New York court clears woman of murder in battered-wife case

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New York court clears woman of murder in battered-wife case

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New York jury cleared a woman who shot dead her retired police officer husband of murder on Thursday in a case that had been seen as a test of the battered-woman defense.

Barbara Sheehan, 50, was acquitted of second-degree murder after three days of deliberations by the jury in state Supreme Court in Queens but was found guilty of a lesser charge of gun possession.

Sheehan's lawyers successfully argued that she fired only after her husband threatened to kill her, and Sheehan and her grown children had testified about the violent household ruled by Raymond Sheehan, 49, a former New York City Police sergeant.

Both the prosecution and defense said the beatings and bruises came to an end on February 18, 2008, when Sheehan shot her husband 11 times in their Queens home.




http://news.yahoo.com/york-court-clears-woman-murder-battered-wife-case-225348214.html?bouchon=501,ny

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1. Sometimes people like that just need killin'

I hate to say it, but it's true. Especially when the abuser is a member of law enforcement. My dad was a cop and he really had a hard time with that whole code of silence thing. It eventually got him into trouble and forced him into early retirement. The last straw: he was an officer in a small town in northern lower Michigan working nights. He stopped a poor Native American kid who was walking home after drinking. He gave him a ride home and a warning. He then stopped a rich local lawyer's son for underage DUI and hauled him in. He got into a lot of trouble for "potentially harming" the rich kid's future and for not jailing the Indian kid. That did it for dad. They screwed him out of his pension, too. Bastards.

Diane
Anishinaabe in MI

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2. Suspected domestic abusers go free as Topeka city, county officials bicker over funds

A bitter argument over money in Topeka, Kan., means that city and county authorities have neglected to prosecute or charge people suspected of domestic battery since Sept. 8.

In other words, the local justice system has spent a month effectively sending the message that misdemeanor domestic assault will go unpunished--at least for now.

The dispute started last month, when Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor announced that a 10 percent budget cut to his office in 2012 meant he would no longer be prosecuting any of the city's misdemeanors, effective immediately. Topeka city council members say they can't afford the estimated $800,000 yearly cost of prosecuting those misdemeanors and jailing offenders--and that they want the county to continue carrying out misdemeanor prosecutions as it has for the past 25 years. The county continues to insist that the jurisdiction for these prosecutions should shift to city prosecutors, but the Topeka City Council says that none of the city's five attorneys has any recent experience prosecuting domestic violence cases.

Next week, the council will vote on a measure that will strip domestic ba



http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/suspected-domestic-abusers-free-topeka-city-county-officials-161404729.html