Here is some decent news coming out of Florida, but many are remaining cautiously optimistic.

Remember the woman sentenced 20 years for firing a warning shot into the air in aims of keeping her abusive husband off of her? She has been granted a new trial to prove her innocents or change the sentence at the very least.

Marissa Alexander is the woman at the controversy and the one behind bars over the State’s mandatory minimum sentencing laws for firing warning shots. In the State of Florida, you are able to Stand Your Ground with deadly force (and walk free), but firing a warning shot in the air could land you in jail for a minimum of 20 years. Many believe this is backwards and an unjust perversion of the law.

Marissa Alexander’s sentence sparked national outrage over the perverse outcomes from mandatory minimum sentences and Stand Your Ground laws. A judge rejected Alexander’s Stand Your Ground argument that she was justified in firing the warning shot to protect herself. She was then convicted by a jury of aggravated assault, and sentenced to Florida’s mandatory minimum 20-year prison term for that offense. She is serving that sentence now.

In a decision issued Thursday, an appeals panel upheld the judge’s Stand Your Ground decision, but held that the instructions to the jury on self-defense were improper. The instructions wrongly stated that Alexander had to prove her fear of aggravated battery beyond a reasonable doubt, and improperly included an instruction about injury when there definitively was no injury caused by Alexander’s action, the court held.

Many have pointed to Alexander’s case as an example of inconsistent application of Stand Your Ground laws.

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While the laws that authorize use of deadly force in self-defense have led to acquittals or no charges for many male aggressors whose gunshots were fatal, Alexander was not successful in invoking the law for much less force, and in one of the few prominent cases that involves allegations of domestic violence. The judge’s failure to allow the claim comports with studies that have shown the ALEC and NRA-backed laws are discriminatory and applied arbitrarily.

We are excited the woman gets the opportunity at a new trial. However, with the track record in the State of Florida, we wouldn’t hold our breathe if we were you. The State has a strong history of inappropriate use of justice when it comes to our community.

In our opinion, this case is just one more reason mandatory minimums make no sense and do nothing but favor the private prison system’s fat profit margins.

Source: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/09/26/2685251/florida-court-grants-new-trial-to-woman-serving-20-years-for-firing-warning-shot/