A Former ballerina accused of killing her husband was convicted of manslaughter Tuesday night in Florida, hours after a jury began considering her claim that the shooting four years ago was in self-defense.
Ashley Benefield, 33, was charged with second-degree murder, but the panel convicted her of the lesser offense in the Sept. 27, 2020, slaying of Doug Benefield.
After the verdict was announced, the judge revoked Benefield’s $100,000 bond and returned her to the custody of the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office. No date has been set for her sentencing.
Benefield testified last week that she feared for her life when she fatally shot her husband during what she described as a terrifying confrontation with him in their south Tampa home.
Prosecutors disputed her account, saying evidence from the day of the murder did not match her description of the confrontation and accusing her of using “unsubstantiated” allegations of domestic violence to gain sole custody of her son.
“She didn’t need to shoot him,” said Suzanne O’Donnell, assistant state attorney for Florida’s 12th Judicial District, in her closing argument Tuesday. “She had an agenda. She got what she wanted.
Benefield’s attorney, Neil Taylor, said his client repeatedly sought — but did not receive — help over what he described as her husband’s abusive behavior, which culminated in an argument about an imminent move out of state that Ashley said Benefield, turned physical and then lethal. .
In emotional testimony last week, she testified that Doug Benefield blocked her from leaving the house, hit her in the face and attacked her while she had the gun drawn and begged him to stop.
In her closing argument Tuesday, Taylor said her client did what any law-abiding citizen would be expected to do with an abusive partner: She filed “complaint after complaint after complaint, drawing the attention of authorities to Doug’s behavior. Benefield, no results.” again without relief.”
No one else was home when she fatally shot her husband, nor was there video of the confrontation. But O’Donnell said there was no evidence that Benefield had been hit in the face and described Benefield’s testimony about the event as “evasive.”
O’Donnell also said that the fatal bullet that struck the victim traveled from side to side through her body, appearing to contradict Benefield’s testimony that he was advancing on her when she pulled the trigger.
She testified that her husband was controlling and volatile. She alleged that he fired a bullet into the ceiling of her home during an argument in which he threatened suicide, that he threw a loaded gun at her, and that he punched the dog in the face so hard that it left the animal unconscious.
In 2017, the Benefields obtained a court order in South Carolina — where they lived together — that prohibited them from contacting each other, O’Donnell said.
After Doug Benefield appeared to have violated the order, Taylor said, his wife sought a domestic violence injunction in Florida, where she had moved.
The injunction, which cited the allegations described by Ashley Benefield at trial, would have prevented her ex-husband from seeing their son. The injunction was denied when a judge said she did not find his allegations credible. Taylor presented text messages between the estranged couple at trial that he said corroborated his client’s account.
O’Donnell said Tuesday that prosecutors were not trying to convince the jury “that Doug Benefield was an angel.” But the murder achieved something O’Donnell said Ashley Benefield sought: sole custody of her daughter.
“This was a custody battle this mother was going to win at all costs,” O’Donnell said in her opening statement. “The cost was Doug Benefield’s life, and that is murder.”
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
