Florida, two standards, one state.

So in recent news a black person was involved in a shooting in Florida. No not Treyvon Martin, I'm sure everyone has heared enough about wannabe super cop George Zimmerman. Nope, this one involves Marissa Alexander and the notorious Stand Your Ground Law. http://ideas.time.com/2012/04/30/where-was-stand-your-ground-for-marissa-alexander/?xid=gonewsedit


Oh don't get me wrong this is a situation that from the sounds of it Stand Your Ground is supposed to apply.


Here is the so-called Stand Your Ground law. 

(3) A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

 

http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=&URL=0700-0799/0776/Sections/0776.013.html

 

So lets look at what happened to Marissa Alexander. She was at home just minding her own damn business till hubby came in and started kicking her ass. Sounds like she was somewhere she had a right to be and wasn't doing anything illegal. Here comes this guy ready to use force, sounds to me she ought to be able to use force right back, right? So she fires back at a guy coming at her who was choking her just a little while ago, she sounds like the person the law was meant to protect right? 

Well apparently the judge didn't think so. The judge even said she could have left the home and that “insufficient evidence she reasonably believed that deadly force was needed.” And now this mother is locked up in prison waiting sentencing.

 

So, she was getting beaten and choked and the judge here still thinks the law doesn't apply. Seriously how is this NOT self-defense. Basically to use force in self-defense the use of force needs to be reasonable. Here we got domestic violence in motion, it wasn't like Gray, Marissa's husband was walking down the street with candy and iced tea when she blasted him.

 

Seriously, what the fuck Florida?

 

How is it that George Zimmerman gets to shoot a 17 year old kid who had nothing but candy and tea and whom Zimmerman admitted to everyone that he didn't know if Treyvon was armed, gets to go off on bail, while Marissa gets tossed in prison. The situation with Marissa is pretty much a Criminal Law casebook example of self-defense. After all, when you choke someone, you might kill them, hence being lethal force, and therefore Marissa would be allowed to respond with lethal force. And in case you missed it, she's in her own damn house! What state, anywhere, would require you to flee from your home? Not even California, which is derided by 2nd Amendment supporters (like me) has a requirement to flee from your own home. What, is it racism? George certainly looks more White than Latino, and Marissa definitely looks black. Is it sexism? Is it because George is a man and Marissa is a woman? Is she supposed to be a submissive housewife who'll take a beating if her psycho ass husband feels like it?

 

I don't know, the White looking man gets bail and the black looking woman is sitting in prison. It's shit like this that makes people lose faith in the "justice" system.