Victoria Law talking:
Cherelle Baldwin met the man who became the father of her child, Jeffrey Brown, when she was a 19-year-old, so in 2010. They started a relationship. And unbeknownst to many family members, there was abuse in the relationship, which is not uncommon. When abuse begins in a relationship, people may minimize the abuse, they may not realize that they are being controlled or manipulated. Abuse is not necessarily walking down the street with lots of bumps and bruises. The physical assaults may only happen a couple of times, and that’s enough to intimidate people. But what Cherelle’s family has told me is that they noticed that she began pulling away a little bit more, so she wasn’t as—she wasn’t at their family gatherings as much. She often had to check with Jeffrey before she was able to make decisions. And Cherelle’s mother said that this was not like her.
Fast-forward, they had a baby boy together. And by 2013, the couple had actually split up. And domestic violence advocates will tell you that it’s—that ending the relationship is often the most dangerous time for a domestic violence survivor, because that threatens the abuser’s control, and they are more likely to lash out and try to fatally harm their ex-girlfriend or their ex-partner. And so, in 2013, she—they had split up. He had moved out, but he continued to harass her. He continued to come by and use their son as a reason to stay in contact with her and to intimidate her, to take her money, to take her phone. She finally had an order of protection against him after he showed up at her house and threw her clothes out the window and then smashed her cellphone. The police showed up. They saw what had happened. They arrested him. They gave her an order of protection. And he continued to violate this order of protection. So he was not supposed to threaten her. He was not supposed to intimidate her. He was not supposed to—he definitely was not supposed to assault her.
And on the morning of May 18, 2013, he sent a series of threatening text messages and then showed up at her house, broke into her house, tried to strangle her, tried to hit her with—hit her with his belt. And she tried to escape. She got into her car. He tried to, you know, get into the car after her. And that was when he ended up dead, and she ended up with a broken leg. And so, by the time the police arrived, this had all happened. And witnesses say that they saw him attacking her that morning.
in early 2015, Cherelle Baldwin went to trial on first-degree murder charges. It was a six-week trial. After five days of deliberation, the jury came back and said that there was a hung jury, meaning that they could not all agree. Apparently, 11 jurors wanted to acquit her of charges, and there was one holdout. And after five days of deliberation, they were unable to budge the one holdout. The one holdout was unable to budge the other 11 jurors. So they came back to the court. The judge declared a mistrial. And at that point, the prosecutor’s office could have said, “We’re done. You know, like we’re not retrying the case.” And instead, they said, “We’re going to retry this case.” So Cherelle Baldwin goes back to prison, because in Connecticut women who are detained awaiting trial are sent to the state’s prison, not to a local jail. So she goes back to prison for almost another year, and now she’s on trial again.
bail is set not necessarily as any sort of risk assessment, but it’s often set to supposedly ensure that people come back to court. But in Cherelle Baldwin’s case, she has family, she has a loving family, she has a son, she had a job, she had strong ties to the community. There was no need to set her bail at $1 million. This seems more punitive. And obviously her family has not been able to raise the money, so therefore she is not allowed to be at home helping to prepare for her defense, which is easier when she’s outside; unable to see her son, except on visits twice a month; and unable to be with the rest of her family.
in these kinds of cases where there is a mandatory arrest and police are required to make an arrest, they show up, and it’s up to the officer to determine who to arrest. And oftentimes if the person who is the victim of domestic violence doesn’t fit their perception of who a domestic violence victim looks like—say, she is loud; say, if she is angry; say, if she is large, black, a woman of color; if she has fought back in any way, even if the fighting back is very disproportionate—so, if she is being badly beaten or strangled, and she throws a remote control at her abuser, they might—the abuser might say, “Well, she also did this to me,” and that could be a dual arrest. So, for many women, particularly women who don’t fit this preconceived notion of what a victim looks like, calling the police may very well end up with them behind bars, as well.
In Cherelle’s case, when the police showed up, they did not threaten to arrest Cherelle. But across the country, we see many women and domestic violence victims talk about how oftentimes they’re not taken seriously or they’re perceived also as being equally aggressive.
Marissa Alexander was a Florida mother of three. She had just given birth to a baby nine days earlier. And she was estranged from her husband, but because they had a baby together, they were actually—he was actually at her house. And she went to the bathroom, and he looked at her phone, which is something that abusers do. They want control, so they’re looking at your phone, they’re monitoring your emails, they’re isolating you from your family. He looked at her phone and noticed that she had sent some of the baby photos to her ex-husband. And he—when she came out of the bathroom, he attacked her. He shoved her against the wall. He tried to strangle her.
She escaped and fled into the garage, and she had meant to get in her car and drive away. She got to the garage, realized she had forgotten her keys and her cellphone inside the house in her hurry to get away from him. So she had no choice but to re-enter the house. And she was in Florida. She had a registered and licensed gun. And what she said is that she fired the gun at the ceiling as a warning shot to say, “Don’t come any closer.” And he did not come any closer. He left the house, and he immediately called the police and said, “My estranged wife tried to shoot me.” And she was arrested and tried.
here is a woman firing shots in the air to protect herself from what she believed is an abusive spouse, and she winds up getting 20 years, while George Zimmerman, is released scot-free after pursuing someone [Trayvon Martin] based on racial stereotypes and assumptions of criminality.
what happened was Marissa Alexander tried to plead Stand Your Ground, which, as we all know, George Zimmerman was successful in doing, and the judge ruled that she could not argue Stand Your Ground because he said that she could have retreated from her own house. So we see the ways in which the law is not equally applied to people in the state of Florida, or perhaps anywhere. And she ultimately was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison. An appeals court overturned her conviction, and, as in the case of Cherelle Baldwin, the prosecutor could have decided not to retry her. But instead, the prosecutor, who is the same prosecutor who tried George Zimmerman, vowed to retry her and seek a 60-year sentence, if she was convicted.
Cynthia Long talking:
the baby is in split custody with me and the other grandmother. We’re sharing custody. So he spends five days with her and five days with me. He—lovely little child. Right now, the whole advocate people are—they’ve just been so wonderful. Holly, out of Chicago, has been excellent. There’s been a lot of support from all the domestic violence advocates around the country, even in the United Kingdom. I had some people from Australia who Facebook us, and they’re showing all their support and love for Cherelle. I’m just happy that everyone was able to hear Cherelle’s story and hear about it, because we couldn’t get any kind of support in the beginning of this, and now that everyone knows about her story, you know, we’re very grateful for all the support out there. And we want to thank the Stamford advocate, domestic crisis center, for coming to her closing argument on Thursday—Wednesday. But they’ve been so supportive, and I just want to thank everyone.
I take him up there every other Sunday. Not so much during the week, but every other Sunday I take him up there. So he’s pretty—he’s fully aware who his mother is.
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Victoria Law
freelance journalist and author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women. Her recent article for Rewire is called “Facing Years in Prison for Fleeing Abuse: Cherelle Baldwin’s Story is Far from Unique.”
Cynthia Long
the mother of Cherelle Baldwin, a 23-year-old Connecticut mother on trial for killing her alleged abuser. Cherelle faces 25 to 60 years if convicted.
— source democracynow.org
What kind of a country is USA? We also have lot of Obama loving progressives in india. thats the power of the me culture Cornel West talks about. What a shame.