A former ballerina who was convicted of manslaughter in what she claimed was the self-defense killing of her estranged husband was sentenced Tuesday to 20 years in prison.
Ashley Benefield, 33, had faced a maximum sentence of 30 years in the fatal shooting of Doug Benefield, 58, at her Florida home on Sept. 27, 2020.
Benefield was also sentenced to 10 years of probation after her prison sentence, NBC affiliate WFLA in Tampa reported.
Prosecutors in Florida’s 12th Judicial District, south of Tampa, had charged her with second-degree murder. A jury acquitted her after a six-day trial this summer but found her guilty of the lesser crime of first-degree manslaughter.
In trial testimony, she described her husband as controlling and volatile, with a history of abusive behavior. She testified that she fatally shot him after an argument at her home escalated into a physical altercation that she said made her fear for her life.
A prosecutor called the abuse allegations “fictitious” and said the physical evidence in the shooting didn’t match Benefield’s account of the altercation.
The prosecutor, Suzanne O’Donnell, alleged that Benefield shot her husband during a contentious battle that she sought to win “at all costs.”
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She had previously sought injunctions that would have barred him from seeing their young child.
She filed one in 2018 after he appeared to have violated a no-contact order they had obtained against each other, she testified, but a judge denied the injunction, saying she didn’t find the claims credible.
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Benefield sought a second injunction in 2020 that accused her husband of child abuse. He was not charged with any crimes in connection with the allegations, and the proceedings were ongoing at the time of his death.
Benefield’s lawyers requested a new trial alleging juror and other misconduct. According to the filing, one juror failed to disclose that she had been in a custody dispute with an ex-husband who had accused her of abusive behavior — facts that the filing said mirrored the prosecution's theory about Benefield and would have raised concerns about the juror's ability to serve impartially.
The filing suggests another juror may have had a cellphone in the jury room and shared details of the deliberations with a person who claimed a sibling snuck in a phone and was relaying real-time information about the case to him.
The person then posted that information on a news site under the handle "That Hoodie Guy," according to the filing.
In a separate filing, prosecutors countered that even if someone was providing real-time updates, there was no evidence the jury's fact-finding process had been compromised.
And a review of the transcript showed that the juror involved in the custody dispute had not withheld any information, prosecutors said in the filing.
"Had defense counsel exercised due diligence and followed up on the questions asked, he may have received the answers he sought," the filing states.
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