Ex-Cop Acquitted in Seven-Shot Killing of Husband

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Mark Tyson

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Ex-Cop Acquitted in Seven-Shot Killing of Husband

08/06/2003

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

WEST PALM BEACH - A circuit jury shortly before noon on Wednesday returned a not guilty verdict against a former Palm Beach Gardens police officer charged with the seven-shot murder of her husband.

The verdict in the second-degree murder case against Gwendolyn Fleming Napier was announced by a jury that included seven women and just one man after three hours of deliberations.

The prosecution had contended the veteran cop shot her husband seven times -- four times near his groin -- after discovering he had sired a child with another woman. The death occurred in a locked bedroom on Thanksgiving Day 2000.

The defense maintained Napier, 39, was an abused woman and had no choice but to pull the trigger and save herself from another beating.

Napier's second-degree murder trial began Monday with prosecutors painting her as an angry wife who had threatened to kill John Napier Jr. if she ever found out he fathered a child with another woman while married to her. She was aiming for his crotch when she fired the gun as family and friends milled around their Riviera Beach home, Assistant State Attorney Tom Lawson said.

As it turned out, Napier's husband John Napier had been carrying on an affair for years with another woman that resulted in a child in 1996, well after the Napiers got married.

But Gwen Napier's attorneys said she shot in self-defense after her drunken husband locked the bedroom door, pulled a pistol on her, and choked, punched and kicked her. John Napier had abused his wife for years, but she never reported it because she feared her pleas for help would be ignored and her husband would retaliate, argued her lead attorney, Scott Richardson.
 
Seven shots is torture, not self defense, especially considering where she directed her shots.

There are too many shelters and programs out there for her to get away with being "an abused woman and had no choice but to pull the trigger and save herself from another beating."

Sorry, people, this was a murder.

But, since it's a PC world, and she's a LEO, it's all OK, and she walks.

Wonder if the same would have happened had the sexes been reversed.
 
RIIIIGHT...

If a female LEO went to the authorities and claimed she had been abused, her claims would have been ignored... :rolleyes:

Here's a person who deals with criminals day in and day out and she can't figure out what to do about abuse? :rolleyes:

A person who is much more familiar than most with the options a battered wife has available to her, and the protection the law offers her and she can't think of a way to get away other than to riddle the abuser's crotch? :rolleyes:

Must have been a real bunch of geniuses on the jury.
 
If she never reported it.......wheres the proof it ever really happened??? Other than her word vs her dead hsuband????

I'm a LEO........and the others are right. She deals with this kind of stuff every day.......but doesn't know what to do for herself??? Yeah, ok:fire:
 
Seven shots is torture, not self defense, especially considering where she directed her shots.
Click to expand...

While I agree with you in this circumstance that it was murder, we cannot ever allow the number of rounds fired to dictate whether something constitutes murder or self-defense. We shoot to stop the threat, and the number of rounds that takes is irrelevant. The circumstances surrounding the shooting as well as the location of the shots show that it was murder, not the number of rounds.
 
Minced onions....

>> We shoot to stop the threat, and the number of rounds that takes is irrelevant

Huh? If you put 4 rounds in my onions, the treat would stop... Trust me.

Unless a man was on heroin, I'd expect this to be a universal response.

Sounds like murder to me, but then, I'm not a woman in the jury box.
-Phil
 
I'm a LEO........and the others are right. She deals with this kind of stuff every day.......but doesn't know what to do for herself??? Yeah, ok
Click to expand...

Just playing devil's advocate, but I don't find it especially hard to believe that a female LEO might not want to openly discuss such problems because of fears of embarassment, having her position undermined ("little woman can't handle her own problems, how can she handle other domestics"), etc. Male LEOs see domestic violence all the time, but it doesn't stop them from having a startingly high degree of violence in their own home lives. It's easy to tell someone else "don't do that" but hard to apply the advice to one's own life.
 
WHERE in the groin area? Did she place 4 shots neatly there and 3 in the head? Or did she follow what some (and a growing number) of instructors advocate, the "zipper" technique. That's where you start low center and work up. That doesn't mean that she deliberately shot him in the cojones to hurt him, but it's easy to paint it that way. A prosecutor could make hay with that.

We don't know, do we? In fact, I suspect the jury saw a LOT of evidence that didn't make it into these few paragraphs.


Second guessing juries is not a good way to advertise your wisdom. Sometimes they make a bad call, but they almost ALWAYS have more information than we have. (Prior convictions of the perp being about the only exception.)

And "she coulda so she woulda", especially when talking about spousal abuse, is another good way to advertise your lack of wisdom. It just ain't that simple.
 
If you put 4 rounds in my onions, the treat would stop... Trust me.
Click to expand...

Why? I've taken bad hits in the "onions" and was functional for about 10 seconds or so. (The anticipation of the pain is almost worse than the pain itself . . . almost.) Combined with the fact that 4 rounds in less than a second, the fact that trauma as severe as a gunshot can induce its own form of short-term anesthetic (due to shock), and the hyped up responses of a person in a fight, it's not unbelievable that she could have completely emasculated the guy and he could have kept coming.
 
But, since it's a PC world, and she's a LEO, it's all OK, and she walks.
Click to expand...
Actually, she's a former LEO. And I'm not really sure what your point is with that comment. I mean, she was arrested and prosecuted as a criminal. The jury let her go free. Usually when people make knights vs serfs comments, it is because LEOs are getting differential treatment from the system. Well, in this case the system did everything to her that it could...and the commoners let the knight off the hook.

FWIW, I'd be hard pressed to call this anything other than murder, just looking at the very basic facts. Something here is not adding up. But, then again, we only have the very basic facts. I'm puzzled.

Mike
 
I suspect the media isn't telling us the whole story here. Florida law can be vicious if you misjudge a defensive shooting (a WARNING SHOT can get you MANDATORY 15 years or more), and the fact that she was completely acquitted tells me that the deceased wasn't standing there apologizing for having an affair.

As far as "aiming for the groin," that's baloney. She hit 7 for 7; four happened to be in the lower torso and three higher. This is actually consistent with a moderately trained shooter aiming COM under very high stress (many people tend to shoot low when rushing a presentation).

Also, what caliber was she using? If she was using a .22 (or even a .380) and shooting until the threat went down, it wouldn't be unusual to get off seven before the attack ceased.
 
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