A former ballerina charged in the fatal shooting of her husband was convicted of manslaughter late Tuesday in Florida, 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 in the killing of Doug Benefield on Sept. 27, 2020.
After the verdict was announced, the judge revoked Benefield’s $100,000 bond and remanded her to the custody of the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office. A date has not 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 at her home south of Tampa.
Prosecutors challenged her account, saying evidence from the day of the killing did not match her description of the confrontation and accusing her of using “unfounded” allegations of domestic abuse 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.”
Benefield’s lawyer, Neil Taylor, said his client had repeatedly sought — but did not receive — help over what he described as her husband’s abusive behavior, which culminated in an argument over a forthcoming move out of state that Ashley Benefield said turned physical, then lethal.
In emotional testimony last week, she testified that Doug Benefield 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 did 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 the 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 struck in the face, and she described her testimony about the event as “evasive.”
O’Donnell also said the fatal bullet that struck the victim traveled side to side through his 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 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, the Benefields obtained a court order in South Carolina — where they had lived together — that barred 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 Ashley Benefield described at trial, would have barred her estranged husband from seeing their child. The injunction was denied when a judge said she did not find her claims 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 weren’t trying to convince the jury “that Doug Benefield was an angel.” But the killing accomplished something that O’Donnell said Ashley Benefield had sought: sole custody of their daughter.
“This was a custody battle that this mother was going to win at all costs,” O’Donnell said in her opening statement. “The cost was the life of Doug Benefield, and that is murder.”
