Some Justice?
Via Digby the latest on the Marissa Alexander case.
Ms Alexander has been granted a new trial and been released on bail, but we still don’t know why she was charged or convicted of assault.
These are the undisputed bare facts of the case: during a confrontation with her husband Ms Alexander fired one round into a wall in her kitchen.
Her husband had been convicted of domestic violence for attacking earlier. She had an active restraining order against him. She had a valid concealed weapons permit.
From my perspective as a former law enforcement officer I don’t understand why this went to trial. She was in her home, and the husband was violating a judicial order even being there. The state had already proven he was a threat to her. This is a classic self-defense situation, made even more clear cut by existing court records [i.e. you don’t need to believe her about her husband being a threat, the courts said he was].
Ms Alexander was given “a 20-year prison sentence under the state’s mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines because she had fired a gun during the assault.”
Her husband wasn’t hurt in any way in the incident, but Ms Alexander was given 20 years in prison for firing a warning shot.
Of course it makes no difference to this case, but another undisputed fact is that Ms Alexander is an African-American. [/sarcasm]
4 comments
Of course it makes no difference to this case, but another undisputed fact is that Ms Alexander is an African-American. [/sarcasm]
oh none whatsoever. /s
As an old fart who is in no condition to fight any real battles, I have probably more interest than the average citizen in the stability of our government. And it seems to me that throughout history, one factor more likely than any other to destabilize the whole social contract is the failure of a government to deliver judicial fairness to ordinary citizens. That the State of Florida brought Ms. Alexander to trial given the basic facts in evidence is a bad sign for long-term stability… a really bad sign.
FWIW, I don’t believe Texas is in any way better. And yes, OF COURSE it made a difference that Ms. Alexander is African-American.
Rule of law is fundamentally a scam. The purpose of the scam is to fool most people into obeying the law without the need for force. Law is always rigged to benefit the ruling class — always, regardless of what nation we’re talking about — but if the scam is *good*, if the rigging is subtle enough, the vast majority of people believe that the law is fair and provides justice, and the vast majority of people obey the law without having to be prompted by the barrel of a gun to do so. And the civilization is fat and happy.
If more than 1% of the population is a criminal, then clearly the rigging of law to benefit the ruling class has become so blatant that the scam is starting to crumble. Currently 6.5% of the U.S. population has a felony record, and roughly 25% of the U.S. population has been arrested or convicted of some crime. 25%.
That is not sustainable. It isn’t. Either the nation is going to descend into total anarchy as more and more people ignore the law and rule of gun becomes more and more common, or we’re going to end up with the sort of vicious police state that is the only kind of government that can enforce rule of law at gunpoint. And vicious police states are *expensive*. They suck the guts out of any economy and send the best and brightest fleeing to other countries, and they’re only keeping the lid on the pressure cooker, they’re not releasing the pressure. Look at what happened when Saddam’s vicious police state failed. It was not pretty…
If our rulers were smart, they would realize that so blatantly rigging the law in their favor is going to cause an explosion, just like letting pressure build up indefinitely in a pressure cooker will cause an explosion. They would try to pass laws that restored the semblance of fairness to our economy and daily lives and try to get people to buy in to rule of law again. But if our rulers were smart, they wouldn’t have come this far down the primrose path to anarchy or vicious dictatorship in the first place…
– Badtux the Sociological Penguin
The Florida gun lobby hasn’t said anything about this case. which makes it rather obvious that they believe that ‘only certain people’ have a right to defend themselves. The entire process was so out of whack with the law that the appellate court couldn’t have decided anything except a new trial.
Badtux is right, the law has to be trusted to work, and it isn’t trusted by large groups of the population. People are not going to be witnesses or jurors if they don’t think there will be any justice at the end of the trial. People are seeing the police as a threat, not protection, and the problems will increase with every step towards further militarization.