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[Marissa Alexander] or Why Florida needs to take a look at its gun crime laws
Skull2185
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
This is something that's gaining attention since the Zimmerman verdict.
In 2010 a young mother of three found herself in a situation that gun nuts use to promote this silly stand your ground buisness
This woman had her ex-husband coming at her in a threatening manner. She had a restraining order against him, and he'd been arrested in the past for fucking beating her. Marissa, who has a concealed weapons permit, fired a warning shot into the wall of her house to stop him. Please note: She did not fucking shoot him, and she did not take a life. For whatever reason, she had to appear before a judge and jury. It took this jury only 12 minutes to find this young African-American mother of three, guilty of... I guess a charge of "child endangerment" three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon because her husband's two children were in the house during the argument(still bullshit charges), and the judge sentenced her to 20 goddamn years in prison because of the "10-20-Life" gun crime law. Marissa comitted no crime here, though.
She's got the attention of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, though. These are two men I usually cannot stand, but I'm rooting for them now. I'm hoping they do everything that they can to get this woman out of prison and back to her children.
In 2010 a young mother of three found herself in a situation that gun nuts use to promote this silly stand your ground buisness
This woman had her ex-husband coming at her in a threatening manner. She had a restraining order against him, and he'd been arrested in the past for fucking beating her. Marissa, who has a concealed weapons permit, fired a warning shot into the wall of her house to stop him. Please note: She did not fucking shoot him, and she did not take a life. For whatever reason, she had to appear before a judge and jury. It took this jury only 12 minutes to find this young African-American mother of three, guilty of... I guess a charge of "child endangerment" three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon because her husband's two children were in the house during the argument(still bullshit charges), and the judge sentenced her to 20 goddamn years in prison because of the "10-20-Life" gun crime law. Marissa comitted no crime here, though.
She's got the attention of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, though. These are two men I usually cannot stand, but I'm rooting for them now. I'm hoping they do everything that they can to get this woman out of prison and back to her children.
Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
Skull2185 on
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That's not standing your ground.
Though the 20 years thing is fucking stupid.
I don't know about any jail time being unreasonable. You don't fire a gun in a residential neighborhood. I absolutely agree the amount is excessive by at least a factor of twenty.
She was out of the dangerous situation and then returned and discharged a weapon. Nothing in there is self defense. Also, if you can fire a "warning shot" you're going to have a hard as fuck time proving you qualify for self defense as our laws are written.
Not sure how reliable this is since it's Wikipedia, but:
So, if this is all correct, then I agree with Devout. Definitely not a stand your ground case as I originally understood it. Marissa definitely made some poor choices here. A 20 year sentence, 20 years away from her children, is completely bonkers though. She's served three years, that's probably more than enough.
Now I'm a little embarrassed for getting as angry as I was about this. Probably should've researched it just a bit more than I did before getting on the internet to be mad and vent...
I messed up here. I made the (uncommon for me) mistake of taking info I was told, and articles that I read (which are conveniently set up to be misleading...) at face value instead of looking into the facts for myself. I got all hot under the collar and had to jump on the internet to be mad abou an "injustice".
The issue I'm seeing here is really about Florida's flawed 0 tolerance gun crime laws. Alexander probably isn't the only example of a ludicrous punishment for a minor incident. I can't find anything about her having criminal history, or being a repeat offender of any sort, but due to a set of very poor choices (there appears to be conflicting reports on her shooting at the wall or ceiling, regardless, she is luck the bullet didn't end up hitting anyone) she's facing 17 more years in prison. It seems like an incredibly excessive punishment for the events that landed her in jail.
As a kid i hung out at my neighbors house a lot and he was a bit of a gun nut. His daughters dumb bf was cleaning his Bushmaster when it was loaded and it went off in a room down the hall from me. The bullet traveled through two walls and the only reason it didn't punch through the wall into the room I was in was it buried itself 3/4th of the way through a 2000 page legal book. This was in a rural area but in an urban environment you just shot through two of your neighbors apartments.
The two factors that make me think she deserved time were her leaving and coming back with the gun, and firing a warning shot. It's not self defense if you come back, although if you really stretch it you could maybe make a case that she was defending her two kids.
That said, the warning shot really seals it. You pull a gun, you should be ready to kill someone. You pull the trigger, you should be trying to.
In combination, those factors make it hard not to justify some punishment. Twenty years is bullshit though. Mandatory minimums are bullshit legislative overreach as that should be judicials purview.
This is exactly what Marissa did.
The 20 year sentence is a lot, but could have been avoided if she took the plea bargain.
The case is unfortunate, but the verdict is proper.
So the two options are either become a murderer yourself or allow yourself to be attacked /raped by a man the police were supposed to be keeping away from you?
You can fire warning shots - not through a wall in a residential area, obviously, but a round into the floor (assuming nobody is in a basement below you) isn't going to do anything aside from scaring your attacker. It's easy for anyone to say, "Well gee whiz, that wasn't such a good idea," when they weren't in such a high pressure situation and probably never have been in their life.
i love all of the John Rambo types who declare that, "YOU MUST SHOOT TO KILL. PERIOD." as though it's such a trivial thing to do.
That's what they said about Aaron Swartz.
If you're going to be attacked / raped, you aren't a murderer when you kill the man you have a restraining order against. It's tragic, but not murder.
If you are going to be attacked / raped and you are able to disengage, you do so. If you disengage and choose to get a weapon and return, you have demonstrated intent which is categorically not self defense. It may be unprosecutable, it may be justifiable, it may even be moral. But it's not self defense.
If you believe you are in danger of being attacked / suffering great bodily harm, you have the right to self-defense. Which is the use of deadly force, which is recognized as legitimate in that very narrow window of circumstances. If you don't believe the danger of suffering great bodily harm is significant enough to use deadly force to remove the threat to the best of your ability, you have provided evidence use of deadly force wasn't justified.
Quite simply, not everyone is Rambo. Nobody expects everyone to to be Rambo. But people who choose to use guns have guidelines about what is legal and proper, and violating those guidelines endangers other people. With great power comes great responsibility and all that jazz.
As for your example of shooting into the floor / basement...well, you HOPE nobody is down there. And the bullet doesn't riccochet. But it's still illegal and an unlawful discharge of a firearm.
For the record, if you're really going to insist on using a warning shot, you're stupid, but if you say you were trying to hit them but missed, or you accidentally squeezed the trigger / misfired, it's probably going to give you reasonable doubt.
A bullet fired from a low-caliber pistol can ricochet off of a floor and retain both enough kinetic energy and enough of it's shape to seriously harm someone?
No, it cannot.
Marissa was offered the 90 day sentence because this was a different circumstance, so it's hard to feel sorry for her when she cleared decided to reject that.
If you hit a tree, you committed the crime of reckless endangerment.
If you hit a person, you committed the crime of reckless endangerment as well as the additional crime of vehicular homicide.
When the tree is hit we already punished for the 'coulda hit someone' - that was the reckless endangerment. So charging someone with an extra additional crime that didn't happen doesn't make sense.
Its deeper than a single case. It's a general attitude towards guns. Guns are for seriously injuring and killing people. They're not for threatening people or for looking cool. You look at all those cases out there of accidental shootings a huge number of them are people who were playing with guns or not treating them with the proper respect. When you pick up a gun you are picking up the power of life and death. If you're not prepared to deal with that don't go fucking near them.
which in this case means that there should not have been an assault charge, but rather one(3 counts) of reckless endangerment and perhaps at a stretch attempted assault.
Florida:
So, definitely one count of aggravated assault against her ex. The only argument there is if it was lawful self defense or not - which the intent of leaving and coming back with a gun, and firing a warning shot together torpedo. Definitely one count of unlawful discharge of a firearm as well.
The two against her kids are arguable. Intentionally firing the gun is an act and probably meets the criteria of an assault, and since she did it with a deadly weapon without intent to kill it crosses into the 'aggravated' territory.
EDIT - just to be clear - I think the charges were (mostly) legit. The sentence was absolute bullshit.
IIRC there have been cases of abuse victims claiming self defense for killing their abusers even when abuse is not imminent at the very moment.
Or attempted murder
One of the two
Well, let that be a reminder that if you're going to shoot an abuser, make sure you are a sympathetic white lady.
But yeah, that is a good point regarding self defense.
A good point about 'or attempted murder' too.
This strikes me as kind of weird. But I suspect it's a communication problem.
Claiming a 'warning shot' versus self defense means the jury is working under a very different scenario, and I can't really find fault with, in general, different scenarios resulting in different verdicts.
Yeah? I know that. Are you mixing up quotes or something?
I was raised that you don't pull a gun unless you are ready to kill, and you don't pull the trigger unless you are trying / going to kill.
I did say that if you're stupid enough to fire a warning shot, don't tell the police it was a warning shot - either you were trying to kill and missed (which was pointed out could get attempted murder..) or you accidentally squeezed the trigger / misfired. But I wouldn't recommend a warning / shoot to wound / etc type shot in any circumstances.
going purely by what has been posted in this thread the self defence argument falls apart when she leaves the house and goes to her car. at that point she is clearly able to remove herself from any potentially dangerous situation. she was able to leave the house, if she got to the car then she was able to leave the area.
however, there's been no mention of whether her ex-husband pursued her from the house and retread back inside upon seeing the gun. that would greatly change the scenario and while may not fall within the real of SYG may still have grounds to be classed as self defence.
The legal quirk is is Florida ridiculous mandatory sentencing for said crime. and whatever incompetent lawyer didn't get her to take the plea bargain.
Self-defense can be simplified (perhaps overly so, but bear with me) into two basic ideas:
1. People have the right to use reasonable force (determined by context) in order to protect themselves and their property from harm.
2. This defense is not available to aggressors- those who escalate situations.
Alexander, rightly or wrongly, believed she was acting in self-defense by confronting her ex-husband. She fired a "warning shot." I agree that under the most rudimentary gun safety regimens, warning shots do not exist. However, Alexander's actions were meant to limit the escalation of the incident. She sought to defend herself and her children, but was also trying the contain the situation as much as possible. Self-defense is not available to her, and she's now in jail for reckless endangerment.
Had she killed her ex-husband, she would probably be free. Her argument could have been that she feared imminent bodily harm or death for herself or her children. If a jury found that fear reasonable, then Alexander would have been guilty of no crime.
I find it odd that Florida has designed their laws such that it's easier to prove a self-defense claim by escalating the situation to deadly force. In effect, Florida law rewards "second-stage" aggressors- those who escalate a situation beyond what was incited by the original aggressor. It appears that there is no incentive to contain a situation once it has arisen.
Say that you are walking your dog through a park, and someone comes up and cuts that dog with a knife. Under Florida law, it would be easier to prove self-defense if you were to take out a gun and kill that person, than if you punch or shove that person.
People who say that there is no such thing as a "warning shot" are correct. Despite that, I find it troubling that Florida law appears to encourage killing as a first resort.
He never faced 20 years at all. Can we please put that lie to rest?