusive man. She had opportunities for leniency at every turn and rejected them.