An abused wife walked free from court after being

An abused wife walked free from court after being convicted of
killing her husband.

Former nun Elizabeth Line, 29, stabbed her husband Ronald 17 times
after he drunkenly attacked her in their home on the White City
estate.

She denied murder, claiming she had acted out of provocation after
enduring years of savage beatings and sexual and emotional abuse at
his hands.

The three-man, nine-woman jury acquitted her of murder and
convicted her on the alternative charge of manslaughter.

Judge Gerald Butler QC described Line’s case as ‘exceptional.

‘
He sentenced her to 18 months prison, suspended for two years,
adding: ‘You have suffered enough.

‘
The court was told Line, originally from Poland, had married her
husband in 1990.

Although loving and kind when sober she said he became violent and
abusive during his frequent drinking bouts.

On June 26 last year, he had suddenly turned on her after spending
the afternoon drinking Vodka in the Colonel Smuts pub in Fontheim
Road.

In the witness box, the 6ft 1in defendant said she armed herself
with a kitchen knife because she feared she was about to get a
beating.

She said she pushed the knife into his stomach because she thought
he too had a knife.

Line said she only remembered stabbing him once but the ambulance
crew which rushed to the flat found her 5ft 8in husband had 17 knife
wounds.

After the jury convicted her on manslaughter, Mr Stephen Leslie,
defending, told the court of the years of hell she had endured at her
husband’s hands.

He even killed her kitten, he said.

Judge Butler told her: ‘It is only in the most exceptional
circumstances that manslaughter can be dealt with other than by way of
a lengthy and immediate custodial sentence.

‘I believe these exceptional circumstances do exist here.

The final
act of provocation was in itself sufficient to reduce murder to
manslaughter.

‘But you had previously been subjected to months of violence and
sexual abuse of the worst kind.

‘You have been in prison for over seven months awaiting trial.

‘You have suffered enough.

‘
Line did not comment as she walked to freedom.

ENDS