Woman gets 20 year sentence for defending herself and shooting

Twelve minutes, that is all it took. Just twelve minutes. In twelve minutes the jury had convicted Marissa Alexander of a criminal offense that carried a mandatory 10-20 year term. Frankly, some juries take longer to decide which restaurant they are going order from. The judge said he had no choice, because she used a firearm, she had to receive twenty years, no matter what the extenuating circumstances might be.

Those same extenuating circumstances by the way were a husband who threatened to kill her, who in fact, admitted to just that. So, Alexander fired a warning shot against her abusive husband. A man who had a history of violence against women.

She did not attempt to shoot the man. She did shot towards the kitchen wall. Now, according to the prosecutors there were children in a room in the general direction in which she fired. But this was a woman scared that she might be murdered. For this, she gets twenty years. Maybe I should not blame the jury too much, they often do not know the sentence that will be imposed, if someone is convicted.

In fact, not just prosecutors but judges themselves, do not want jurors to know about the mandatory minimum sentences imposed after conviction. They want jurors like mushrooms, in the dark, and you know what else.

The prosecuting attorney defended this waste of taxpayer money and 20 years of a life thrown away, by saying she offered a plea deal for a three year sentence. Even three years would be an absurdly harsh punishment. What would have been the point of putting her in prison for three years? Should Alexander have just allowed herself to have been murdered? Would this prosecutor, also a woman, have allowed herself to be murdered?

I don't know what happened exactly during the shooting by George Zimmerman of Trayvon Martin, but this case seems a clear injustice. Alexander is African American and I don't think that is a coindence. I have seen too many cases of injustice against black defendents to think that is not an important factor in this case.

Oh, by the way, in White Plains, NY, an elderly African American man named Kenneth Chamblain Sr, was shot by police. It seems he had accidently hit a medical alert button while he was sleeping. When police came he told them he had acccidently triggered it. The police still tried to force themselves into his house, despite his pleadings for them to go away.

On tape one of them told him, "I don't give a f*** ni****." When police finally forced themselves into his apartment, Chamberlain was shot almost immediately, after being tased and hit with a beanbag fired from a shotgun.

The officer who fired the gunshot, name wasn't released for months. This actually happened late last year, and is only getting attention recently. The police had stated Chamberlain had grabbed a butcher knife and charged them, but no video by the taser gun that one officer held, recorded that. In fact, Chamberlain's niece stated he asked them, why they had their guns drawn. If Chamberlain had lived, I am sure he would have been charged with some kind of violent felony, somehow.