A Jacksonville has been ssentenced to 20 years in prison in a controversial self-defense case that has once again shoved Florida's Stand Your Ground statute into the public spotlight.

Marisa Alexander was sentenced to 20 years this morning in Duval County Court .  She was convicted on three counts of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon for an August 2010 incident in which she fired a gun into the ceiling of her home in front of her husband and his two children after she alleges he was beating her severely.

"And he was in her face, threatening to kill her.  And the words he used?  He said 'B----, I'll kill you,'" says Helen Jenkins, Alexander's mother.

Alexander and her attorney argue that she fired the shot in self-defense, as a warning shot.  Prosecutors say Alexander fired the shot in anger.  She filed a motion last week to have her trial dismissed based on the Stand Your Ground defense, but Judge Daniel James denied the motion, stating that in order for that to work, Alexander would have to prove she was in reasonable fear of bodily harm or death.  Judge James ruled that because Alexander went back to her now ex-husband's house four months after the original incident allegedly to break it off with her husband and ended up punching him while she was there, that she was not in reasonable fear for her life.

Alexander's attorney, Kevin Cobbin, says they plan to appeal her conviction.