Marissa Alexander Ruling at Heart of New Warning Shot Bill

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The ruling two years ago which saw Marissa Alexander, a 33 year old mother, jailed for 20 years for firing a warning shot at her husband is partly behind the new Warning Shot Bill before the Florida Legislature.

Alexander had fired the shot into her garage wall apparently because she thought that her estranged husband was going to hurt her. Mrs. Alexander said that there was a restraining order out on her husband and she thought that he was going to beat her.

Her sentence at the time was part of Florida’s 10-20-life rule, which mandates minimum sentences for firearm convictions. Perplexingly, firing a warning shot at someone because they are threatened may lead to a more severe punishment than actually killing someone. The Stand-Your-Ground legislation allows anyone in the state to defend themselves with deadly force if they feel threatened.

The apparent contradiction is at the heart of the attempt to change the Warning Shot Law, with a bill which is scheduled to go through the Florida legislature and be finalized next year.

Mrs. Alexander is currently back at home for Christmas with her children and out on bail. She had already spent two years in jail before a First Court of Appeals hearing overturned the original decision and granted her a new trial which is scheduled for April next year.

Her original trial only took 12 minutes for the jury to make a decision about her guilt. The decision caused a nationwide debate about the Warning Shot legislation, especially compared to the Stand-Your-Ground laws which Florida and many other states now have. In the Alexander trial, the prosecution argued that she could not justifiably use the Stand-Your–Ground defense because she was “not acting in self-defense”. The prosecution demanded at the time that she showed evidence that she had been beaten by her husband. This turned out to be an illegal request and was the reason that the original conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal in September, allowing her one more chance at gaining justice.

The contradiction between the decision to jail Alexander and the Zimmerman trial earlier this year has been highlighted by civil rights and women’s advocacy groups.

George Zimmerman was cleared of any wrongdoing earlier this year because of the existence of the Stand-Your-Ground Law. Even though he shot and killed Trayvon Martin, the black teenager he said was threatening him, he received a far more favorable result than did Mrs. Alexander.

The changes to the Warning Shot Law in the new bill have been hotly debated already in this state. The Florida Public Defender’s Association and many criminal defense attorneys have come out in favor of the new bill, saying that it will mean that many of the defendants they deal with will not be prosecuted for defending themselves which happens all too commonly at present. The State Attorney, Bill Eddins, however, thinks that the bill is unnecessary. He says that in most cases where someone has used a firearm in self-defense, whether they have fired a warning shot or not have been carefully screened by the prosecution and thinks that no one would be prosecuted if their life was genuinely in danger or they were going to be severely beaten.