The Rutherford County Shooting

The Defendant had been married to her husband for twenty-five years. For twenty of those years, her husband — an alcoholic — subjected the Defendant to extreme and escalating abuse: beatings with fists, kicks, and objects; cigarette burns; forcing her to eat dog food from a bowl on the floor and sleep on concrete; requiring her to beg on street corners for his drinking money. He threatened repeatedly to kill her and her children. On multiple occasions the Defendant sought help from Police and social services; each time her husband followed her, dragged her away, and the beatings worsened. Two expert psychiatric witnesses testified she suffered severe battered wife syndrome — a state they described as "torture, degradation and reduction to an animal level of existence." On June 12, 1985, after a day of severe beating, the Defendant obtained a pistol. While her husband slept, she shot him three times in the back of the head.