Babe shoots her husband in the back

After spending a total of seven months in custody, a Tennessee woman who fatally shot her preacher husband in the back was released on Tuesday.

Mary Winkler, a 33-year-old mother of three girls, was freed from a Tennessee mental health facility where she was treated for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

She wont will not talk to the news media because she continues to wage a legal battle to win custody of her girls and faces a $2 million civil suit filed by the parents of her slain husband, Matthew Winkler.

Except for her oldest daughter's brief testimony at her trial, she hasn't seen her children in a year. She will return to work at the dry cleaners in McMinnville, Tennessee, (doh?) where she worked before the trial. She is living with friends (which ones?).

She served about 7 months between the county jail as she awaited trial and at the mental health facility following her conviction for voluntary manslaughter.

She never denied shooting her husband, Matthew, the popular new preacher at the Fourth Street Church of Christ in Selmer.

On March 22, 2006, church elders found his body -- with a shotgun wound to the back -- in the bedroom of the parsonage after he failed to show up for an evening service. His wife was arrested the next day with the couple's three young daughters.

Mary Winkler was charged with murder, which could have sent her to prison for up to 60 years, but a jury found her guilty of voluntary manslaughter following an emotional trial in which she testified about suffering years of verbal and physical abuse. (Only in America)
She claims she didn't recall pulling the trigger .She said she apologized and wiped the blood that bubbled from her dying husband's lips as he asked, "Why?"

Prosecutors and Matthew Winkler's family members said he was a good husband and father.
But on the stand, Mary Winkler described a hellish 10-year marriage during which, she said, her husband struck her, screamed at her, criticized her and blamed her when things went wrong. She said he made her watch pornography and wear "slutty" costumes for sex, and that he forced her to submit to sex acts that made her uncomfortable.

She testified she pointed the shotgun at her husband during an argument to force him to talk through their problems, and "something went off."
A defense psychologist testified that she was depressed and showed classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Mary Winkler initially received a three-year sentence in June. But the amazingly compassionate judge required that she serve only 210 days, and allowed her to serve the rest of the time on probation.

Since Mary Winkler's arrest, the couple's three children have been cared for by Matthew Winkler's parents, who have filed court papers seeking to terminate her parental rights.

This is so amazing i just had to add it to the blog. It's one of those random things that you see and find weird. I feel the woman could have gotten out whenever she wanted instead of bottling it all up until she had to shot the man. He wasn't threatening her when she shot him (as i can infer from him being shot in the back).

Should she really have gotten off with such a light sentence for taking a life?

Does this send a message to all the frustrated wives out there that they can shot their husbands, plead insanity and get on with their lives after 210days?

I don't really have an answer so i leave all to the almighty.

For more info you can see www.cnn.com