I'll make this short. Young Cynthia Nixon was beaten and raped by some black youths, incurring injuries that ruined her career as a dancer. Three or four menacing looking black youths are now prowling through a subway car. She sits next to them. They inch up in front of her (one with a screw driver in his pocket), lean over and say, "How about a taste, Baby. Boom. She shoots a couple of them, one of them while he's sitting down.
It's a courageous episode because it resonates with so much of the public. The case prompting it was certainly Bernard Goetz, who a few years earlier had done pretty much the same thing.
But -- BREAKING NEWS! In Florida, which has a "stand-your-ground" law, which doesn't require the threatened person to retreat, a man named Zimmerman following a black kid through an apartment complex (against the advice of the police), a confrontation followed and Zimmerman killed the black kid.
He got off.
In his episode though, Cynthia Nixon is convicted of carrying an unlicensed gun and reckless endangerment for firing a gun in a crowded environment. Her sentence is relatively easy because neither the DA nor the Public Defender know exactly how to juggle the utility of their arguments.
If she'd done it in Florida, like Zimmerman, she'd be at liberty.