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This essay considers how “the presumption of innocence” in self-defense cases not only functions through whiteness but also normalizes violence against the black and/or brown body. Consequentially, “the presumption of innocence” renders black victimhood and black innocence illegible.

The cases of women of color imprisoned for killing their sexual assailants played a catalytic role in the development of an anticarceral strand of feminist antiviolence politics during the 1970s. Radical women of color and antiracist white women built practical and analytical bridges between the mass defense campaigns for Joan Little, Inez Garcia, Yvonne Wanrow, and Dessie Woods, and those activist coalitions engendered new critiques and organizing efforts focused on the racial and gender violence perpetrated by the state as well as by individuals. In the intervening decades between the National Third World Women and Violence conference and today, the need for a transformative politics has indisputably grown more acute, as the US carceral state and its attendant racial and gender violences have expanded tremendously. The opening plenary at the INCITE conference featured Yvonne Swan (formerly Wanrow) in conversation with Marissa Alexander, CeCe McDonald, and Renata Hill, three black women imprisoned in recent years for defending themselves from violent attacks by intimate partners or strangers.

\"I am so pleased to hear that Florida's First District Court of Appeals ordered a new trial for [Marissa Alexander],\" said Florida congresswoman Corrine Brown, whose district includes Jacksonville. \"It has been clear to me since the day she was sentenced that a 20-year mandatory jail term was terribly excessive, and I am thrilled that she will be given another attempt to defend herself.\" A statement from the Florida state attorney's office said, \"The defendant's conviction was reversed on a legal technicality. The First District Court of Appeal found that Florida's Supreme Court's jury instructions were wrong. We are gratified that the Court affirmed the defendant's Stand Your Ground ruling. This means the defendant will not have another Stand Your Ground hearing. The case will be back in Circuit Court in the Fourth Judicial Circuit at the appropriate time.\"

[Marissa Alexander] supporters, including the NAACP, have contrasted Alexander's case with the trial of George Zimmerman, who was acquitted in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman argued that he feared for his life and shot Martin in self defense. Both cases drew attention to Florida's \"stand your ground\" law, which allows individuals to use deadly force when they feel they are in danger. The appeals court stated that the judge was right to block Alexander from using the state's \"stand your ground\" law as a way to defend her actions, WTLV/WJXX reported.