And now the Marissa Alexander case rears up again in the media. I covered her case more than a year ago at this point, when the narrative first hit the media. Alexander is a poster child against mandatory minimum sentences, not against stand your ground laws. A big problem we’re having is that journalists, when they don’t outright have an agenda, which is often, don’t really understand our laws or legal system. Stand Your Ground laws honestly don’t change a whole lot when it comes to self-defense cases. It still comes down to credibility, and that was the difference between Alexander and Zimmerman.
UPDATE: More here, at WTBGU.
UPDATE: Also at Ace of Spades.
“Alexander is a poster child against mandatory minimum sentences, not against stand your ground laws.”
Agreed. The fact that she had a lawyer who made a poorly justified request for a stand your ground hearing doesn’t make this a stand your ground case. Hmmm, she went to her car and came back in the house to confront the man she had a restraining order against but had minutes before been talking with calmly and voluntarily. The Zimmerman case did not invoke stand your ground no matter how many timees someone tries to use it as an arguement against the stand your ground law.
What this case does have in common with the Zimmerman case is reporting by the media and those with an agenda of partial facts in a misleading way to support their argument. Then others follow based on emotion or flawed logic and the whole issue gets blown out of proportion and turned into something it is not.