JACKSONVILLE, Fla.—Marissa Alexander knows politics. No political race—judgeship, state representative, national—nor proposed amendment escapes her notice. That’s why during this midterm election season, she has sat down her 18-year-old twins at the dinner table to go over everything—the amendments and candidates that…
We all know who “stand your ground” laws protect, so perhaps it is not surprising that a 38-year-old black Selma, Ala., woman is behind bars and facing murder charges despite the fact that she insists she shot and killed her estranged husband in self-defense.
The girlfriend of a black man gunned down in a Florida parking lot last week says that not only was her boyfriend just coming to her defense in a heated dispute, but that the gunman “wanted someone to be angry at.”
Unfortunately, Marissa Alexander of Jacksonville, Fla., is a living embodiment of the vicious discrepancies of our criminal-justice system—both against black defendants and against women.
