Winkler goes free
August 14th, 2007Mary Winkler, who shot and killed her husband while he slept, is a free woman.
She was sentenced in June to three years in prison. But the judge required her to serve only 19 percent of that - 210 days.
With 143 days of credit for time served, her sentenced boiled down to 67 days in jail. The judge gave her the option of serving 60 days of that in a mental health facility.
Her attorneys’ efforts to find a facility for her delayed her leaving jail. So, she served 12 days in jail and will have spent 55 days in the mental health facility.
What an outrageous injustice.
Tim,
Is there anything that Matthew Winkler could have done to Mary or the kids to deserve what he received?
Josh,
Short answer: Yes.
Did any of the allegations against him reach that level? No.
Were any of the allegations against him based on anything more than Mary’s testimony? Was there an overwhelming amount of evidence that Matthew did what Mary accused him of doing?
No way.
If the roles were reversed, what is the probability that we would have the same outcome?
A snowball’s chance …
in Gehenna
Tim,
Do we fully know what Matthew did to Mary and the kids for 10 + years?
On a different note, grace and blessings to your family during your time of grief and celebration of life.
Josh,
Thanks very much. To answer your question — no, we don’t know. We know what she alleges, and there’s no reason to think the situation was worse than what she says.
What we do know is that she shot her husband in the back while he was in bed, and that she served precious little jail time for doing so.
I think this verdict is appalling. But I also think it is interesting that the argument that Farese made carried so much weight with the jury. Apparently, spousal abuse is a much bigger problem than we may be willing to admit. The jurors most likely had either a direct experience with abuse or knew someone close to them who had. We may not feel that the abuse was sufficient enough to justify murder, but apparently the jury did. I find that very interesting.
If you suffer from any kind of abuse, you don’t go to the gun rack and grab a piece and kill your husband. You go to the authorities, to your church leaders, to your family.
I found this line particularly amusing:
“A forensic psychologist testified Winkler had suffered from the latter (PTSD) since the death of her younger sister while she was growing up in Knoxville.”
That’s an insult to people who truly suffer from that. I won’t go into the details of my story, but suffice to say with this precedent I could go postal and be back in time for the Super Bowl.
It’s ridiculous.
Zoner - I thought the same thing when I saw that testimony, too.