Woman says husband was attacking her before fatal shooting [The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn.]
By Lawrence Buser, The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn. | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
"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."
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
Under questioning by her attorney,
"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
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
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