Now for something a little different from FL.

[Callisto32]

Last edited Wed May 2, 2012, 07:53 AM - Edit history (1)

http://reason.com/archives/2012/05/02/20-years-for-standing-her-ground

20 Years for Standing Her Ground
A Florida woman faces prison after firing a warning shot to scare off an abusive husband.

Jacob Sullum | May 2, 2012

Marissa Alexander"I got five baby mammas, and I put my hands on every last one of them except for one," Rico Gray confessed during a November 2010 deposition. "The way I was with women…they had to walk on eggshells around me." He recalled punching women in the face, shoving them, choking them, and tossing them out the door.

Yet somehow, after one of those women fired a warning shot into the ceiling of her Jacksonville, Florida, home to scare him away during yet another violent outburst, prosecutors managed to convince a jury that Gray was the victim. As a result, Marissa Alexander, a 31-year-old mother of three, faces 20 years in prison for standing her ground against an abusive husband.

Gray has been arrested twice for domestic battery, including an assault that sent Alexander to the hospital. In September 2009 Alexander obtained a protective order against Gray that was still in effect on August 1, 2010, when he flew into a jealous rage after discovering, while poking through her cellphone, that she had sent pictures of their newborn daughter to her first husband.

Alexander was in the master bathroom at the time, and Gray tried to force his way in. When she came out, he screamed and cursed at her while preventing her from leaving the bedroom. "I was like forcing her back with my body," reported Gray, who is seven inches taller than Alexander and outweighs her by 100 pounds.

[oneshooter]

1. That "warning shot" should have been center of mass.

If you need to pull it, then you need to use it. Otherwise don't pull it.

Oneshooter
Armed and Livin in Texas

[jeepnstein]

2. Yup.

You shoot to stop the aggression. I wonder where the round from that "warning shot" came to rest? Warning shots are dumb.

[Callisto32]

5. In the ceiling of the living room, I believe it said.

[Callisto32]

3. I agree.

I always cringe when I read about people firing "warning shots"

[Glaug-Eldare]

4. It's easy to second-guess her from here, but you're right

I cringe every time I read about "warning shots." Every bullet you fire goes somewhere and hits something. Or someone.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

7. As Tuco (Eli Wallach) said...

"When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk."

[ileus]

6. If she fired a warning shot she wasn't in fear for her life.

Last edited Wed May 2, 2012, 02:22 PM - Edit history (2)

She's the lowest of the rudebasertotergunner death spewer users.

[SoutherDem]

8. Am I missing something?

From what I have heard for over a month are situations where people have used the "stand your ground law" to all but commit premeditated murder.
It sounds as this woman didn't want to kill but scare, would she have been better to have killed him?
Is it the law or the entire state that is screwed up?

By the way, although I currently do not own any guns as a young adult I did, and I was always taught to never shoot up in the air (or ceiling) you never know where it is going to come down or with the ceiling what it might bring down.

[Meiko]

9. The way the story reads

is she pursued him once she had picked up her gun from the car.

When Alexander managed to get by, she ran through the kitchen to the garage, where she says she realized she did not have the keys to her car, could not call for help because she had left her cellphone behind, and could not escape because the garage door was not working. Instead she grabbed her handgun from her car and headed back through the kitchen, where Gray confronted her again.

After she grabbed her gun why didn't she stay in the garage. It may look like to the jury that she became the aggressor when she could have retreated and waited until he left and the called the police. I am not sure what the law reads but a warning shot may be illegal as well.

[Glaug-Eldare]

10. Would you want to be trapped in the garage?

Reads to me like she was trying to escape, but the garage turned into a dead end. If she stayed there, she would have been trapped in a space with only one exit and with no means of calling the police. She seems to have wound up in a situation where she had to advance in order to retreat. (Not that she should be compelled to retreat in her own home -- Alexander shouldn't be restrained by Gray's criminal invasion)