Battered Wife Defense Fails in Staten Island Case
Sometimes the Mary Winkler approach works and sometimes it doesn't. In this case, it didn't (The New York Times, 5/21/09). Janet Redmond-Mercereau shot her firefighter husband three times in the head while he slept, killing him. She's been convicted of second-degree murder and faces 25 years to life imprisonment for the crime.
Redmond-Mercereau at first told police her husband had committed suicide (three shots to the head?), but they figured that one out. Her defense at trial was that he had been physically and emotionally abusive towards her. Apparently the jury didn't buy that claim. Apparently too, she committed the crime while their children were in the house.
The prosecutor called the murder cold and calculated. The defense attorney called the trial a "witch hunt." I suspect both are correct.
Whatever the individual facts of the case were, the Mary Winkler defense didn't work - this time. My guess is that it failed at least in part because the killer stood to gain financially from her husband's death. She would have gotten his pension and title to their house. In future cases, prosecutors would do well to explore the financial benefits to the wife of her husband's death. Something trumped the "battered wife" defense in this case and I'd wager that was it.
And then there's the usual question, "Was this recorded as a domestic violence incident?"
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