Lisa Bloom, an anchor and legal analyst for Court TV, covered Mary Winkler's case from start to finish. "At Court TV, a collective gasp went up at the verdict, Oprah," Lisa says. "We all thought this was a first-degree murder case. The difference between murder and manslaughter, which she was convicted of? Premeditation.
"Didn't Mary make a decision to wait for her husband to fall asleep? Didn't she make a decision to go into the closet and get that gun? To point it at Matthew and to pull the trigger? Those are all decisions that usually add up to premeditation, but it didn't in this case."
Lisa says she believes the community rallied behind Mary Winkler and believed her. "And when the shoe, that stripper shoe, was next to her on the stand and she hung her head low? That's the kind of thing you might have laughed at in a big city. But in that small town, I think people really believed that she was humiliated."
Published 09/12/2007
