A former dancer has been found guilty of killing her ex-husband, in a case dubbed the “Black Swan” trial.
Ashley Benefield was convicted of manslaughter in a Florida court on Tuesday for the September 2020 shooting death of Doug Benefield, Sky’s US partner NBC News reported.
The 33-year-old woman had been charged with second-degree murder, but the jury found her guilty of the lesser charge.
The media nickname given to the case comes from the 2010 film Black Swan about a psychologically disturbed ballet dancer, starring Natalie Portman.
Benefield told the court last week that she feared for her life and acted in self-defense when she shot and killed her husband during what she described as a terrifying confrontation with him at their south Tampa home.
But prosecutors said evidence from the day of the murder did not match their description of the confrontation.
“She didn’t have to shoot him,” prosecutors argued, accusing Benefield of using “baseless” allegations of domestic abuse against her husband to gain sole custody of their son.
“She had an agenda. She got what she wanted,” Suzanne O’Donnell, assistant state attorney for Florida’s 12th Judicial District, told the jury.
Benefield’s attorney, Neil Taylor, responded that she filed “complaint after complaint after complaint bringing Doug Benefield’s behavior to the attention of authorities to no avail.”
Benefield told the court that her husband stopped her from leaving their house, punched her in the face and lunged at her while she had the gun in her hand and pleaded with him to stop.
The couple was alone when they were shot and there was no video of the confrontation.
But O’Donnell said there was no evidence Benefield had been hit in the face and described his evidence as “evasive”.
The prosecutor said the fatal bullet traveled sideways through Benefield’s body, calling into question Ashley Benefield’s testimony that he was moving toward her when she pulled the trigger.
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Benefield described her husband as “controlling and volatile” and alleged that he fired a bullet into the ceiling of their home during an argument in which he threatened suicide, threw a loaded gun at her, and hit their dog in the face so hard that it knocked it down. to the animal. unconscious.
O’Donnell said prosecutors were not trying to convince the jury “that Doug Benefield was an angel,” but the murder achieved something she said Ashley Benefield had sought: sole custody of her daughter.
The judge revoked Benefield’s $100,000 (£78,000) and remanded her in custody.
A date for his sentencing has not yet been set.
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