Saturday, May 19, 2012
The First “Filipinos”
Many historians and scientists believe that the first inhabitants of the Philippine islands emerged during the Pleistocene period. There are two theories on where the inhabitants (first Filipinos) came from namely: Beyer’s “Migration Theory” and Jocano’s “Evolution Theory”. Noted social scientist Henry Otley Beyer believes that Filipinos descended from different groups that came from Southeast Asia in successive waves of migration. Each group had a distinct culture, with it’s own customs and traditions. While Jocano believes that Asians, including Filipinos are the result of a lengthy process of evolution and migration.
Migration Theory
The first migrants were what Beyer caked the “Dawnmen” (or “cavemen” because they lived in caves.). The Dawnmen resembled Java Man, Peking Man, and other Asian Home sapiens who existed about 250,000 years ago. They did not have any knowledge of agriculture, and lived by hunting and fishing. It was precisely in search of food that they came to the Philippines by way of the land bridges that connected the Philippines and Indonesia. Owing perhaps to their migratory nature, they eventually left the Philippines for destinations unknown.
The second group of migrants was composed of dark-skinned pygmies called “Aetas’ or “Negritoes”. 
About 30,000 years ago, they crossed the land bridged from Malaya, Borneo, and Australia until they reached Palawan, Mindoro and Mindanao. They were pygmies who went around practically naked and were good at hunting, fishing and food gathering. They used spears and small flint stones weapons.
About 30,000 years ago, they crossed the land bridged from Malaya, Borneo, and Australia until they reached Palawan, Mindoro and Mindanao. They were pygmies who went around practically naked and were good at hunting, fishing and food gathering. They used spears and small flint stones weapons.The Aetas were already in the Philippines when the land bridges disappeared due to the thinning of the ice glaciers and the subsequent increase in seawater level. This natural events “forced” them to remain in the country and become its first permanent inhabitants.
Because of the disappearance of the land bridges, the third wave of migrants was necessarily skilled in seafaring. These were the Indonesians, who came to the islands in boats. They were more advanced than the Aetas in that: they had tools made out of stone and steel, which enabled them to build sturdier houses: they engaged in farming and mining, and used materials made of brass; they wore clothing and other body ornaments.
Last to migrate to the Philippines, according to Beyer, were Malays. They were believed to have come from Java, Sumatra, Borneo, and the Malay Peninsula more than 2,000 years ago. Like the Indonesians, they also traveled in boats.
The Malays were brown-skinned and of medium height, with straight black hair and flat noses. Their technology was said to be more advanced than that of their predecessors. They engaged in pottery, weaving, jewelry making and metal smelting, and introduced the irrigation system in rice planting.
Jocano’s Theory
Renowned Filipino anthropologist Felipe Landa Jocano disputes Beyer’s belief that Filipinos descended from Negritoes and Malays who migrated to the Philippines thousands of years ago. According to Jocano, it is difficult to prove that Negritoes were the first inhabitants of this country. The only thing that can positively concluded from fossil evidence, he says is that the first men who came to the Philippines also went to New Guinea, Java, Borneo, and Australia.
In 1962, a skullcap and a portion of a jaw-presumed to be a human origin-were found in the Tabon Caves of Palawan by archaeologist Robert Fox and Manuel Santiago, who both worked for the National Museum. Carbon dating placed their age at 21,000 to 22,000 years. This proves, Jocano argues, that man came earlier to the Philippines than to the Malay Peninsula; therefore, the first inhabitants of our islands could not have come from the region. The “Tabon Man” is said to resemble Java Man and Peking Man. He gathered fruits, leaves and plants for his food. He hunted with weapons made of stone. Although further research is still being done on his life and culture, evidence shows that he was already capable of using his brain in order to survive and keep himself safe.
Instead of the Migration Theory, Jocano advances the Evolution Theory, as a better explanation of how our country was first inhabited by human beings, Jocano believes that the first people of Southeast Asia were products of a long process of evolution and migration. His research indicates that they shared more or less the same culture, beliefs, practices an even similar tools and implements. These people eventually went their separate ways; some migrated to the Philippines, the others to New Guinea, Java and Borneo. Proof, Jocano says, can be found in the fossils discovered in different parts of Southeast Asia, as well as the recorded migrations of other peoples from the Asian mainland when history began to unfold. Continue to Spanish Expeditions to the Philippines. Also see "About the Philippines".
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Chuck Brown, pioneer of go-go funk music, dies
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Chuck Brown, who styled a mix of funk, soul and Latin party sounds to create go-go music in the nation's capital, has died after suffering from pneumonia. He was 75.
Brown died Wednesday at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore. Hospital spokesman Gary Stephenson confirmed that Brown had died after a hospital stay that began April 18.
Find: Chuck Brown videos
Thanks to Brown and his deep, gravelly voice, go-go music was uniquely identified with Washington. He continued to play the city's club circuit to a loyal audience late in life.
Mayor Vincent Gray said the city will be a different place without Brown.
"Go-go is D.C.'s very own unique contribution to the world of pop music," he said. "Today is a very sad day for music lovers the world over."
"Go-go is a music that continues on and on and on, and it's a call-and-response communication with the audience," Brown said.
Go-go was heavy on percussion with drummers as lead players, accented by guitar riffs, keyboards and horns. Sometimes they would play for two or three hours without stopping. In between tunes, Brown would keep the thunk of percussion going and talk to the crowd.
Brown's hit "Bustin' Loose" with his group, the Soul Searchers, helped define go-go's sound. It spent several weeks atop the R&B chart in 1979. Rapper Nelly later sampled Brown's "Bustin' Loose" in 2002 for his massive hit "Hot in Herre," which won Nelly a Grammy.
In 2007, rapper Eve sampled Brown's song "Blow Your Whistle" in her hit single "Tambourine."
Brown told the AP he admired such artists.
"Go-go had some influence on rap because a lot of rap musicians come to my shows," he said. "Some of them were students at Howard University. People like Puff Daddy, he's been to see us when he was a young Howard University student."
Spike Lee, a fan of Brown's, used go-go for his movie "School Daze."
"Chuck Brown Will Always Be 'Bustin' Loose' — the Godfather of Go-Go," Lee said through a spokeswoman.
When he was younger, Brown spent some time in jail. While behind bars, he traded five cartons of cigarettes for his first guitar. After he was freed in 1962, Brown played with several bands and then formed the Soul Searchers. To comply with terms of his parole, they couldn't play where alcohol was served, so they went to churches, recreation halls and youth centers.
Brown's daughter, Cherita Whiting, said he had died from complications with pneumonia and was gone too soon.
"I just want to tell all his fans, thank you, for lovin' our dad," she said. "He had the best fans in the world."
During the crack epidemic of the 1980s, violence in some clubs affected go-go's reputation. Brown said "we can't blame the go-go for that," though.
More recently, he said he had seen more grandparents at his shows, with an audience ranging in age from 18 to 60.
In 2005, he was named a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Washington was always his most loyal fan base, Brown told the AP, and he was happy to play here the rest of his life.
Donna Summer: Biography
Born: Dec 31, 1948 in Boston, MADonna Summer's title as the "Queen of Disco" wasn't mere hype -- she was one of the very few disco performers to enjoy a measure of career longevity, and her consistent chart success was rivaled in the disco world only by the Bee Gees. Summer was certainly a talented vocalist, trained as a powerful gospel belter, but then again, so were many of her contemporaries. Of major importance in setting Summer apart were her songwriting abilities and her choice of talented collaborators in producers/songwriters Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, which resulted in a steady supply of high-quality (and, often, high-concept) material. But what was more, few vocalists could match the sultry, unfettered eroticism Summer brought to many of her best recordings, which seemed to embody the spirit of the disco era perfectly. The total package made Summer the ultimate disco diva, one of the few whose star power was even bigger than the music.Summer's albums were selling well, bolstered by her popularity in the dance clubs, and she was poised to become a major pop hitmaker as well. Her acting turn in the 1978 disco-themed comedy Thank God It's Friday produced another hit in "Last Dance," which won her a Grammy for Best Female R&B Vocal (as well as an Oscar for songwriter Paul Jabara). Doubtlessly benefiting from the added exposure, the double-LP set Live and More became Summer's first number one album later that year. It featured one side of new studio material, including a disco cover of the psychedelic pop epic "MacArthur Park" that became her first number one pop single early the next year. Her 1979 double-LP Bad Girls featured more of her songwriting contributions than ever, and went straight to number one, as did the lusty singles "Bad Girls" and the rock-oriented "Hot Stuff," which made Summer the first female artist ever to score three number one singles in the same calendar year. Her greatest-hits package On the Radio also topped the charts, the first time any artist had ever hit number one with three consecutive double LPs; the newly recorded title track became another hit, and Summer's duet with Barbra Streisand, "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)," became her fourth number one single.
At the peak of her success, Summer decided to leave Casablanca, and became the first artist signed to the new Geffen label. Sensing that the disco era was coming to a close, Summer attempted to modify her style to include more R&B and pop/rock on her first Geffen album, 1980's The Wanderer; the album and its title track were both hits. Not wanting to alienate her core audience, Summer returned to pure dance music on an attempted follow-up; however, Geffen deemed I'm a Rainbow not worthy of release (it was finally issued in 1996). Instead, Summer ended her collaboration with Moroder and Bellotte and teamed up with Quincy Jones for 1982's Donna Summer. "Love Is in Control (Finger on the Trigger)" was a significant hit, but none of its follow-ups did very well. With producer Michael Omartian, Summer moved back into post-disco dance music and urban R&B with 1983's She Works Hard for the Money; its title track was a smash and became a feminist anthem of sorts. However, with her career momentum slowing, it also marked the end of Summer's prime. Despite winning a gospel Grammy for "Forgive Me," Summer's 1984 follow-up Cats Without Claws flopped, as did the 1987 comeback effort All Systems Go. Hiring the British production team of Stock, Aitken & Waterman, Summer scored her last major success with the 1989 Top Ten single "This Time I Know It's for Real," from the album Another Place & Time; around the same time, she began denouncing her earlier, "sinful" disco material. 1991's lackluster, urban-styled Mistaken Identity effectively killed her career momentum, and none of her new '90s albums produced that elusive hit. However, she did make some noise on the dance charts with "Melody of Love," from the excellent 1994 retrospective Endless Summer, and reunited with Moroder for the 1997 non-LP single "Carry On," which won the inaugural Grammy for Best Dance Recording. Summer subsequently signed a deal with Sony, which primed her for re-establishment with the 1999 greatest-hits live album VH1 Presents: Live and More Encore!; it featured the new song "I Will Go With You (Con Te Partiro)," which had some success on the dance charts. The energetic and eclectic Crayons, her first proper studio album since Mistaken Identity, was released on the Burgundy label in 2008. ~ Steve Huey, Rovi
The sudden passing of the Queen of Disco prompts a closer look at her legacy
Donna Summer: Beyond Disco
 Donna Summer (©Sony) |
Certainly she was the most prominent face of a largely faceless music, a name everyone knew reigning over a genre that was essentially the anti-"Cheers," where nobody knew your name (quick -- who were the lead singers of Chic?). But she was much more than a glamorous symbol of a hedonistic and vaguely threatening (at least to orthodox American rockers) lifestyle: She was a musical pioneer whose innovations in large part shaped popular music's future.
LaDonna Gaines, from Boston, went to Germany with a company of "Hair" in the early '70s, married a German actor named Sommer, and connected with a German bubblegum artist and producer named Giorgio Moroder, and his partner Pete Bellotte, around 1973. One of their first collaborations, a single called "The Hostage," was a disturbing piece of work capitalizing on the European kidnapping-as-political-statement trend that culminated in the killings at the Munich Olympics.
That record couldn't have been farther away from her U.S. debut. "Love to Love You Baby" was a demo that, according to Casablanca executive Larry Harris, was accidentally jarred while playing at a party, so that in effect it played for twice its actual length. Intrigued, Casablanca president Neil Bogart commissioned Moroder and Summer to make an extended version, which Bogart further extended to 17 minutes. Little more than a long simulated orgasm over a hypnotic track, it became a club sensation, then a radio sensation, in late 1975.
You could argue that this first mega-successful extended 12-inch was the ancestor of all trance music to follow, but realistically, if her career had ended then, it would have made a feeble legacy. But over the next few years, Moroder (who originally thought he could find a stronger singer than Summer for "Love to Love You") found an ideal creative partner in Summer.
That burst of creativity first bloomed on Summer's third album, 1976's "Four Seasons of Love," which was nothing less than a disco concept album, just like the heavy thematic albums that progressive rock titans were making during that decade. "Seasons" was vastly more listenable, four entrancing tracks that combined the disco pulse with genuine melody. Follow-up "I Remember Yesterday" nodded to the past (notably on "Love's Unkind," as masterful a Phil Spector/Crystals pastiche as you could hope to find) but on its key track single-handedly propelled music into the future.
Even 35 years later, "I Feel Love" still sounds like a recording beamed in from another galaxy. Moroder's army of chattering synthesizers creates a desensitized zone in which Summer is trapped, and her icy insistence that she can "feel love" establishes a deadly irony. More than any other record, this one proved you didn't need guitars and "real" instruments to create great records. The synth-pop of the '80s and '90s as well as the last quarter-century of dance music (and pop, for that matter) would be inconceivable without it.
But Summer and Moroder had even more to offer. Certainly there was schlock galore on her singles -- the everlasting prom standard and compulsory aspiring-diva karaoke cover "Last Dance," a superfluous disco-fication of "MacArthur Park" -- but 1977 double album "Once Upon a Time" (her fifth album in two years) was a dazzling disco fairy tale full of sumptuous melodies and gloriously mesmerizing arrangements. And for an encore, she helped marry disco and rock.
"Hot Stuff" wasn't the first rock-disco fusion by any means. (Check longtime French star Sheila's "You Light My Fire" for a pioneering effort.) But as the first superstar record to incorporate these seemingly incompatible elements, it sealed the deal, building a bridge between two musical factions that seemed unalterably opposed. Rock fans were publicly destroying disco records and radio stations sponsored "no-Bee Gees weekends" in a climate of fear that disco would render rock irrelevant, and along came a record celebrating that sybaritic disco lifestyle that so alarmed upstanding Americans with good old heartland power chords. Labelmates Kiss immediately followed suit from the rock side with the disco fusion "I Was Made for Lovin' You," and while the two sides didn't exactly air-kiss and hold hands, the established musical boundaries were breached once and for all
Having twice reshaped the course of popular music (three times if you count "Love to Love You Baby"), Summer settled down to a more mundane form of stardom. She still managed to break ground: "Bad Girls" was a notable tribute to a profession as old as that of musicians, "The Wanderer" was an edgy attempt to escape the disco pigeonhole she was mired in, and her penultimate hit, 1983's "She Works Hard for the Money," has endured as a notable tribute to an even older occupation than the one saluted in "Bad Girls": underpaid women's scut work.
But the quality control, erratic in the best of times, deteriorated, and we got by-the-numbers disco-pop exercises such as "Dim All the Lights" and "On the Radio" and extravagant, soulless stunts on the order of her duet with Barbra Streisand. "Enough Is Enough," indeed. The public was only occasionally enamored by her post-Moroder records on Geffen, where she thrashed through a variety of derivative styles, and after "Hard for the Money," hardly an innovative record, there was only one more hit, 1989's "This Time I Know It's for Real," masterminded by British schlock-meister team Stock/Aitken/Waterman (of Rick Astley fame). She became more serious about her Christian faith, interspersing nonmusical activities with sporadic comebacks on the diva-nostalgia circuit.
And that's how she's been perceived, as the main survivor of a much-derided musical era. She deserves better. Her best records from the '70s are every bit as important, and impressive, as the rock classics from Springsteen, Bowie and their compatriots and (listen to "I Feel Love" again) quite conceivably more influential.
Veteran music journalist and critic Ken Barnes witnessed the late '70s disco boom as the rare rock fan who didn't dismiss the dance phenomenon out of hand. He subsequently helmed the broadcast industry trade journal Radio & Records and served as music editor of USA Today, where he launched the Idol Chatter blog covering "American Idol." He now contributes to MSN Music as co-author of the Scene & Heard blog, as well as through additional feature articles and reviews.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Marissa Alexander Sentenced: Florida Mom Who Shot At Abusive Husband Gets 20 Years In Prison
Marissa Alexander, the 31-year-old Florida woman who fired what her family calls a warning shot at her abusive husband, was sentenced Friday morning to 20 years in prison.
Alexander was convicted of three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for firing into a wall near her husband and his two young children at their Jacksonville home in 2010. Alexander has maintained that she wasn't trying to hurt anyone and that she was standing her ground against a man who had over the course of nearly a year punched and choked her on several different occasions. Alexander says that she believed she was protected that day under the state's Stand Your Ground Law, which gives people wide discretion in using deadly force to defend themselves.
A judge and a jury disagreed.
The State Attorney's Office offered a plea bargain that would have sent Alexander to prison for three years, but she rejected it, hoping to convince a jury that she had been defending herself when she fired the weapon.
Alexander's case has become the latest battleground in a fight against what Alexander's supporters call the misapplication of the Stand Your Ground Law and Florida's mandatory minimum sentencing laws, which offer stiff sentences for crimes involving guns.
According to Florida's 10-20-Life statutes, anyone who pulls a gun during a crime receives a mandatory 10-year sentence. Firing a gun during the commission of a crime equals a mandatory 20-year sentence. Anyone convicted of shooting and killing another person during a crime is sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
Alexander, who did not have a criminal record before the shooting, was convicted of felony assault with a gun.
"Florida's mandatory 10-20-life gun law forced the Court to impose an arbitrary, unjust and completely inappropriate sentence,” said Greg Newburn, Florida project director for Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a group that fights to repeal such laws. "As long as Florida keeps its inflexible gun sentencing laws, we will continue to see cases like Ms. Alexander's."
Alexander, a mother of three, and her family have vowed to keep fighting.
"It's like a nightmare that we can't wake up from," Helen Jenkins, Alexander's mother, told HuffPost shortly after the sentencing. "But we just take it one day at a time. Emotionally we are spent, but every day we start over because we have to fight for Marissa."
Jenkins said the family is currently raising funds to hire another attorney to appeal Alexander's case.
Angela Corey, the state attorney who oversaw the case against Alexander, said that justice was indeed served and that Alexander was angry and reckless, not fearful, on the night of the shooting. Just because no one was harmed in the incident doesn't make the shooting any less a punishable crime, Corey said.
"I feel like when someone fires a loaded gun inside of a home with two children standing in the direction where the bullet was fired, we have to have tough laws that say you don't do that," Corey told HuffPost. "Justice, with the laws of the state of Florida, was served. But I don't believe her supporters will ever believe that."
The Jacksonville courtroom in which Alexander was sentenced was packed with Alexander's family and supporters. At one point, according to news reports, a group of young supporters stood up and sang or chanted, "We who believe in justice will not rest!"
One by one, Alexander's family members addressed the court, including Alexander's mother and father, a sister and a brother who broke down in tears as they talked about their sister and how they believe the system had wronged her.
Alexander's daughter, Havelin, 11, read from a letter she'd written and questioned "how my mom could be beaten but she's the one arrested," according to Lincoln Alexander, the girl's father and Marissa's ex-husband.
"That's the reason why I'm fighting," Lincoln Alexander told Huffpost. "I'm fighting for my kids ... I knew this day was coming and my thoughts were on them. Would they be strong enough?"
If Alexander's future appeals are unsuccessful, and she serves her full 20-year term in prison, her twins will be 31 years old when she is released. Her youngest will be 22.
"Today was another tough day for them," Lincoln Alexander said of his kids. "Once they took Marissa away and we walked out of the court and everything was over, that's when it was toughest."
On Aug. 1, 2010, a fight between Alexander and her husband, Rico Gray, 36, left her cornered in the couple's home. She fled into the garage to escape but was trapped behind a jammed door, she stated in court documents. She said she grabbed the gun she kept in the garage, returned to the house and, when Gray threatened to kill her, fired a single shot to ward him off.
Gray ran out of the house with his two sons and called the police. Alexander was arrested and charged. She unsuccessfully invoked her right to stand her ground in court. Alexander's sentencing comes 435 days after the shooting. It took a jury 12 minutes to find her guilty.
Gray himself admitted in a deposition to abusing "all five of his babies' mamas except one," and to hitting Alexander. Alexander's family and supporters say that Gray's testimony should not be trusted, because he perjured himself by changing his account of events on the night of the shooting between his early depositions and later court hearings -- a claim that was not disputed by Corey, the state attorney.
Alexander’s case has drawn comparisons to the case of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black teenager shot to death in February by a neighborhood watch volunteer who claimed he shot Martin in self-defense. The shooter, George Zimmerman, was initially released after the police said he was within his legal rights to defend himself. He was later arrested and charged with second-degree murder more than 40 days later.
Both the Martin and Alexander cases have stirred controversy around Florida's self-defense and gun laws, but it wasn't until some media pivoted from the Martin case to Alexander's that her name became known outside of Jacksonville.
Her family has set up a website and has appeared on cable news shows and nationally syndicated radio programs to spread the word about the "injustice" that they believe Alexander has suffered.
But in the past week, Angela Corey, the state attorney (who also is prosecuting Zimmerman in the Martin case), has launched a media offensive to combat what she has called "misinformation" being spread by the family about the circumstances of the shooting.
Shortly after the sentencing, Corey echoed comments she made to HuffPost earlier this week, saying that Alexander's own actions on the night of the incident and in the following months have landed her in the position that she is in.
While Alexander's family has portrayed her as a victim at the end of her emotional rope and in fear of her life, Corey says Alexander fired in anger and not in fear. Corey disputes the so-called warning shot into the ceiling with photographs that show bullet holes much lower, going through a kitchen wall and into the living room where Corey said Gray and his boys were.
"The fact that nobody got hurt has to be balanced with the fact that someone could have gotten hurt," Corey said. "The kids being right next to him changed everything."
About four months after Alexander was released on bail, on orders to have no contact with Gray, she got into an altercation with him at his home that gave him a black eye, Corey said. Alexander was arrested and charged with battery, to which she pleaded no contest.
Corey said that Alexander's actions -- engaging with a man of whom she claimed to be deathly afraid, and assaulting him -- "didn't show much of her being remorseful" or "being a peaceful person."
"Everybody is still ignoring that she got out on bond and chose to go back over there and hit him a second time," Corey said. "That was kind of an indication of where putting her on probation, where you might have been able to do that before, was off the table since she disregarded a judges order."
Alexander's family said the second incident took place just days before her newborn would have been dropped off of her insurance, and that she went over to Gray's home to have him sign paperwork that would have kept the baby insured. The family say that he attacked her that night and provided HuffPost with her medical records, which show that she suffered minor scrapes and bruising on her face, hand and arm.
After the altercation, Alexander left Gray's house, and Gray called the police.
On Friday Corey's office provided a police report, photographs and a 911 call that counter Alexander's claims.
In the police report, Gray claimed that Alexander came over to drop off their daughter, and that when he rebuffed Alexander's request to spend the night, she "became enraged and began striking him on the face." Gray said he raised his hands, the report continues, and he yelled out to his sons to call the police. The responding officer wrote that Gray's children corroborated that account.
When the police contacted her an hour or so later, according to the report, she said she didn't understand why they were contacting her and that she had an "alibi." The police noted swelling and a cut under Gray's left eye and no visible injuries on Alexander. But on the way to the jail, Alexander said she felt light-headed and became unresponsive.
An officer then "observed that there was a small cut under the suspect's eye that was not there prior to her being placed in my back seat."
Alexander was rearrested that night and has remained in custody ever since.
Alexander Arrest Report Dec. 2010
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"Florida's mandatory 10-20-life gun law forced the Court to impose an arbitrary, unjust and completely inappropriate sentence,” said Greg Newburn, Florida project director for Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a group that fights to repeal such laws. "As long as Florida keeps its inflexible gun sentencing laws, we will continue to see cases like Ms. Alexander's."
Alexander, a mother of three, and her family have vowed to keep fighting.
"It's like a nightmare that we can't wake up from," Helen Jenkins, Alexander's mother, told HuffPost shortly after the sentencing. "But we just take it one day at a time. Emotionally we are spent, but every day we start over because we have to fight for Marissa."
Jenkins said the family is currently raising funds to hire another attorney to appeal Alexander's case.
Angela Corey, the state attorney who oversaw the case against Alexander, said that justice was indeed served and that Alexander was angry and reckless, not fearful, on the night of the shooting. Just because no one was harmed in the incident doesn't make the shooting any less a punishable crime, Corey said.
"I feel like when someone fires a loaded gun inside of a home with two children standing in the direction where the bullet was fired, we have to have tough laws that say you don't do that," Corey told HuffPost. "Justice, with the laws of the state of Florida, was served. But I don't believe her supporters will ever believe that."
The Jacksonville courtroom in which Alexander was sentenced was packed with Alexander's family and supporters. At one point, according to news reports, a group of young supporters stood up and sang or chanted, "We who believe in justice will not rest!"
One by one, Alexander's family members addressed the court, including Alexander's mother and father, a sister and a brother who broke down in tears as they talked about their sister and how they believe the system had wronged her.
Alexander's daughter, Havelin, 11, read from a letter she'd written and questioned "how my mom could be beaten but she's the one arrested," according to Lincoln Alexander, the girl's father and Marissa's ex-husband.
"That's the reason why I'm fighting," Lincoln Alexander told Huffpost. "I'm fighting for my kids ... I knew this day was coming and my thoughts were on them. Would they be strong enough?"
If Alexander's future appeals are unsuccessful, and she serves her full 20-year term in prison, her twins will be 31 years old when she is released. Her youngest will be 22.
"Today was another tough day for them," Lincoln Alexander said of his kids. "Once they took Marissa away and we walked out of the court and everything was over, that's when it was toughest."
On Aug. 1, 2010, a fight between Alexander and her husband, Rico Gray, 36, left her cornered in the couple's home. She fled into the garage to escape but was trapped behind a jammed door, she stated in court documents. She said she grabbed the gun she kept in the garage, returned to the house and, when Gray threatened to kill her, fired a single shot to ward him off.
Gray ran out of the house with his two sons and called the police. Alexander was arrested and charged. She unsuccessfully invoked her right to stand her ground in court. Alexander's sentencing comes 435 days after the shooting. It took a jury 12 minutes to find her guilty.
Gray himself admitted in a deposition to abusing "all five of his babies' mamas except one," and to hitting Alexander. Alexander's family and supporters say that Gray's testimony should not be trusted, because he perjured himself by changing his account of events on the night of the shooting between his early depositions and later court hearings -- a claim that was not disputed by Corey, the state attorney.
Alexander’s case has drawn comparisons to the case of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black teenager shot to death in February by a neighborhood watch volunteer who claimed he shot Martin in self-defense. The shooter, George Zimmerman, was initially released after the police said he was within his legal rights to defend himself. He was later arrested and charged with second-degree murder more than 40 days later.
Both the Martin and Alexander cases have stirred controversy around Florida's self-defense and gun laws, but it wasn't until some media pivoted from the Martin case to Alexander's that her name became known outside of Jacksonville.
Her family has set up a website and has appeared on cable news shows and nationally syndicated radio programs to spread the word about the "injustice" that they believe Alexander has suffered.
But in the past week, Angela Corey, the state attorney (who also is prosecuting Zimmerman in the Martin case), has launched a media offensive to combat what she has called "misinformation" being spread by the family about the circumstances of the shooting.
Shortly after the sentencing, Corey echoed comments she made to HuffPost earlier this week, saying that Alexander's own actions on the night of the incident and in the following months have landed her in the position that she is in.
While Alexander's family has portrayed her as a victim at the end of her emotional rope and in fear of her life, Corey says Alexander fired in anger and not in fear. Corey disputes the so-called warning shot into the ceiling with photographs that show bullet holes much lower, going through a kitchen wall and into the living room where Corey said Gray and his boys were.
"The fact that nobody got hurt has to be balanced with the fact that someone could have gotten hurt," Corey said. "The kids being right next to him changed everything."
About four months after Alexander was released on bail, on orders to have no contact with Gray, she got into an altercation with him at his home that gave him a black eye, Corey said. Alexander was arrested and charged with battery, to which she pleaded no contest.
Corey said that Alexander's actions -- engaging with a man of whom she claimed to be deathly afraid, and assaulting him -- "didn't show much of her being remorseful" or "being a peaceful person."
"Everybody is still ignoring that she got out on bond and chose to go back over there and hit him a second time," Corey said. "That was kind of an indication of where putting her on probation, where you might have been able to do that before, was off the table since she disregarded a judges order."
Alexander's family said the second incident took place just days before her newborn would have been dropped off of her insurance, and that she went over to Gray's home to have him sign paperwork that would have kept the baby insured. The family say that he attacked her that night and provided HuffPost with her medical records, which show that she suffered minor scrapes and bruising on her face, hand and arm.
After the altercation, Alexander left Gray's house, and Gray called the police.
On Friday Corey's office provided a police report, photographs and a 911 call that counter Alexander's claims.
In the police report, Gray claimed that Alexander came over to drop off their daughter, and that when he rebuffed Alexander's request to spend the night, she "became enraged and began striking him on the face." Gray said he raised his hands, the report continues, and he yelled out to his sons to call the police. The responding officer wrote that Gray's children corroborated that account.
When the police contacted her an hour or so later, according to the report, she said she didn't understand why they were contacting her and that she had an "alibi." The police noted swelling and a cut under Gray's left eye and no visible injuries on Alexander. But on the way to the jail, Alexander said she felt light-headed and became unresponsive.
An officer then "observed that there was a small cut under the suspect's eye that was not there prior to her being placed in my back seat."
Alexander was rearrested that night and has remained in custody ever since.
Alexander Arrest Report Dec. 2010
Alexander, a mother of three, and her family have vowed to keep fighting.
"It's like a nightmare that we can't wake up from," Helen Jenkins, Alexander's mother, told HuffPost shortly after the sentencing. "But we just take it one day at a time. Emotionally we are spent, but every day we start over because we have to fight for Marissa."
Jenkins said the family is currently raising funds to hire another attorney to appeal Alexander's case.
Angela Corey, the state attorney who oversaw the case against Alexander, said that justice was indeed served and that Alexander was angry and reckless, not fearful, on the night of the shooting. Just because no one was harmed in the incident doesn't make the shooting any less a punishable crime, Corey said.
"I feel like when someone fires a loaded gun inside of a home with two children standing in the direction where the bullet was fired, we have to have tough laws that say you don't do that," Corey told HuffPost. "Justice, with the laws of the state of Florida, was served. But I don't believe her supporters will ever believe that."
The Jacksonville courtroom in which Alexander was sentenced was packed with Alexander's family and supporters. At one point, according to news reports, a group of young supporters stood up and sang or chanted, "We who believe in justice will not rest!"
One by one, Alexander's family members addressed the court, including Alexander's mother and father, a sister and a brother who broke down in tears as they talked about their sister and how they believe the system had wronged her.
Alexander's daughter, Havelin, 11, read from a letter she'd written and questioned "how my mom could be beaten but she's the one arrested," according to Lincoln Alexander, the girl's father and Marissa's ex-husband.
"That's the reason why I'm fighting," Lincoln Alexander told Huffpost. "I'm fighting for my kids ... I knew this day was coming and my thoughts were on them. Would they be strong enough?"
If Alexander's future appeals are unsuccessful, and she serves her full 20-year term in prison, her twins will be 31 years old when she is released. Her youngest will be 22.
"Today was another tough day for them," Lincoln Alexander said of his kids. "Once they took Marissa away and we walked out of the court and everything was over, that's when it was toughest."
On Aug. 1, 2010, a fight between Alexander and her husband, Rico Gray, 36, left her cornered in the couple's home. She fled into the garage to escape but was trapped behind a jammed door, she stated in court documents. She said she grabbed the gun she kept in the garage, returned to the house and, when Gray threatened to kill her, fired a single shot to ward him off.
Gray ran out of the house with his two sons and called the police. Alexander was arrested and charged. She unsuccessfully invoked her right to stand her ground in court. Alexander's sentencing comes 435 days after the shooting. It took a jury 12 minutes to find her guilty.
Gray himself admitted in a deposition to abusing "all five of his babies' mamas except one," and to hitting Alexander. Alexander's family and supporters say that Gray's testimony should not be trusted, because he perjured himself by changing his account of events on the night of the shooting between his early depositions and later court hearings -- a claim that was not disputed by Corey, the state attorney.
Alexander’s case has drawn comparisons to the case of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black teenager shot to death in February by a neighborhood watch volunteer who claimed he shot Martin in self-defense. The shooter, George Zimmerman, was initially released after the police said he was within his legal rights to defend himself. He was later arrested and charged with second-degree murder more than 40 days later.
Both the Martin and Alexander cases have stirred controversy around Florida's self-defense and gun laws, but it wasn't until some media pivoted from the Martin case to Alexander's that her name became known outside of Jacksonville.
Her family has set up a website and has appeared on cable news shows and nationally syndicated radio programs to spread the word about the "injustice" that they believe Alexander has suffered.
But in the past week, Angela Corey, the state attorney (who also is prosecuting Zimmerman in the Martin case), has launched a media offensive to combat what she has called "misinformation" being spread by the family about the circumstances of the shooting.
Shortly after the sentencing, Corey echoed comments she made to HuffPost earlier this week, saying that Alexander's own actions on the night of the incident and in the following months have landed her in the position that she is in.
While Alexander's family has portrayed her as a victim at the end of her emotional rope and in fear of her life, Corey says Alexander fired in anger and not in fear. Corey disputes the so-called warning shot into the ceiling with photographs that show bullet holes much lower, going through a kitchen wall and into the living room where Corey said Gray and his boys were.
"The fact that nobody got hurt has to be balanced with the fact that someone could have gotten hurt," Corey said. "The kids being right next to him changed everything."
About four months after Alexander was released on bail, on orders to have no contact with Gray, she got into an altercation with him at his home that gave him a black eye, Corey said. Alexander was arrested and charged with battery, to which she pleaded no contest.
Corey said that Alexander's actions -- engaging with a man of whom she claimed to be deathly afraid, and assaulting him -- "didn't show much of her being remorseful" or "being a peaceful person."
"Everybody is still ignoring that she got out on bond and chose to go back over there and hit him a second time," Corey said. "That was kind of an indication of where putting her on probation, where you might have been able to do that before, was off the table since she disregarded a judges order."
Alexander's family said the second incident took place just days before her newborn would have been dropped off of her insurance, and that she went over to Gray's home to have him sign paperwork that would have kept the baby insured. The family say that he attacked her that night and provided HuffPost with her medical records, which show that she suffered minor scrapes and bruising on her face, hand and arm.
After the altercation, Alexander left Gray's house, and Gray called the police.
On Friday Corey's office provided a police report, photographs and a 911 call that counter Alexander's claims.
In the police report, Gray claimed that Alexander came over to drop off their daughter, and that when he rebuffed Alexander's request to spend the night, she "became enraged and began striking him on the face." Gray said he raised his hands, the report continues, and he yelled out to his sons to call the police. The responding officer wrote that Gray's children corroborated that account.
When the police contacted her an hour or so later, according to the report, she said she didn't understand why they were contacting her and that she had an "alibi." The police noted swelling and a cut under Gray's left eye and no visible injuries on Alexander. But on the way to the jail, Alexander said she felt light-headed and became unresponsive.
An officer then "observed that there was a small cut under the suspect's eye that was not there prior to her being placed in my back seat."
Alexander was rearrested that night and has remained in custody ever since.
Alexander Arrest Report Dec. 2010
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