Winkler Trial

[CC1]

Originally Posted by Just a Shepherd

Just how has she "gotten away with murder?" We have this thing in America called the jury system. Basically, they hear ALL the evidence and decide guilt (what level of) or innocence. Seems to me the system is doing what it is supposed to do. Apparently there are mitigating circumstances.

What we have in America is a society who no longer believes in personal responsibility for our behaviour and actions.

Everybody has an excuse for everything. Modern psychobabble has brought these kinds of verdicts upon us.

A woman in he situation can leave, go to a woman's shelter, file for divorce, go live with relatives, a million different things. What they cannot do is murder their spouse in cold blood.

Verdicts like this will only encourage other women to do the same.

This woman had been taken in by that goofy Nigerian internet scam. She had lost thousands of dollars through that scam and possibly others. She was kiting checks, had opened out of town checking accounts as part of the kiting scam, etc,etc.

Those are not the actions of an innocent helpless woman. She knew she was in big doo doo with her husband over her losing all of that money and rather than face him she killed him.

Did she "snap"? Of course she did to some degree. However she always knew right from wrong. She is not insane.

[ILG]

Originally Posted by CC1

What we have in America is a society who no longer believes in personal responsibility for our behaviour and actions.

Everybody has an excuse for everything. Modern psychobabble has brought these kinds of verdicts upon us.

A woman in he situation can leave, go to a woman's shelter, file for divorce, go live with relatives, a million different things. What they cannot do is murder their spouse in cold blood.

Verdicts like this will only encourage other women to do the same.

This woman had been taken in by that goofy Nigerian internet scam. She had lost thousands of dollars through that scam and possibly others. She was kiting checks, had opened out of town checking accounts as part of the kiting scam, etc,etc.

Those are not the actions of an innocent helpless woman. She knew she was in big doo doo with her husband over her losing all of that money and rather than face him she killed him.

Did she "snap"? Of course she did to some degree. However she always knew right from wrong. She is not insane.

She should have waited until he was pointing a gun at her again, then she could have pulled a pistol, shot him, and got off scott free.

Seriously though, I don't feel good about her shooting him in the back while he slept. She may have been afraid that he was going to stalk her forever if she left....and maybe he would have. But shooting him in the back just doesn't seem right to me. I know that the DV women I work with, many victims, might feel differently. This issue hits close to home with many. The jury listened to the evidence and made the choice. I am not sure I could have let her off on manslaughter with only maybe a year to serve. That is scary to me because in these cases, we often just don't know what really happened. Did her husband force her to watch porn? How did he do that? Did he hold a gun to her head then? She very well may have watched it out of fear. At the same time, I wonder if there weren't other times that she could have stood up and said no or walked out without shooting him in the back in his sleep. At any rate, she was not proclaimed innocent.

[Esther]

Originally Posted by CC1

I can't believe this woman has gotten away with murder. She could possibly be out on parole in just one year after shooting her husband to death in cold blood with a shotgun then leaving him to die on the floor.

She should have been behind bars for life at the very least and the death penalty would have been appropriate.

What do you base your comment on? I know you are in TN where you perhaps have more information than the rest of us.

[CC1]

Originally Posted by Esther

What do you base your comment on? I know you are in TN where you perhaps have more information than the rest of us.

There has been extensive coverage of the trial here and I have either seen the actual footage of or read her supposed defense.

It is the weakest attempt to paint a man as an abuser I have ever seen and is clearly a legal tactic to get her off and it worked.

The oldest daugther testifed that she had never witnessed her father abusing her mother, being mean to her, etc and I think it would have been very hard for him to have hid it from her. She would have at least seen her mother distraught and that did not happen.

This is a case of a mentally weak woman losing a ton of money in internet scams, the bank was closing in on her and it was all about to become public.

She was devious enough to open a second out of town bank account that she used in a kiting scheme to try and keep the first bank and her overdrawn account there under control.

When she realized her house of cards was falling around her and how angry her husband was going to be and what shame that was going to bring on them in the small community she did an irrational thing.

She should have been held accountable for what she did and she ought to be ashamed of herself for smearing her dead husband in an attempt to get off scot free.

That is true evil.

[ILG]

The oldest daugther testifed that she had never witnessed her father abusing her mother, being mean to her, etc and I think it would have been very hard for him to have hid it from her. She would have at least seen her mother distraught and that did not happen.

She may not have seen it or she may not know how to define it. She may not want her mother to suffer any more than she already has.

She should have been held accountable for what she did and she ought to be ashamed of herself for smearing her dead husband in an attempt to get off scot free.

That is true evil.

You seem to have very strong reactions to this type of thing everytime one of these cases comes up.

As I see it these cases are very hard, even for juries to root out the real truth and decide just what really is going on. In listening to some sexual abuse accusations and domestic violence accusations the truth is sometimes very hard to dicipher. When you have a sexual abuse case, for example, it is sometimes his word against hers and vice versa. If he is guilty, we all obviously want him to pay. If she is lying, we want her to pay. But having a 3rd party decide is what is hard. In the Mary Winkler case, the bottom line for me is that whether she was abused or not, she shot him in the back while he slept.

[Esther]

Originally Posted by CC1

There has been extensive coverage of the trial here and I have either seen the actual footage of or read her supposed defense.

It is the weakest attempt to paint a man as an abuser I have ever seen and is clearly a legal tactic to get her off and it worked.

The oldest daugther testifed that she had never witnessed her father abusing her mother, being mean to her, etc and I think it would have been very hard for him to have hid it from her. She would have at least seen her mother distraught and that did not happen.

This is a case of a mentally weak woman losing a ton of money in internet scams, the bank was closing in on her and it was all about to become public.

She was devious enough to open a second out of town bank account that she used in a kiting scheme to try and keep the first bank and her overdrawn account there under control.

When she realized her house of cards was falling around her and how angry her husband was going to be and what shame that was going to bring on them in the small community she did an irrational thing.

She should have been held accountable for what she did and she ought to be ashamed of herself for smearing her dead husband in an attempt to get off scot free.

That is true evil.

How old is the oldest daughter?

[rgcraig]

Originally Posted by Esther

How old is the oldest daughter?

9 and it should be noted that she is living with the paternal grandparents too.

[ILG]

Originally Posted by rgcraig

9 and it should be noted that she is living with the paternal grandparents too.

This is from the link provided by MB:

Her depiction of her marriage contrasts radically with the description by the prosecution, whose witnesses described Matthew Winkler as a good father and husband. The couple's 9-year-old daughter, Patricia, testified she had a good father and she never saw him mistreat her mother.

[Esther]

Originally Posted by rgcraig

9 and it should be noted that she is living with the paternal grandparents too.

That is very note worthy to know. She is too young to know what may have really been going on in my opinion and if she was living with his parents they could have influenced her for sure.

[TopDog]

Originally Posted by CC1

I can't believe this woman has gotten away with murder. She could possibly be out on parole in just one year after shooting her husband to death in cold blood with a shotgun then leaving him to die on the floor.

She should have been behind bars for life at the very least and the death penalty would have been appropriate.

I tend to agree CC1. I think that in general crimes committed by woman are minimized by the justice system - including the jury in this case.

Just flip the table on this and consider if he had shot her - it would likely be a very different outcome. I think this is part of a growing trend of acceptable gender based discrimination (a form of racism?).....

Well - I expect this should generate some pretty "good" reactions.....