After deliberating more than nine hours over two days, a jury on Monday convicted a former Ridgefield woman of first-degree attempted murder and first-degree assault for shooting her husband in 2007.
As she listened to Clark County Superior Court Judge Barbara Johnson read the verdicts, Sheryl J. Martin blinked several times and looked down at her lap. She showed no other emotion.
When the judge ordered that Martin be taken into custody immediately, family members seated behind her started sobbing. The 54-year-old, who now lives in Longview with her parents, has been out of custody after posting bond following the Sept. 8, 2007, incident.
“Can she hug her parents goodbye first?” defense attorney David McDonald asked the judge. Johnson said yes.
Martin’s parents, two sons and other family members circled her, hugging and consoling her.
Then the defendant took off her earrings and necklace, handing them to her family, and put her hands behind her back for a custody officer to handcuff her.
The case isn’t over yet, McDonald said. He plans to appeal the conviction and will be requesting an appeal bond.
Intent at issue
The panel of 10 women and two men received the case at noon Friday and rendered a verdict at about 12:45 p.m. Monday.
Sentencing was set for Nov. 18.
First-degree attempted murder carries a minimum sentence of 15 years in prison. The jury returned a special finding that the crime was committed with a firearm, which tacked on an additional five years in prison. Martin will be sentenced only for attempted murder; the assault charge was filed in case of an appeal, a standard procedure, said Senior Deputy Prosecutor John Fairgrieve.
During the weeklong trial, jurors heard that Martin shot her husband four times at their Ridgefield home after finding out he’d been having an affair.
Neither side disputed that Martin, a loan processor with no criminal record, shot Eddie E. Martin. Instead, they were asked to decide her state of mind during the shooting and whether she could form intent.
McDonald had argued that his client’s long undiagnosed depression and histrionic personality disorder, or a disorder in which a person overreacts to get attention — aggravated by the stress of learning about her husband’s infidelity — spun her into a dissociative state.
She couldn’t remember the shooting and had told a psychologist she didn’t know who — or what — she was shooting, according to trial testimony.
Before trial, McDonald had requested to use a “betrayal trauma theory,” or the argument that her husband’s affair traumatized Martin. But the defense was struck down by the judge on grounds that it was too untested of a theory to be reliable.
Fairgrieve told jurors the facts of the case spoke volumes about Martin’s intent: She first shot her husband twice in the legs before taking a break to reload and shooting him twice more in the shoulder. Eddie Martin testified at trial that his wife yelled at some point, “If I can’t have you nobody can.”
The shooting followed an argument between the couple in which Sheryl Martin caught Eddie Martin sending text messages to his lover, jurors heard at trial. Eddie Martin then requested a divorce. Later that night, as he was sleeping in a camper, Sheryl Martin shot him and then called 911.
The couple is now divorced; Eddie Martin recovered, but suffered loss of mobility in his left elbow.
Laura McVicker: 360-735-4516 or laura.mcvicker@columbian.com.
