Stand Your Ground, Unless You’re a Battered Woman

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/04/07/stand-your-ground-unless-youre-battered-woman

Cherelle Baldwin met Jeffrey Brown in Connecticut in 2010, when she was 19 years old. Before long they had a baby boy together. Brown became abusive, and by 2013 the couple had split up. After that, according to court documents, Brown repeatedly threatened her, took her credit cards and money, and assaulted her during visits to see their son. She eventually got a court order barring threats, harassment and assaults during visits, but Brown continued sending threatening texts. On May 18, 2013, he sent over a dozen threats via text, two of which read “DOA on sight” (sic), indicating she would be Dead On Arrival. His car was parked down the street.

Cherelle was awakened to find Brown in her room. He beat her, and strangled and whipped her with a belt. She fled the house in her nightgown, without her shoes or her glasses. She raced into her car. “She crashed her car into a cement wall,” her defense attorney, Miles Gerety, told us on the “Democracy Now!” news hour. “She wakes up next to the car, not really knowing what had happened, because she had retrograde amnesia.” What happened next is unclear. Baldwin suffered a broken leg in the crash. Police found Jeffrey Brown pinned between the car and the wall, dead. According to Gerety, he still had the belt that he had used to beat Baldwin wrapped around his hand.

Despite her injuries, despite the order of protection, despite the slew of threatening text messages from Brown against her, Cherelle Baldwin was charged with first-degree murder and remanded to Connecticut’s maximum-security prison, with bail set at $1 million. After a six-week trial, 11 of the 12 jurors voted to acquit. One juror held out, so the judge declared a mistrial. The prosecutor sought a second trial, insisting on maintaining the impossibly high bail. Baldwin remained behind bars.