Mark Tyson
Member
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.
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.