Crime & Justice

Marissa Alexander to get a new trial

Marissa Alexander, who was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for shooting up a warning shot against her abusive husband will get a new trial.

Published

13 years ago

September 26, 2013

UVM Staff

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Marissa Alexander, who was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for shooting a warning shot against her abusive husband, will get a new trial.

New trial for Marissa Alexander

Many people became familiar with Marissa Alexander’s story after the death of Trayvon Martin and the controversy behind Stand Your Grounds laws in Florida.

First one

Marissa testified that after an altercation regarding texts from her ex-husband, she locked herself in the bathroom. Her husband Rico Gray broke through the door, grabbed her by the neck, and shoved her into the door. She ran to the garage, found she couldn’t get the door open, and returned with a gun. When Gray saw the gun, he said, “B*tch, I’ll kill you.”

Stand Your Ground

Alexander testified that she fired the gun into the air as a warning shot to scare off her husband. She pleaded Stand Your Ground against her husband. It only took 12 minutes for jurors to convict and reject her self-defense claims. She was sentenced to 10-20 life, the law which carries a series of mandatory sentencing related to gun charges.

“We reject her contention that the trial court erred in declining to grant her immunity from prosecution under Florida’s Stand Your Ground law,” wrote Judge James H. Daniel, “but we remand for a new trial because the jury instructions on self-defense were erroneous.”

Source: MSNBC

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