A former ballerina who was convicted of manslaughter in what she claimed was the self-defense killing of her estranged husband was sentenced Tuesday to twenty years in jail.
Circuit Court Judge Mathew Whyte mentioned that whereas he believed Ashley Benefield, 33, had acted underneath duress and proven regret for the deadly taking pictures of Doug Benefield, 58, at her Florida house on Sept. 27, 2020, she didn’t deserve a lowered sentence.
Lawyers for Ashley Benefield, who confronted a most sentence of 30 years, had sought a lesser punishment. Whyte additionally sentenced her to 10 years of probation.
Ashley Benefield remained expressionless when Whyte introduced the penalty.
After Tuesday’s listening to, Doug Benefield’s relations mentioned that whereas they disagreed with the decide’s discovering that Ashley Benefield had proven regret, they believed her punishment was honest.
“I’ve waited so lengthy to talk to her, nose to nose,” mentioned Doug Benefield’s daughter, Eva Benefield, who learn a sufferer impression assertion through the listening to. “I hope jail serves her effectively.”
Prosecutors in Florida’s twelfth Judicial District, south of Tampa, had charged her with second-degree homicide. A jury acquitted her after a six-day trial this summer time however discovered her responsible of the lesser crime of first-degree manslaughter.
In trial testimony, she described her husband as controlling and unstable, with a historical past of abusive conduct. She testified that she fatally shot him after an argument at her house escalated right into a bodily altercation that she mentioned made her concern for her life.
A prosecutor known as the abuse allegations “fictitious” and mentioned the bodily proof within the taking pictures didn’t match Benefield’s account of the altercation.
The prosecutor, Suzanne O’Donnell, alleged that Benefield shot her husband throughout a contentious battle that she sought to win “in any respect prices.”
She had beforehand sought injunctions that might have barred him from seeing their younger little one.
She filed one in 2018 after he appeared to have violated a no-contact order that they had obtained towards one another, she testified, however a decide denied the injunction, saying she didn’t discover the claims credible.
Benefield sought a second injunction in 2020 that accused her husband of kid abuse. He was not charged with any crimes in reference to the allegations, and the proceedings have been ongoing on the time of his demise.
Benefield’s legal professionals had sought a brand new trial alleging juror misconduct. According to the submitting, one juror didn’t disclose that she had been in a custody dispute with an ex-husband who had accused her of abusive conduct — details that the submitting mentioned mirrored the prosecution’s concept about Benefield and would have raised issues in regards to the juror’s means to serve impartially.
The submitting suggests one other juror could have had a cellphone within the jury room and shared particulars of the deliberations with an individual who claimed a sibling snuck in a telephone and was relaying real-time details about the case to him.
The individual then posted that info on a information web site underneath the deal with “That Hoodie Guy,” in accordance with the submitting.
In an order posted Tuesday, Judge Whyte denied the protection’s request, saying that he interviewed every of the jurors and located that none admitted having a telephone throughout deliberations, nor did any recall seeing a tool getting used throughout deliberations.
And Whyte blamed the protection crew for not asking follow-up questions throughout jury choice. During that part of the trial, he wrote, the doubtless neutral juror responded affirmatively to a query about home abuse, however Ashley Benefield’s protection legal professionals didn’t ask observe up on the matter.