Free Republic

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Marissa Alexander, a woman whose case helped bring national attention to Florida's stand your ground and minimum sentencing laws, was allowed to leave jail late Tuesday afternoon to spend the rest of her sentence on house arrest. Applause broke out in the courtroom when Judge James Daniel announced he would reject the prosecutors' request for an additional two-year sentence and was releasing Alexander to community control. As she left the courthouse, Alexander read a prepared statement: "Today, after the sentence given by Judge Daniel, my family and I will be able to move on with our lives....

Grace Miranda and other supporters of Trayvon Martin rally in front of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s office to ask him to retract his support for the state’s “Stand your ground” gun law in April 2012. A panel of Florida lawmakers shot down a proposal to repeal the state's "Stand your ground" law but approved an amendment to allow immunity for those who fire a warning shot, the Tampa Bay Times reports. Nearly 300 people attended the vote to give their opinion on the controversial law that has been in the national spotlight and under intense scrutiny since the shooting of...

“There is something patently unjust about this,” Jackson said .... “First and foremost, the case was overcharged,” Dowd said in a phone call to his office. He said the results were out of proportion to how the case should have been resolved and agreed with Jackson’s efforts

In the wake of the Zimmerman verdict, many media outlets have erroneously focused on Florida's Stand Your Ground law, which was never invoked by the defense. In fact, Zimmerman declined the opportunity to seek a Stand Your Ground hearing earlier this year. Reason explains: The initial decision not to arrest Zimmerman, former Sanford, Florida, Police Chief Bill Lee said last week (as paraphrased by CNN), "had nothing to do with Florida's controversial 'Stand Your Ground' law" because "from an investigative standpoint, it was purely a matter of self-defense." And as The New York Times explained last month, "Florida's Stand Your...

Late Saturday evening, George Zimmerman was found not guilty in the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. The issue of self-defense played a central role in Zimmerman’s not guilty plea and his defense’s argument against the second-degree murder charges, and his acquittal is drawing comparisons in the media to the verdict of another high-profile Florida shooting incident: the case of Marissa Alexander. Alexander, an African-American Florida woman, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2012 for shooting what she described as warning shots into a wall during a confrontation with her husband. Alexander’s lawyers claimed self-defense in the case, and...

ORLANDO -- More than 400,000 people have signed online petitions calling for the U.S. Department of Justice to file civil rights charges against George Zimmerman for killing 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. The department is looking into whether those charges need to be filed. Both NAACP President Ben Jealous and NAACP Chairman Roslyn Brock are speaking out in support of the continued federal investigating Zimmerman for violating Martin’s civil rights. Meanwhile, News 13 discussed the case with Florida Fifth District Congressman Corrine Brown at the 104th annual NAACP convention Sunday, which is being held this week at the Orange County Convention Center....