Posted on 12/09/2015 1:10:03 PM PST by CedarDave
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - He wouldn't stop hitting her.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. He jabbed her forehead with his meaty hand, she said, his fingers like sledgehammers, her head snapping back and forth so violently she thought she would pass out.
Or worse. "It hurt," Marlina James said. "It just hurt so bad. I just wanted it to stop. I kept asking him to stop. 'Please stop,' I kept saying. 'Leave me alone,' I said. Honest to God, I couldn't take it anymore. He just kept hitting me and hitting me."
James, 36, tells her story in the office of her lawyer, Nicole Moss. Her head is buried in her tear-stained hands as she speaks. She cannot look at me. She cannot stop talking about what happened that June 23, 2013, morning at her home off East Central. It's as if she were pleading again for the pain to stop.
On that June morning while she was still in bed, John Lumpkins raged at her kids over a conversation about a dog. She told him to leave her children alone.
"He was standing over me, hitting me, yelling at me, the sweat and the spit hitting my face," she said. "His eyes were so red. I was scared. There was nowhere for me to go."
All she could think about, she said, was protecting her children, who were either cowering in the bedroom or in other rooms nearby.
"I just knew I was gone," she said. "I was done."
But she wasn't done. She reached under her pillow for a loaded handgun, which she had purchased for protection a year before.
She closed her eyes and fired.
Lumpkins died of a gunshot wound to the heart, according to an autopsy report.
(Excerpt) Read more at abqjournal.com ...
You don’t have to “get” a jury trial, you almost have to go out of your way to get a bench trial.
Good point. Thanks.
Her attorney still didn’t seem to do a good job for her.
My Mom had bruises all the time from “running into a door jam” or “falling down the back stairs”. I saw her take a beating when I was about 7 or 8 that I haven’t forgotten in 40 yrs.
My parents were married 46 years before Dad died.
This SOB and my Dad liked to beat on weak women.
My sister and I broke that cycle. We would have done what this women did had any boyfriends or husbands tried that on us.
On the news site, the reporter answered some questions in the comment section. She said this women wanted a bench trial because, she assumes, that it’s because of anxiety issues testifying in front of a jury.
Even if that’s true, the lawyer really screwed this women over.
I probably would have seen this as self defense, knowing the facts presented.
Agreed, he had to have been terrible.
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