COURT FINALLY OVERTURNS MARISSA ALEXANDER’S 20 YEAR SENTENCE.

[Travelman]

55. Seems lots of people don't want to beburdened with the actual facts

This had absolutely nothing to do with race. It had everything to do with a woman who, without any doubt whatsoever, committed attempted murder. She was not in any way "standing her ground;" a central tenet of any self-defense claim is that one must be reasonably in fear of some manner of imminent danger. Marissa Alexander was not, in any way, shape, form, or fashion in any sort of imminent danger. Rico Gray was not hitting her or threatening to hit her. That he did so in the past is not relevant to the situation on the day in question.

This woman went to Gray's home and entered that home, uninvited, and in direct violation of an order of protection. No, "she was getting her stuff" is NOT a valid excuse for violating an order of protection. If you want to "get your stuff" and it's in a domicile where the occupant has an order of protection against you, then what you do is call the sheriff and get them to accompany you to get your stuff, not just show up when someone is away at work.

She got into a protracted argument with Gray, and then she left the house to go out to the garage, retrieved a gun from the locked glove compartment of her car, loaded the gun, then went back inside the house and fired a shot at Gray's head. She walked past at least one door that was readily available for her to leave the premises had she actually felt she was in danger. She could have opened the garage and driven away had she chosen to (she claimed that the garage door didn't work, but that neither explained how she got her car into the garage in the first place, not did it explain how it was that the garage door worked just fine when the police arrived).

She did not shoot into the ground or into the ceiling, as one would do with an actual warning shot (which is still a spectacularly bad idea, but that's beside the point); she fired AT HIS HEAD. She barely missed his head, and the bullet wound up penetrating a wall and it was only through sheer blind luck that neither of her children on the other side of that wall managed to not get hit. To preface her "warning shot," Marissa Alexander said to Rico Gray "I've got something for your ass!"

Again, Rico Gray was not beating up or in any other fashion terrorizing Marissa Alexander at the time that these events occurred. She was, effectively, burglarizing his home when he returned home from work, and she went and got a gun out of her car to shoot at him.

After she shot at Gray, he took the children and fled from the house, and Marissa Alexander then engaged in a SEVEN-HOUR STANDOFF WITH POLICE in that same house, threatening to kill herself and the police if they came into the house.

After all of this, she was still offered a plea deal that would have already had her released from prison. Despite her attorneys pleading with her to accept the deal, assuring her that if she failed to take the deal, then the jury would undoubtedly convict her, and they would have no choice but to give her a twenty-year sentence, she steadfastly refused and insisted upon trying her chances with the jury. The case was so incredibly obvious that the jury needed no time at all to convict, and no, it was not an all-white jury: one Black woman, one Hispanic woman, one white woman, two white males, one Asian male.



This is not, was not, and never will be a case of self-defense. This is a case of a disturbed, violent, dangerous woman who committed attempted murder. She deserves to be behind bars where she can't hurt anyone else.