Don’t believe anything you read online. Heck, don’t even believe the stuff I write. The press and gun-control activists keep harping on Stand Your Ground (SYG) laws in various states. They are fixated on it, referring to specific cases as “clear problems” with the law when those examples have nothing to do with SYG.
Written by some no-it-all named Adam Gabbatt in The UK Guardian.
The case provoked outcry at the apparent double standard between [Marissa] Alexander’s case and that of George Zimmerman, who killed Trayvon Martin and initially avoided arrest after invoking Florida’s stand-your-ground law.
That’s a complete lie. The press was all over SYG, but Zimmerman’s lawyers never used it to “avoid arrest” nor did they use it at trial.
The case Gabbatt is referring to is Marissa Alexander’s charge and conviction for aggravated assault. In some strange universe, pundits think there is a similarity between the Zimmerman and Alexander cases, but there was no double standard, and the cases are completely different.
Here is a brief summary of the Alexander case.
Alexander got into an argument with her husband, Rico Gray, after Gray found text messages on Alexander’s phone to her ex-husband. Alexander claimed Gray initially prevented her from leaving the bathroom – where they were arguing – but at some point she was able to get by him and get away. Alexander fled the house, but when she got to her car in the garage, she realized she had left her keys inside. So she got her gun from the car and re-entered the house. Alexander told police the garage door was broken, and that’s why she didn’t exit that way. Police found no evidence proving the garage door wasn’t working properly.
When Alexander went back inside, she claimed Gray continued to threaten her so she fired a “warning shot” through the house — which she fired in the direction of Gray, with his children nearby.
Was the shot in anger or in self-defense? If the shot was fired in self-defense, and Alexander was in fear for her life, why did she go back to Gray’s house (she was not living there) when she was out on bail? She was prohibited from going there but still went. Gray called the cops.
When the police contacted Alexander about the incident, she first said she didn’t know what they were talking about, and she hadn’t been at the house, but later she stated that Gray attacked her because she wouldn’t stay with him overnight. Alexander never called police and later stated she was scared. According to police reports, Alexander had no injuries, but Gray had a bloody swollen eye and told police Alexander had punched him.
In Gray’s initial deposition to police, he said he would have hit Alexander if she had really tried to threaten him, in an effort to help her and get her potential sentence reduced. Alexander and Gray collaborated on that story while she awaited trial, but Gray later admitted that it wasn’t true and that she really did threaten him and did fire a shot at him.
Alexander was convicted of aggravated assault, but she is getting a new trial. She will not be able to use the SYG defense, but still we have the media acting like idiots comparing the similarity of these cases and pushing the “SYG laws are bad” theme. Tell me, how the heck can anyone think or say these cases are similar?