Labor defender: Marissa Alexander and Stand your Ground

Marissa Alexander, an African American Florida woman, sentenced to 20 years in prison in May of 2012, was recently released on bond. After pleading innocent to firing a warning shot at her angry estranged husband under Floridas controversial stand your ground law, the jury found her guilty Stand you ground stems from the castle doctrine concept, where a person is permitted to use deadly force if they think they are being threatened within the confines of their home, without any legal recourse. Forty-six states now acknowledge, via castle doctrine legislation, that a person is not required to retreat if their home is attacked. Twenty two other states have extended this doctrine to include any place a person has a right to be. The concept being no person should have to retreat from a place they can legally be if confronted by an assailant. This is a very old law. In fact The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Beard v. U.S.[5] (1895) that a man who was on his premises when he came under attack and ...did not provoke the assault, and had at the time reasonable grounds to believe, and in good faith believed, that the deceased intended to take his life, or do him great bodily harm...was not obliged to retreat, nor to consider whether he could safely retreat, but was entitled to stand his ground.[6][7] (wiki)1 John Roman, a senior fellow at the Urban Institutes Justice Policy Center, analyzed a pool of 43,500 homicides by race in states with Stand Your Ground laws. Roman found that a greater number of homicides were found justified in Stand Your Ground states in all racial combinations, a result he believes is because those states yielded more killings overall. Roman also found that Stand Your Ground laws tend to track the existing racial disparities in homicide convictions across the U.S. with one significant exception: Whites who kill blacks in Stand Your Ground states are far more likely to be found justified in their killings (our emphasis.) In non-Stand Your Ground states, whites are 250 percent more likely to be found justified in killing a black person than a white person who kills another white person; in Stand Your Ground states, that number jumps to 354 percent. (Frontline 7/12)2

Romans data is clear and viable. There is racial disparity in the application of stand your ground laws. So Marissa didnt stand a chance on two counts. Given that the Stand your ground disparity mirrors the inequality in the culture at large, the fact that she was African American already put her at a disadvantage for a fair trial in general,

and add to that Floridas 10-20-life mandatory sentencing laws, she was nothing more than a sitting duck. Many advocacy groups have been fighting for her release (NAACP, domestic violence watch groups, etc.) She is out on bond for now.3 The racist capitalist legal system is not reformable and cannot be made to work in the interests of the workers and oppressed. In its fundamentals it rests upon the lie of legal equality of classes which are social inequalities under capitalism. Underpinning this lie is the racist history of the United States in its material development, from chattel slavery to legal segregation to the racist de facto economic segregation of Blacks today. Marissa Alexanders right to self-defense is supreme and the misapplication of the law that found George Zimmerman innocent of the murder of Trayvon Martin automatically sentenced Ms. Alexander to 20 years. Stand Your Ground laws are racist in conception as well as application. Previous to the rise of the ALEC, the castle laws dating from 1895 were universally regarded as adequate legal justification for armed self-defense.4

Free Marissa Alexander! For the right of self-defense against domestic assault! For the right of armed self-defense against racist terror! Justice for Trayvon Martin and all victims of vigilante and racist cop terror!

Communist Workers Group USA

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Labor Donated

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/criminal-justice/is-there-racial-bias-in-stand-your-ground-laws/ http://tampa.cbslocal.com/2013/11/29/marissa-alexander-released-from-jail-on-bond/ http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/12/04/shooting-georgia-alzheimer-patient-reignites-stand-your-ground-debate/

http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0700-0799/0776/Sections/0776.013.html http://floridastandyourground.org/ http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-law-basics/states-that-have-stand-your-ground-laws.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/07/15/everything-you-need-to-know-about-stand-your-ground-laws/ http://csgv.org/action/stand-up-to-stand-your-ground/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/stand-your-ground-laws http://redalertpolitics.com/2013/10/30/gun-rights-expert-economist-makes-case-against-racism-narrative-surrounding-stand-your-ground-laws/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-horwitz/protecting-marissa-at-the_b_1551998.html