A former Florida ballerina has been sentenced to 20 years in prison following her manslaughter conviction for fatally shooting her estranged husband in 2020.
Manatee County court records show Circuit Judge Matt Whyte imposed the sentence Tuesday on Ashley Benefield, 32, after rejecting her request for a new trial based on allegations of juror misconduct.
Benefield contended that she killed her estranged husband, Doug Benefield, 58, in self-defence during an argument at her house in the Bradenton, Florida, area. Bradenton is about 30 miles (48 kilometres) south of Tampa.
Defendant Ashley Benefield glances back after the jury retired to deliberate during her trial, Monday, July 29, 2024, at the Manatee County Judicial Center in Bradenton, Fla.
Tiffany Tompkins/The Bradenton Herald via AP
The Benefields were co-founders of the American National Ballet and Ashley Benefield is a former dancer.
The case has been dubbed the “Black Swan trial,” referring to the 2010 film Black Swan in which Natalie Portman plays a young ballerina losing her grip on reality.
She had been charged with second-degree murder, but the jurors opted for a lesser manslaughter offence after nearly seven hours of deliberations in July. The maximum sentence for that crime is 30 years behind bars when a firearm is used, while the murder charge carries a potential life prison term.
Before the sentencing, Whyte rejected defence motions for a new trial based on claims a juror failed to disclose a personal history involving domestic violence and that one juror improperly brought a cellphone into the jury room during deliberations, which the judge found had no merit.
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Ashley Benefield’s lawyer has said she will appeal the conviction and sentence.
The Benefield’s marriage
Ashley and Doug married in 2016 when she was a 24-year-old ballet dancer and Doug was a 54-year-old consultant and Navy veteran. The pair met a Republican fundraiser and got married just 13 days after.
Doug, 30 years Ashley’s senior, was a recent widower. His first wife had died just nine months prior, according to CBS’s 48 Hours.
A year after getting married, Ashley became pregnant and soon after that, she left her husband. She allegedly fled the marriage after an incident in which Doug fired a gun into the ceiling of their home during an argument. Ashley then started accusing Doug of poisoning her and his first wife.
When their daughter was born in March 2018, Ashley didn’t inform Doug or put his name on the birth certificate. Doug met his daughter six months later after a judge intervened, 48 Hours reported. The couple eventually reconciled and, in 2020, Ashely suggested that they move to Maryland together. During this time, Ashley had been living with her mother in Florida while Doug lived in South Carolina.
The shooting
On Sept. 27, 2020, the Benefields were alone at Ashley’s mother’s house, packing a moving van, while Ashley’s mother took their daughter to the park. A neighbour then reported hearing screaming. Ashley went to the neighbour’s house, gun in hand, and told them that she had just shot her husband in self-defence.
Doug was still alive when emergency workers responded but he was unable to talk. He died an hour later in hospital.
During the trial, Ashley testified that she and her husband had been arguing and that he hit her with a moving box and “body-checked” her. She said she was “scared to death” and thought her husband was going to kill her. She grabbed her gun, pointed it at Doug and told him to stop. When he continued to move towards her, she shot him.
Investigators determined that Doug was shot twice, and the fatal bullet struck him and went through his body, hitting his arm first and travelling into his chest. This suggests that Doug was turning away from his wife when he was shot, contradicting Ashley’s testimony.
The trial
Prosecutors argued that Ashley’s testimony was inconsistent and that she had killed her estranged husband in order to get sole custody of their daughter.
“This case is about a woman who very early on in her pregnancy decided she wanted to be a single mother,” Assistant State Attorney Suzanne O’Donnell told the jury, according to The Post and Courier. “She did not want the father of this child to have any visitation.”
Meanwhile, Ashley’s lawyer claimed that the former ballerina was a victim of intimate partner violence and that Doug was an abusive and controlling spouse.
“The evidence is going to show that Douglas Benefield was a very disturbed man,” Neil Taylor told the jury. “Thirty years older than Ashley, he was obsessed with her, and he successfully portrayed himself as everything he was not in an effort to win her hand in marriage. Despite promoting himself as a religious and decent human being, Douglas Benefield was a manipulative, cunning and abusive man who insisted, absolutely insisted, on control.”
Prosecutors argued that Ashley did not qualify as a victim of domestic abuse because she and Doug had lived separately in the period before the shooting, CBS reported. The court also heard of a previous legal battle between the couple in which Ashley sought a domestic violence injunction against her husband in 2017. The injunction was denied by a judge who did not find her claims to be credible.
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— With files from Global News