Abused wife not a murderer.

A Manitoba jury took less than one hour to acquit a Brandon woman of a charge of first degree murder in May. The woman was on trial for the murder of her husband of 17 years. During those years, she had been subject to horrendous physical and emotional abuse and on the night she shot her husband, she was under orders from him to have killed herself before he and his girlfriend got home or he would murder her and their children. In his charge to the jury, Justice Rodney Mykle told them that he would not accept a conviction for first degree murder and explained in careful detail the difference between second degree murder and manslaughter, what constituted self defence...