"Reverse Trayvon" Marissa Alexander granted a retrial

In what many consider a miscarriage of justice, Marissa Alexander was sentenced to 20 years in prison under Florida’s mandatory sentencing guidelines. A Florida appeals court has now granted her a new trial:

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 A Florida appeals court is ordering a new trial for a woman sentenced to 20 years to prison after she fired a warning shot in a wall during a dispute with her husband.

The 1st District Court of Appeal ruled that a judge did not properly instruct the jury handling the case of Marissa Alexander.

But the appeals court did also state that the judge was right to block Alexander from using the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law as a way to defend her actions.

Alexander had never been arrested before she fired a bullet at a wall one day in 2010 to scare off her husband when she felt he was threatening her.

Let’s put this as bluntly as we can: Marissa Alexander never had valid claim to self defense under Florida’s “stand your ground” law, a reality the appeals court confirmed.

Despite becoming a cause célèbre for some race-baiting members of the media who wanted to use her as a sort of “reverse Trayvon Martin“, the simple fact of the matter is Alexander successfully left the scene of a domestic dispute, retrieved a firearm, and came back into the home to fire a shot in the direction of her husband Rico Gray and his two children.

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She compounded her case and created the conditions for her sentence by having contact with Gray after her arrest against the trial judge’s order, and then was arrested for physically assaulting Gray again in December after the August gun incident.

As none of the facts of the case seem to be in dispute, just the jury instructions, expect a retrial to result in a similar outcome of “guilty.”

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