Ashley Benefield guilty of manslaughter in Black Swan trial after shooting husband dead
After almost seven hours of deliberation, a Manatee County jury found Ashley Benefield guilty of manslaughter late Tuesday night.
The six-person jury decided at around 10:30 p.m. that the Lakewood Ranch mother and ex-ballerina did not act in self-defense when she shot and killed her husband, Doug Benefield, in September 2020. Ashley Benefield, 32, was convicted of the lesser offense of manslaughter after facing a second-degree murder charge.
The verdict came less than an hour after the jury sent a note announcing they could not reach a unanimous verdict. But when Judge Matt Whyte asked if they wished to return tomorrow and continue deliberations in the morning, the jury decided to stay, returning with a lesser-included offense conviction to send Ashley Benefield to prison.
Ashley Benefield could now face up to 30 years in prison. Manslaughter with a firearm carries a minimum mandatory of 11.5 years in prison. If the jury had convicted her on the second-degree murder charge, she could have faced life in prison.
A sentencing hearing will be held at a later date.
Following the verdict, Judge Matt Whyte remanded Ashley Benefield to the custody of the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office, revoking her $100,000 bond despite defense attorney Neil Taylor’s attempts to keep his client out on bond.
Benefield guilty of manslaughter in Black Swan trial
The conviction comes more than three-and-a-half years after Ashley Benefield was first arrested for the fatal shooting, with the case gaining widespread media attention, inspiring podcasts, sparking interest from true-crime TV shows like CBS’s “48 Hours,” and drawing Court TV coverage.
Ashley Benefield, who had already undergone a Stand Your Ground Hearing in July 2023, conceded alongside her defense attorney that she did shoot her husband but argued self-defense throughout the trial, saying she was a victim of domestic violence and was in fear for her life when Doug Benefield attacked her and she was “forced to shoot him.”
Before deliberations began at 3:45 p.m., Taylor called upon jurors to examine the facts of the case carefully, which he believed supported their self-defense claim.
“For the last several years, I’ve walked hand-in-hand with Ashley,” Taylor said. “I’m now going to surrender her fate to you.”
Taylor cautioned jurors against a manslaughter conviction.
“Manslaughter is a compromise. Ashley’s not looking for a compromise. She’s entitled to more than that. This is either second-degree murder, or it’s not,” Taylor said.
Over six hours later, Ashley Benefield remained largely stoic as the verdict was read, displaying none of the emotions that forced the judge to call a pair of recesses when she took the stand Friday to give her account of what happened on Sept. 27, 2020.
Prosecutors say Benefield tried to ‘manipulate’ court
During closing arguments, Assistant State Attorneys Rebecca Freel and Suzanne O’Donnell alleged that Ashley Benefield used her emotions throughout the trial to “manipulate” the court, pointing to Friday’s testimony.
While on the stand, Ashley Benefield told the court how Doug Benefield hit her and wouldn’t let her leave her mother’s Lakewood Ranch home following an argument over an upcoming move to Maryland, forcing her to pull the trigger as her husband “lunged” at her.
But the prosecution didn’t buy Ashley Benefield’s account of what happened.
“Did you ever see one tear? Did you ever see one drop of liquid?” O’Donnell asked jurors.
Freel noted that Ashley Benefield didn’t appear to need a tissue during her emotional breakdown until Whyte pointed out she could have one.
“That’s manipulation. That’s her efforts to manipulate you and make you believe that she was a victim. She is not the victim. Douglas Benefield was the victim in this case,” Freel told jurors.
Ashley Benefield and her defense attorney argued throughout the trial that she was a victim of domestic abuse, pointing to instances where Doug Benefield allegedly shot a hole in the ceiling to intimidate her, punched their dog and threw their pet cat down the stairs. The defense called domestic violence expert Bruce Ferris to the stand Monday, who said that many of the patterns exhibited in the relationship were consistent with domestic abuse.
The prosecution attacked Ferris’ credibility during closing arguments.
“Mr. Ferris has never seen a relationship he wouldn’t say is a domestic violence relationship,” Freel said.
While prosecutors acknowledged some of Doug Benefield’s behaviors may not have been perfect, they consistently attempted to shift the focus away from him, pointing out that many of the allegations happened three years before the shooting.
During this three-year period, O’Donnell said the couple did not live together, yet Ashley Benefield repeatedly made complaints and filed domestic violence injunctions against her husband. In the lead-up to the September 2020 shooting, prosecutors say Ashley Benefield was living in her mother’s Lakewood Ranch home, where they argued that Doug Benefield could not control her.
The prosecution painted a different picture from the defense’s self-defense claim, coloring Ashley Benefield as a master manipulator who put on a “ruse” for Doug Benefield, law enforcement and the court system with one goal in mind: obtaining sole custody of their then 2-year-old daughter.
O’Donnell argued that Ashley Benefield used domestic violence allegations as a way of attempting to game the system to achieve this goal. During closing arguments, she pointed to testimony jurors previously heard regarding a conversation between detective Chris Gillum and Ashley Benefield, where Ashley allegedly demanded Gillum arrest Doug Benefield at a custody hearing in front of a judge so she could keep her baby.
“‘I will do whatever I have to do to keep my baby, you (expletive),’” Gillum said Ashley Benefield told him.
Taylor questioned the accuracy of Gillum’s memory two-and-a-half years later and thought it was troubling that Gillum made no mention of these comments in reports he made at the time.
Did custody battle play a role in shooting?
The defense attorney argued throughout the trial that the court permitted the state to present distorted facts, part of what he repeatedly called a “bias against women” by the court system.
“This is, and has been, a fundamentally flawed prosecution,” Taylor said.
This “flawed prosecution,” Taylor said, was in part exhibited by the difference in how the state opened the trial versus how they closed it.
Much of the state’s opening arguments were focused on Sept. 30, 2020, a date prosecutors said the results of a psychological evaluation undergone by Ashley and Doug Benefield were set to be released.
Part of Ashley Benefield’s motivations for killing her husband, the prosecutors argued, was to prevent the release of the test results, where they said she acted interested in reconciling with Doug in a move to Maryland during joint therapy sessions, while secretly expressing to the therapist during solo sessions that she had no interest in reconciling.
‘Domestic violence is a real problem’
But Taylor presented evidence of email correspondence between the couple’s family attorneys and a judge’s judicial assistant that he said showed the Sept. 30 hearing was for a domestic violence injunction and not the release of the psychological report.
After this evidence was presented, the prosecution’s closing remarks focused less on the report and more on the injunction and Ashley Benefield’s motivation to kill her husband to “gain sole custody” of their child.
“I’ve never seen it before. Right in front of your eyes, the state changes their theory,” Taylor said.
Prosecutors made it clear, however, that they had just as many problems with the defense’s self-defense claims, saying that this was never about domestic violence.
“Domestic violence is absolutely a real problem,” O’Donnell said. “There are many, many women that are in horrendous situations. Women, and sometimes men, that are in situations where they’re being abused and beaten on a regular basis. People who feel like they cannot get out, no way to get out. This is not this defendant, and it never was.”
Doug’s daughter, Eva Benefield, echoed those sentiments outside the courthouse after the jury came to a verdict.
“I apologize to all the women who have gone through domestic violence situations. I think what Ashley was doing was unfair to them. They deserve justice and I’m very happy that my dad got the justice he deserves,” Eva Benefield said.
Ashley Benefield’s defense attorney told the court Tuesday night that he plans to file an appeal.
“I think we certainly have good and sufficient grounds to appeal in good faith,” Taylor said.
This story was originally published July 31, 2024 at 9:35 AM.
