Viola Pook - on New Year's Eve in 2008, the 57 year old threw kerosene on her common-law husband, Orlando Vasquez and set him on fire. In 2011, she was sentenced to life in prison for his murder. But the court of appeal quashed that conviction, based on the fact that she was a battered woman. At her re-trial she pleaded guilty to manslaughter and today she was sentenced to eight years in prison. Justice Lucas took into consideration sentencing guidelines from similar cases, the most prominent one being that of Lavern Longsworth, aka Anti-Christ who got her sentence reduced to eight years in prison for burning up her husband. But since Pook has been in prison on remand since 2009, Justice Lucas will have to factor in time already served. He is determining how much time he can deduct, if it includes both the time on remand - which was 2 years, and the other 4 years spent seeking an appeal. Pook's attorney LLiana Swift says the court ought to take into consideration the entire 6 years and 9 months and 27 days that Pook has been behind bars since her arrest.
On Monday November 2, she will be told how many years will be deducted as time served.
Pook has been diagnosed as suffering from Battered Women Syndrome after over 20 year of being in an abusive relationship.
In a moving mitigation plea, her daughter, Cristy Jeffords that her mother told her the reason why she killed Vasquez was because he was molesting a child who is a family member.
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