A former ballerina charged in the fatal shooting of her husband was convicted of manslaughter late Tuesday, hours after a jury began considering her claim that the shooting four years ago was in self-defense.
Ashley Benefield, 33, had been charged with second-degree murder, but the panel convicted her of the lesser crime for the Sept. 27, 2020, killing of Doug Benefield.
Benefield testified in a Florida courtroom last week that she feared for her life when she fatally shot Doug during what she described as a terrifying confrontation with him at her home south of Tampa.
Prosecutors challenged her account, saying that evidence from the day of the killing did not match Ashley’s description of the confrontation and accusing her of using “unfounded” allegations of domestic abuse in an effort to obtain sole custody of their child.
“She did not have to shoot him,” Suzanne O’Donnell, assistant state attorney for Florida’s 12th Judicial District, said in her closing argument Tuesday. “She had an agenda. She got what she wanted.”
Ashley’s lawyer, Neil Taylor, said his client had repeatedly sought — but did not receive — help over what he described as Doug’s abusive behavior, which culminated in an argument over a forthcoming move out of state that Ashley said turned physical, then lethal.
In emotional testimony last week, Ashley testified that Doug blocked her from leaving her home, struck her in the face and lunged at her while she had her gun drawn and was pleading with him to stop.
In his closing argument Tuesday, Taylor said his client had done what any law-abiding citizen can be expected to do with an abusive partner: She filed “complaint after complaint after complaint calling Doug Benefield’s behavior to the attention of authorities with no results. Over and over again with no relief.”
No one else was in Ashley’s home when she fatally shot Doug, nor was there video of the confrontation. But O’Donnell said there was no evidence that Ashley had been struck in the face, and the prosecutor described her testimony about the event as “evasive.”
O’Donnell also said that the fatal bullet that struck Doug Benefield traveled side to side through his body, appearing to contradict Ashley’s testimony that he was advancing on her when she pulled the trigger.
Ashley testified that Doug was controlling and volatile. She alleged that he fired a bullet into the ceiling of their home during an argument in which he threatened suicide, that he threw a loaded gun at her and that he punched their dog in the face so hard it knocked the animal unconscious.
In 2017, Ashley and Doug obtained a court order in South Carolina — where they had lived together — that barred them from contacting each other, O’Donnell said.
After Doug appeared to have violated the order, Taylor said, Ashley sought a domestic violence injunction in Florida, where Ashley had moved.
The injunction, which cited the allegations that Ashely described at trial, would have barred her estranged husband from seeing their child. The injunction was denied after a judge said she did not find Ashley’s claims credible. Taylor presented text messages between the estranged couple at trial that he said corroborated Ashley’s account.
Taylor presented text messages between the estranged couple at trial that he said corroborated Ashley’s account.
O’Donnell said Tuesday that prosecutors weren’t trying to convince the jury “that Doug Benefield was an angel.” But the killing accomplished something that O’Donnell said Ashley had sought: sole custody of their daughter.
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