The previous ballerina convicted of killing her well-heeled husband — in a sensational case that got here to be often called the “Black Swan homicide” — has been sentenced to twenty years in jail.
Ashley Benefield, 33, remained stony-faced as her destiny was learn aloud in a Florida courtroom Monday, 5 months after she was convicted of manslaughter within the 2020 deadly taking pictures of her 58-year-old husband Doug Benefield.
“I’ve waited so lengthy to talk to her, head to head,” Doug’s daughter Eva mentioned throughout her victim-impact assertion. “I hope jail serves her nicely.”
Benefield confronted as much as 30 years behind bars for the killing her attorneys argued was carried out in self-defense.
Whereas Decide Mathew Whyte conceded she could have acted underneath duress, he mentioned he couldn’t cut back her sentence, NBC Information reported.
Prosecutors argued the taking pictures had been a part of an elaborate ploy by Benefield to achieve custody of the couple’s little one. Proof from the crime scene indicated her husband had been turned away when she shot him twice throughout a combat at her mom’s dwelling, in response to courtroom testimony.
Jurors acquitted the younger mother of second-degree homicide in July, agreeing she pulled the set off in self-defense after her attorneys argued Doug had been an abusive husband who was terrorizing her bodily and emotionally.
The couple had been embroiled in a bitter custody battle over their child, who Benefield had allegedly refrained from her husband for six months after giving start — with Doug solely being given visitation after with a courtroom order.
Throughout her being pregnant, Benefield started complaining to regulation enforcement that Doug was abusing her — even claiming that he as soon as fired a gun into their ceiling to maintain her from talking, had punched her canine unconscious, and at all times stored a loaded firearm “pulled again and able to hearth,” in response to the protection.
Regardless of their 30-year age distinction — they have been 24 and 54 years previous once they started courting — the couple was married simply 13 days after they met in 2016.
Doug labored within the protection and personal fairness sectors, and Benefield was a skilled ballerina. Collectively, they went on to start out a ballet firm to satisfy Benefield’s lifelong dream.
However the enterprise enterprise shortly fell aside, and Benefield turned pregnant quickly after.
That was when her protection argued their relationship started to fracture and Doug allegedly turned abusive, prompting Benefield to maneuver from their South Carolina dwelling to her mom’s in Florida, and later to put down plans for resettling in Maryland.
On the night time of the taking pictures, Doug had proven up at her mom’s dwelling to confront her, when she claimed he turned violent and started to slap and shove her.
After fleeing to her bed room and pulling out a gun, she claimed Doug adopted her in and she or he was compelled to open hearth after he ignored her pleas to “cease.”
“I assumed he was going to kill me,” she testified throughout the trial.
Doug was by no means charged for any crimes, in response to the Guardian, and investigators mentioned Benefield didn’t present any indicators of bodily abuse after the taking pictures.
Prosecutors argued that her claims of abuse and courtroom allegations amounted to little greater than a efficiency — and that it was all part of a play to win custody of their little one.
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