{"id":22586,"date":"2013-07-18T15:20:40","date_gmt":"2013-07-18T19:20:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=22586"},"modified":"2013-07-18T15:20:40","modified_gmt":"2013-07-18T19:20:40","slug":"zimmerman-verdict-puts-marissa-alexander-case-back-in-the-spotlight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=22586","title":{"rendered":"Zimmerman Verdict Puts Marissa Alexander Case Back In The Spotlight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Late Saturday evening, <strong>George Zimmerman <\/strong>was found not guilty in the death of 17-year-old <strong>Trayvon Martin<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The issue of self-defense played a central role in <strong>Zimmerman\u2019s<\/strong> not guilty plea and his defense\u2019s 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 <strong>Marissa Alexander<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Alexander<\/strong>, 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. <strong>Alexander\u2019s<\/strong> lawyers claimed self-defense in the case, and said her husband had a history of abuse in their relationship. They invoked Florida\u2019s \u201cStand Your Ground\u201d law, which gives people the right to use lethal force if they feel their life is threatened.<\/p>\n<p>The jury ultimately sided with prosecutors in deciding <strong>Alexander\u2019s<\/strong> actions were not in self-defense. Her sentencing fell under the guidelines of what\u2019s known in Florida as the \u201c10-20-Life\u201d law, which set certain mandatory minimum sentences for crimes committed with a firearm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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\u2019s not guilty plea and his defense\u2019s 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}