A former ballerina convicted of manslaughter in what she claimed was the self-defense killing of her estranged husband was sentenced Tuesday to 20 years in prison.
Ashley Benefield, 33, received a maximum sentence of 30 years for the fatal shooting of 58-year-old Doug Benefield at her Florida home on September 27, 2020.
Benefield was also sentenced to 10 years of probation following her prison sentence, NBC affiliate WFLA in Tampa reported.
Prosecutors in Florida’s 12th Judicial District, south of Tampa, had charged her with manslaughter. A jury acquitted her this summer after a six-day trial, but found her guilty of the lesser crime of first-degree manslaughter.
In trial testimony, she described her husband as controlling and capricious, with a history of abuse. She testified that she fatally shot him after an argument at her home escalated into a physical altercation that left her fearing for her life.
A prosecutor called the abuse allegations “fictitious” and said physical evidence from the shooting did not match Benefield’s account of the altercation.
The accuser, Suzanne O’Donnell, alleged that Benefield shot her husband during a controversial fight that she tried to win “at all costs.”
She had previously sought court orders that would have barred him from seeing their young child.
She filed one in 2018 after he appeared to violate a restraining order they obtained against each other, she testified, but a judge denied the order, saying she didn’t find the claims credible.
Benefield requested a second court order in 2020 accusing her husband of child abuse. He was not charged with any crimes in connection with the allegations, and the proceedings were still ongoing at the time of his death.
Benefield’s attorneys asked for a new trial due to alleged juror misconduct and other misconduct. According to the filing, one juror failed to disclose that she was involved in a custody dispute with an ex-husband who had accused her of abuse — facts that the filing said reflected the prosecutor’s theory about Benefield and would have raised concerns about the opinion of the jury member. ability to serve impartially.
The record shows that another juror may have had a cell phone in the jury room and shared details of the deliberations with an individual who claimed a sibling snuck into a phone and gave him real-time information about the case.
The person then posted that information on a news site under the title “That Hoodie Guy,” the filing said.
In a separate filing, prosecutors countered that even if someone provided real-time updates, there was no evidence that the jury’s fact-finding had been compromised.
And an examination of the transcript showed that the juror involved in the custody dispute had not withheld any information, prosecutors said in the filing.
“Had the defense done due diligence and followed the questions asked, he may have gotten the answers he sought,” the filing said.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
