From the Trenches
After unsuccessfully invoking Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground law, Marissa Alexander will now get a second chance to prove that she fired a warning shot at her husband because she felt threatened.
Although Duval County Judge James H. Daniel rejected the idea of using Stand Your Ground laws as a defense, he granted Alexander a new trial Thursday, allowing her to prove to the jury that the shot was indeed fired in self-defense. “We reject her contention that the trial court erred in declining to grant her immunity from prosecution under Florida’s SYG law, but we remand for a new trial because the jury instructions on self-defense were erroneous,” Daniel wrote, according to a report by ABC. Alexander’s case, with the reference to SYG, was often paralleled with the Trayvon Martin shooting. However, when positioned next to each other details were often sparse and centered on race. For example, the Martin incident resulted in the acquittal of a white neighborhood watch volunteer who pursued and shot to death an unarmed black teen, whereas Alexander’s story resulted in her, a black female, getting 20 year in prison for firing a warning shot at her abusive, estranged husband.
