Free Marissa- Inside This Brief Toolkit
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! “As Project South heads down to Jacksonville, Florida for Marissa Alexander's final hearing, we reflect on our work in alliance with New Jim Crow Movement over the last two and a half years of confrontation with DA Angela Corey's version of state violence.” FREE MARISSA- INSIDE THIS BRIEF TOOLKIT: - ARTICLE: Angela Corey is the Bull Connor of the South, 50 years later - TIMELINE: Corey’s impact on Jacksonville - ARTICLE: Confronting Hostility; Why Southern Movements converged in Jacksonville - TIMELINE: Women of Color Prosecuted for Defending Themselves - TIMELINE: Concise History of Jacksonville, Florida TIMELINES were compiled by Cita Cook for Project South, 2013-2014 More on the Southern Movement Assembly can be found at: www.southtosouth.org or www.facebook.com/southernmovementalliance !1 Angela Corey is the Bull Connor of the South, 50 years later. As Project South heads down to Jacksonville, Florida for Marissa Alexander's final hearing, we reflect on our work in alliance with New Jim Crow Movement over the last two and a half years of confrontation with DA Angela Corey's version of state violence. In 1965, Bull Connor in Birmingham and Sheriff Jim Clark in Selma represented the face of white supremacy and were important guardians of cruelty protecting Jim Crow South as local law enforcement. In public protests, they knocked heads into concrete, tear gassed crowds, and unapologetically defended organized racism. Angela Corey, the top cop District Attorney in Florida's 4th district represents the face of this history today, reflecting a growing trend of 21st century racist cruelty that incarcerates teenagers and domestic abuse survivors while letting murderers walk out without consequence. Corey's version of legal terror uses the courts instead of the streets to remind us ‘who is boss’ by enforcing public and racist hostility. Her attack on Marissa Alexander is not just about punishing one woman. After Marissa won an appeal and secured a second trial that threw out a 20-year sentence, Angela Corey ran an intimidation campaign, announcing publicly that she would seek a 60-year sentence in the new trial. As much as this fight feels like a personal vendetta, Corey has built her entire career on excessive punitive practices that have set wild records for over-sentencing and sending disproportionate numbers of juveniles to adult court. Corey’s actions in Marissa’s case are directly connected to punishing the growing movement that has risen to confront the public killings of Trayvon Martin in Sanford FL and Jordan Davis in Jacksonville FL, where she also served as prosecutor. Forced into a plea deal that will keep her under state surveillance and detained at her home for two more years, Marissa is part of growing trends in incarceration that force plea deals and keep more and more people under state control in their own homes. As in the days of Bull Connor, people have not remained silent in the face of this brutality. Social movements are rising again to confront racist violence and the legal frameworks that protect it. On April 26, 2013, Marissa's mother Ms. Jenkins attended the second Southern Movement Assembly anchored by the New Jim Crow Movement in a park on the historically Black Northside of Jacksonville. Under an old army tent, donated by a local church, a participant read a heartfelt letter written by Marissa to the entire assembly of 250 representatives from 10 states. We stormed the Duval County Courthouse the next day, and the Southern Movement Assembly participants committed to both Marissa's individual fight for freedom and the broader pattern of injustice that this case represents. A few months after that on July 14, 2013, Angela Corey was smiling at the press conference that announced Zimmerman’s acquittal for the murder of Trayvon Martin. Grassroots movements sprung into action, and the Southern Movement Assembly organized the Walk for Dignity from Jacksonville to Sanford. The call from Aleta Alston-Toure of Jacksonville was met by hundreds of people, over 25 organizations, churches, and community groups. We walked for two demands: Free Marissa Alexander & Fire Angela Corey. This ongoing fight has galvanized new generations of active communities who say: Enough is Enough. !2 On the eve of her release into home detention, we recognize the incredible grassroots movements in Florida, around the South, and across the country that have made sure that Marissa’s case was part of a national dialogue and that also made important connections between this case and the growing impunity for violence we see in our communities. FOR MORE: CHECK OUT WWW.SOUTHTOSOUTH.ORG & THE SOUTHERN PEOPLE’S INITIATIVE !3 THE HISTORY OF ANGELA COREY’S IMPACT ON JACKSONVILLE October 31, 1954 - Angela B. Corey, the granddaughter of Syrian immigrants, was born in Jacksonville, Florida. She grew up on the Southside and majored in Marketing at Florida State University. 1979 - Corey received a doctorate in law from Levin College of Law at the University of Florida. 1981 - 2006 - Corey was hired as an Assistant State Attorney in Florida’s Fourth Judicial Circuit Court (Duval, Nassau, and Clay Counties) and tried hundreds of cases, including sixty-five homicides. 1991 - Harry Shorstein, a Democrat, was appointed to be State Attorney for the Fourth Judicial Circuit. July 1, 1994 – A new law, passed by the Florida legislature in response to a tourist industry panic about teenage criminals, gave prosecutors the power to send juveniles to adult courts without having to wait any longer for a judge to hold a hearing on which court would be most appropriate for each case. 1998 – State Attorney Harry Shorstein established the use of civil citations in Duval County Public Schools, allowing school officers to cite rather than arrest students for certain first-time misdemeanors. March 1999 – In Wieland v. State, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that women have the right to rely on the battered spouse syndrome as a defense to killing their abuser. 2005 - Shorstein changed Corey’s work assignment from Director of the Gun Crime Unit to Director of the County Court, which handles misdemeanors. She trained newly hired lawyers to be prosecutors. 2006 - Corey announced that she would run against her boss, Harry Shorstein, to be State Attorney. November 2006 - When Shorstein received complaints about Corey as a supervisor, he fired her. Corey said it was because she was running against him. He then announced he would not run for re-election. 2007 - John Tanner, the State Attorney for the Seventh Judicial Circuit, hired Corey. Shorstein was overseeing a grand jury investigation of Tanner’s handling of a Flagler County Jail investigation. August 26, 2008 - Corey won the election as State Attorney in the 4th Circuit with over 64% of the votes. 2009 - Soon after taking office, Corey fired ten assistant state attorneys, over half of the investigators, and forty-eight support employees. That year she sent 230 juvenile felony cases to adult court, twice the number in all the years before she became State Attorney in the Fourth Judicial Circuit Court. August 2009 - Corey asked Florida’s U. S. Senators not to recommend Shorstein for the position of U. S. Attorney for the Middle District of Florida because he used “the grand jury for personal vendettas” and said she would refuse to speak with Shorstein if he were appointed. He was not appointed. August 1, 2010 - Marissa Alexander, a thirty-one-year-old African American woman from Jacksonville, fired a warning shot to stop her abusive husband from attacking her. The bullet did not hit anyone. March 14, 2011 - Toddler David Galarrage, the younger half-brother of Cristian Fernandez, was taken to the hospital; he died two days later from a fractured skull and bleeding brain. June 2, 2011 - Corey sought and received a grand jury indictment of twelve-year-old Cristian Fernandez for killing his two-year-old brother and for aggravated child abuse, !4 making him the youngest person ever charged with murder in Florida. By combining the two cases, Corey turned the charge into one of felony murder, meaning she would not have to prove premeditation for the murder and could ask for a sentence of life without parole. Although Cristian, whose mother was twelve when he was born, had suffered repeated physical and sexual abuse, Corey decided to try him as an adult, ignoring widespread pressure to try him in juvenile court. She eventually claimed that because she had always intended for him to accept a lesser plea (which he did in 2013), he was never really in danger of receiving a life sentence. December 2011 - Corey was listed as a host for a fundraiser for the re-election of Public Defender Matt Shirk. She was trying to convince Shirk to accept a plea agreement for Cristian Fernandez. January 5, 2012 - Corey charged Cristian Fernandez with sexual battery of his younger half-brother, a charge that was later thrown out by a judge. February 26, 2012 - George Zimmerman, a twenty-eight-year-old neighborhood watch volunteer, shot and killed Trayvon Martin as Martin, a seventeen-year-old African American, was walking from a store in Sanford, Florida to the home where he was staying. A few hours later, the Sanford Police Department declared that they would not be arresting Zimmerman because he had fired in self-defense. March 2012 - March 22, 2012 - After both Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee and Seminole County State Attorney Norm Wolfinger resigned from the Zimmerman case, Governor Rick Scott appointed Corey to be the Special Prosecutor. Sandy D’Alemberte, former president of the American Bar Association and former president of Florida State University, emailed that he could not “imagine a worse choice for a prosecutor to serve in the Sanford case.” One reason he gave was that she could not “command the respect of people who care about justice.” Michael Hallett, the Chairman of the University of North Florida’s Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, said the Zimmerman case would enable her to shift the media focus away from the Cristian Fernandez case and “to show concern for a black victim.” At this time, Corey hired Jackelyn Barnard, a veteran television reporter, as her Director of Communications.