Opinion ID: 2323789
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Defendant's February 26, 2001 Statement

Text: More than a year and a half after giving her first taped statement, defendant gave a second one at the Burlington County Prosecutor's Office. Defendant's attorney accompanied her to the office, but inexplicably left her alone when the formal interrogation session began. Defense counsel gave permission to a Burlington County Prosecutor's detective and the executive assistant prosecutor to question defendant in his absence. In this statement, defendant offered a different motivation for the shooting and, with prompting from her interlocutors, downplayed the level of abuse in her relationship with Jimmy. At the outset of the interview, defendant described a Valentine's Day incident when Jimmy became enraged at her at a bar, ripping out the braids from her hair and smashing her head a couple [of] times against the passenger side window of [a] truck. The interviewer then asked her whether this was a one-time event, to which she responded, Yes. Then, through a series of leading questions, the interviewer got defendant to recant her prior description of Jimmy as a violent person: Detective: In prior statements you have painted a picture of JIMMY as being a violent person. Okay, that's not an accurate description of JIMMY, is it? Defendant: No. He would get loud and sometimes make occasional threats but generally he would walk away. Detective: Okay. As a matter of fact, he has on numerous occasions by your own statements, walked out of the house or walked away from you rather than to either continue an argument or become physical in any way. Is that correct? Defendant: Yeah, that's correct. Through more leading questions, defendant described how the family finances for which Jimmy held her responsible had snowballed out of control. Although Jimmy had expected to purchase his dream home in Chatsworth, defendant was not enamored with the idea. Defendant believed that the couple would not qualify for a mortgage for a new home because they were not making timely payments on their existing mortgage. She also believed that she would be blamed for the failure to obtain a mortgage. She did not submit an application for a mortgage because she knew it would be rejected. Instead, she engaged in an elaborate cover-up. She generated a fake mortgage-approval letter so Jimmy would think that they had been approved for the mortgage. She knew that her scheme to keep Jimmy in the dark about the seriousness of their financial problems was about to end. When Jimmy came home for dinner at 12:30 a.m. on August 19, the two argued about their malfunctioning telephone and the impending move to a new home. He made it clear that he would purchase the house with or without her, and also told her that he suspected that she was attempting to undermine the securing of a mortgage. Defendant admitted that she was emotionally hurt and angry that the new house meant more to Jimmy than his relationship with her, and that he would seek help from his family rather than rely on her. That evening she lay on the couch thinking that Jimmy would soon learn about her mortgage-application ruse. She did not want him to find out that [she] had messed up. She was angry with herself because she could not control the finances and angry about their fights in which he called her stupid. She did not come clean with Jimmy about the state of their finances because it would bring on an argument and name callin[g] about how she could not handle things right. There on the couch she decided to kill Jimmy. In the morning, she retrieved and loaded a gun, wrapped it in a T-shirt to avoid leaving fingerprints, entered Jimmy's bedroom, cocked the hammer of the gun, aimed the gun towards his head correcting for her double vision, and fired once. She then went to work as though it were a normal day. Even when she called 9-1-1 that afternoon, she somehow hoped that she would not be caught.