Woman says husband was attacking her before fatal shooting [The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn.]

Dec. 06--A woman charged with murdering her husband in 2009 told jurors Monday that he had anger issues that had grown in the days preceding the shooting until "this was a person I did not recognize."

Pamela Taylor said her husband, Michael, was using steroids and other drugs, had threatened her with screwdrivers, choked her and, on the day of the killing, told her he was going to kill her.

"He was in a rage and he said 'Are you ready to die today?' " she said of the man she began dating in high school and married some 20 years later. "I didn't mean to shoot him. I just wanted him to stop. He was pulling me by my hair toward the bathroom.

"I always loved him. We just could not get along."

Pamela Taylor, 39, testified for more than three hours on the seventh day of her first-degree murder trial in Criminal Court.

Michael Taylor, 39, was shot once in the heart and once behind the right ear on the morning of Dec. 23, 2009, at the the couple's apartment at the Madison Humphreys Center near Interstate 40 and Walnut Grove Road.

His wife used a snub-nosed .38-caliber revolver and hollow-point bullets she fired through the sleeve of a sweatshirt she was wearing.

She said the gun discharged as she tried to push away, but she remembered few details after that.

"I just pushed," she said, sobbing and extending her arms to demonstrate for the jury. "I just pushed."

She said she had bought the gun the previous day by pawning her engagement ring and other jewelry because another gun she owned was missing and she assumed her husband had taken it.

They dated and had a daughter in the early part of their relationship but married other people, divorced and then married each other in February 2008.

Michael Taylor's mother testified last week that her son was in the process of moving out, seeking a divorce and taking his wife off his insurance.

Under questioning by her attorney, Andre Wharton, Pamela Taylor told jurors that as her husband's anger and violent outbursts got progressively worse, it was she who wanted the divorce.

"This was a person I didn't recognize," said Taylor, a licensed practical nurse. "I took my rings off and laid them on the counter and told him that was it. I told him 'I can't do this anymore.' I told him I just wanted (the divorce) to be civil."

On cross-examination, state prosecutor Missy Branham asked Taylor why she chose to stay at their apartment the night before the shooting when she had a gun, a car and money and could have stayed elsewhere if she feared her husband.

Taylor said she thought he would be staying at his mother's and that she tried to avoid him by hiding and barricading herself in a bedroom until morning.

"Then you shot him in the chest and then you shot him again in the back of the head to make sure, right?" asked Branham, who also suggested that the defendant turned over chairs and a laundry hamper to support her account of self-defense.

"I don't remember any of that," Taylor replied.

The trial before Judge Paula Skahan resumes today.

-- Lawrence Buser: (901) 529-2385

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