When Battered Women Bite Back: The Story of Marissa Alexander
When 31-year-old Marissa Alexander, African American mother of three, shot a single warning bullet into the wall during her husband’s rage in 2012, she was stunned when she was charged with three counts of aggravated assault. She tried to argue self-defense under Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, but she was denied immunity, and was given 20 years in prison due to mandatory sentencing laws. Her story eventually sparked a media outrage, with activists criticizing the mandatory sentencing laws and the bias of the prosecuting attorney, jury, and judge who decided on her case. With the help from supporters all around the world, she was able to successfully appeal her case and minimize her sentence to just three years, with two years of probation. Ultimately, what Alexander's story illuminates is a much larger issue in the United States regarding the criminalization of black women precisely when they use force to protect themselves and their families from harm. Her case also highlights the difficulties of navigating intimate partner violence as a black woman, due to the specific financial and social struggles that black women face on account of their race and gender.
Marissa’s experience of domestic abuse is all too common amongst Black American community. According to the Women of Color network, “African American females experience intimate partner violence at a rate 35% higher than that of white females, and about 2.5 times the rate of women of other races.” To complicate this epidemic, many Black women feel discouraged from seeking help in these situations because of the societal and economic challenges they face for leaving their relationships. Facing the stereotypes of the “welfare queen” and the “strong black women,” many battered black women are hesitant to leave their relationships, both for fear of social ridicule and financial hardship.
Alexander’s case outcome soon garnered much media attention in 2013, following the trial for Trayvon Martin, who was slain by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman. After Zimmerman was acquitted on the basis of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground,” law, social media users and activists heavily criticized state attorney Angela Corey, who presided over both Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander cases, for her poor decisions. While the details of each case differed greatly, together they exemplified how Black bodies in the United States are villainized, for simply using self-defense against racist and/or sexist attacks.
With heightened support and further revision, Marissa was able to successfully appeal her sentence later that year, and granted a retrial. During the legal proceedings, prosecuting attorney Corey attempted to triple her sentence if proven guilty, only adding to the state-sanctioned violence Alexander had experienced throughout her trial. Fortunately, in the following year, Alexander was able to reach a plea deal in court, which allowed her to leave jail in 65 days under the following conditions:
For the next two years Alexander must wear a GPS ankle monitor and will only be allowed to leave her home to go to work, job interviews, church, family medical and dental appointments, and to visit her children’s schools. She’ll have to get a judge’s permission to do anything else.
Although her early release was a huge success, Alexander wasn’t completely free. She would have endure another two years of closely-monitored house arrest, in which she would be confined to her home and a limited list of other predetermined places. Moreover, because she was a convicted felon, she would not be able to vote or enjoy many other civil liberties. These restrictions serve only as further examples of the ways in which Black women are criminalized for their self-defense, and the ways in which the justice system fails Black women by not taking into account their identities and experiences during trials. In addition to her limited mobility, Alexander was made to bear strenuous expenses while on probation. Her ankle-monitor, priced at $105 per week, would cost her a total of nearly $11,000 after two years. In a video addressed to her supporters, she also discussed how difficult it was to come up with this money for most convicted felons.
In her statement, Marissa highlights the difficulties of navigating strict probation, and how difficult it must be for women who do not have the support systems she had. In recognizing her wealth of support, she also recognizes and criticizes how the U.S. legal system that criminalizes women not only for fighting against their abusers, but also for not having the financial resources to sustain themselves after prison-time. For Black women, not only can they not trust the justice system to protect them against domestic violence, but they also cannot trust the justice system to acknowledge their resistances as self-defense and survival.
At last, after five years of trials, imprisonment, and house arrest, on January 27, 2017, Marissa Alexander was finally able to take her ankle monitor off. With her newfound freedom and fame, she expressed her wish to “give back using whatever platform I have.” For numerous long years, Alexander had experienced maltreatment from her husband and the legal system on a national and international stage. With her expansive audience, she chose to use her story in order to help other Black youth, in order “to try to help stop the school-to-prison pipeline.”
From her her prison cell to her own home, Alexander's perseverance and commitment to her family gave her the strength to turn a horrifying situation into a positive story for all battered Black women wrongfully convicted for self-defense. In hindsight, Alexander says, she wouldn’t have changed the past five years, because “I now believe what I went through wasn’t punishment, it was preparation,” she proclaims. “I don’t regret it.”41 Not one bit.
To learn more about Marissa Alexander and her work, check out her website here.
