Selmer, Tenn. – A preacher’s wife who claimed her husband abused her was convicted Thursday of voluntary manslaughter for shooting him.
Prosecutors had asked that Mary Winkler, 33, be convicted of first-degree murder, but the jury settled on the lesser charge after deliberating for eight hours. She faces three to six years in prison.
Winkler had told jurors that her husband, Matthew, abused her physically and sexually, but she said the shotgun went off accidentally as she pointed it at him. The prosecution said it was ludicrous to suggest the shooting was an accident.
Matthew Winkler, a 31-year-old preacher at Fourth Street Church of Christ, was fatally shot in the back in the church parsonage in March 2006. One day later, his wife was arrested on the Alabama coast, driving the family minivan with the couple’s three young daughters.
Prosecution witnesses described Matthew Winkler as a good husband and father, and the couple’s 9-year-old daughter testified that she never saw her father mistreat her mother.
WASHINGTON
House favors vote for D.C. residents
The people of the District of Columbia moved a step closer Thursday to gaining voting rights.
But the legislation passed by the House on a 241-177 vote faced a veto threat from the White House, which said it was unconstitutional.
The bill would permanently increase full House membership to 437, giving the largely Democratic half-million residents of the district a seat and adding a temporary at-large seat for Republican-leaning Utah. The House has consisted of 435 seats since 1960.
The bill now goes to the Senate, where its fate is uncertain.
MIAMI
Anti-Castro militant facing fraud trial
Anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles, an aging ex-CIA operative, was released from custody in Chaparral, N.M., Thursday and flew to Miami as he awaits trial on immigration fraud charges.
Posada was required to post a $250,000 bond. His wife, who lives in Miami, his daughter and son also posted a $100,000 bond.
Posada, 79, is awaiting a May 11 trial on allegations he lied to immigration authorities while trying to become a naturalized U.S. citizen.
He is wanted in his native Cuba and in Venezuela, where he is accused of plotting the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner that killed 73 people.
A judge ruled that he couldn’t be deported to those countries because he might be tortured.
TOKYO
Assassination suspect had grudge with city
The gangster arrested in the shooting death of Nagasaki’s mayor visited city offices more than 30 times seeking compensation for car damage caused by a pothole, Japanese media reported Thursday.
Iccho Ito, 61, was shot twice in the back outside a train station Tuesday. Tetsuya Shiroo, a senior member of Japan’s largest crime syndicate, the Yamaguchi-gumi, was caught at the scene.
Police believe Shiroo harbored a grudge over unheeded claims for damage to his car when he drove into a hole at a public works construction site in 2003, Japanese newspapers reported.
Shiroo also allegedly held a grudge over the troubles a construction company he was involved with had obtaining loans from the city, also in 2003.
MOSCOW
Trans-Bering tunnel would be longest ever
The idea of a tunnel under the Bering Strait is being revived as part of an ambitious project to build a 3,700-mile transport corridor linking Russia with Alaska.
Billed by backers as the key to developing Russia’s Far East, the $65 billion project will be the focus of a conference in Moscow on Tuesday, organizers said in a statement this week.
The tunnel, which would take 15-20 years to build, would be the longest in the world, they said. The Bering Strait is about 50 miles wide at its narrowest.
