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’d think she could have gotten a plea deal better than that. She needs to appeal.
She continued the pattern by picking an abusive judge over a jury.
NM Ping List
That’s not the way I meant it at all, but likely you are correct.
Soundds like she had a crappy lawyer who didn’t bother to defend her adequately. And at least her lawyer should have gotten her a jury trial.
I think you nailed it.
HEY! I have an alibi!
(besides, she wasn't even that cute)
The story sounds fishy to me, we only get her side of things, so it’s not “journalism”, but an advocacy piece by her defenders.
He was better looking than her, and no, that blond hair doesn’t make you look too Polish, dear.
Thanks. My boss called me in for a meeting before I had a chance to post to the list.
No problem.. I figured that since you didn’t do it quickly, something must have come up.
I forgot to Ping the list for my Holly Holm article. The others I picked up from news forum Topics and NM keywords.
True enough; it's by one of their opinion writers who usually covers these type of stories. Most of the time I ignore them (as far as posting) but thought this one interesting enough to do so. Not mentioned is whether the gun was legally purchased or if she got it off the street. Of course now that she's been convicted she can no longer have a firearm for any future encounters.
BTW, one of her previous boyfriends who beat her had his friends intimidate her so badly (slashed tires, etc.) that she refused to testify and the case was dismissed.
Yes, she did. I wonder why she chose to kill him rather than leave him?
Always demand a jury trial.
First, why did the indictment come about nearly 2 years later? Somebody said or did or donated something to raise the interest of the prosecution.
Second, Why a bench Trial? You are taking your chances on convincing one of one, not one of twelve. Stipulating to everything looks like her attorney screwed the pooch.
Finally, this lady must either have had an angry judge or she tells a very unbelievable, guilt ridden, version of her story.
This just isn’t a simple abused wife in danger of further injury.
“Kayla Anderson, spokeswoman for the District Attorney’s Office, disputed Moss’ contention that her office had decided not to prosecute.
“This case was accepted and prosecuted because we had sufficient basis in the facts and the law to go forward with a criminal prosecution,†Anderson said in an emailed response. “The defendant used deadly force against a nondeadly force, which was the reason we pursued this matter.—
“They met in early 2013 on Tagged, a dating website. The Pennsylvania man was 6-foot-2 and 210 pounds. He was 34, the same age as James.
“We talked on the phone all the time for two months,†James said. “We’d fall asleep with each other on the phone.â€
A 6’ 2” 210 lb excuse of a man on top of a woman beating the daylights out of her IS DEADLY FORCE. She reacted in kind. The DA is out of line.
“Chavez took minutes to deliberate, finding her guilty of both counts, saying that no “reasonable person†would have acted as James had.”
Perhaps the writer of this piece has added the judge’s words out of context. Perhaps the judge was questioning James, asking her if this was the first beating, and if not, why didn’t she leave him after the first beating? She instead opted to have the gun under her pillow, anticipating that he very well may beat her again. Of course, this is just one possible scenario. Something isn’t right about this article and I suspect the author of it is being misleading. The New Mexico judicial system doesn’t tolerate men beating on women to well. I suppose the judge may have been worried about the BLM activists in ABQ rioting if nothing was done to avenge the dead woman beater. Not sure how public this whole thing has been.
During the initial police investigation of the shooting death, pictures would have been taken of her areas she calimed were being harmed. Something really stinks about this case. But I could not convict a woman who shoots a bastard beating on her. Nit even
I wish I could remember the name of the book about black families that moved from the deep South to Milwaukee and were stuck on welfare. The author claimed that domestic violence and sexual abuse were endemic to that culture before the migration and before welfare - that the women went on welfare because they’d far rather depend on the state than on a man who beat them and cheated on them.
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