Battered Spouses

IT WAS ONLY A GLASS OF VODKA THAT HE LIFTED BEFORE A hushed audience at Lincoln Center last year. But for Peter Martins, artistic director and top boss of the New York City Ballet, the shot glass he grasped on stage that evening might as well have been the Holy Grail. The curtain was about to rise on his ambitious restaging of the classic "Sleeping Beauty."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger cleared the way Thursday for the release of a terminally ill inmate serving a life prison sentence for murdering her abusive boyfriend in 1982, in a controversial case championed by advocates for battered women. Deborah Peagler, 49, is expected to be released early next week, according to one of her attorneys. She has spent more than 26 years behind bars for luring her boyfriend to a park near Lawndale, where two men beat and strangled him. The state's Board of Parole Hearings decided last month that Peagler should be freed, despite opposition from the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.

A woman portrayed by her lawyer as a battered and mistreated wife was acquitted Saturday in the shooting death of her husband. Caroline Decker jumped up and hugged her attorney when the jury in Fulton County Court announced the verdict after 10 hours of deliberations. She had been charged with second-degree murder, first-degree and second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. Defense attorney Mark J. Mahoney said the outcome would have a wide impact.

Deborah Peagler thought she would be home for Christmas. Eight months ago, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said Peagler should be freed from the life prison term she has been serving for 23 years for helping to kill her live-in boyfriend in an Inglewood park. Cooley said then that he believed Peagler, 46, had been a battered woman. That was not considered in 1983 when she pleaded guilty to first-degree murder to avoid a death sentence.

It wraps the protective arm of the "homeowners' bill of rights" notion of self-defense around battered spouses who kill their abusers. And it's heading for the Senate floor--and a fight. Written by a former prosecutor and sponsored by state Sen.

Gov. Pete Wilson took the rare step Friday of granting clemency to two convicted murderers, becoming the first California governor to commute the sentences of women who say they were driven to kill their husbands after suffering continual beatings and abuse.

A woman who had sought executive clemency after she killed her abusive husband struck a plea bargain Monday that reduced her 17-years-to-life sentence to 12 years and probably will result in her release from prison sometime next year. Geneva Love, whose petition for clemency to Gov.

Rock star Tommy Lee was sentenced Wednesday to six months in Los Angeles County Jail for battering his wife, actress Pamela Anderson Lee, and was warned that any violation of his subsequent probation will land him in state prison for three years. Malibu Municipal Judge Lawrence J. Mira said he hoped that counseling would teach the tattooed Motley Crue drummer to solve problems without violence and that jail time would convince him to stick to the many conditions of his three-year probation.

What Leanne Dees did to the emotions of desperately vulnerable people is so unacceptable it was criminal. She knows that now. "I messed up," she said from jail. She promised to give up her unborn children to would-be adoptive parents, several in Southern California, in exchange for living expenses while pregnant. The problem was that she made those promises to different sets of prospective parents at the same time.

Following are partial transcripts of two 911 calls Nicole Brown Simpson made to police on Oct. 25, 1993, from her townhouse: Nicole: Can you send someone to my house? Dispatcher: What's the emergency? Nicole: My ex-husband has just broken into my house and he's ranting and raving outside in the front yard. Dispatcher: Has he been drinking or anything? Nicole: No. But he's crazy. Dispatcher: Did he hit you? Nicole: No. Dispatcher: Do you have a restraining order against him? Nicole: No.

A Riverside County sheriff's deputy was charged Thursday with five counts of spousal and child abuse and criminal threats against his live-in girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter, authorities said. Deputy Efrain Santos Jr., 28, also is under investigation for allegedly using excessive force in an arrest, sheriff's officials said.

A woman convicted of participating in the 1983 murder of her husband was freed from prison after prosecutors agreed she would have been eligible for a battered wife defense if such laws had been on the books at the time. Marie La Pinta left the Suffolk County jail beaming and gripping a bouquet of roses sent by her three grandchildren. She declined to say anything to reporters except "thank you."

Battered women who can prove their abusers coerced them into committing violent crimes will have a chance to win release under legislation signed Friday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The law, which advocates said is unique in the country, is the latest expansion of California's 1992 law allowing battered women's syndrome to be introduced as a defense in trials.

The Orange County Board of Supervisors called Tuesday for an audit to determine whether courts are doing enough to collect fines from those convicted of domestic violence. Those fines help fund domestic violence centers, which provide services for victims and their children, including emergency shelter. Supervisor Tom Wilson said the courts should provide the county at least $100,000 more per year than they have in the past, based on the number of domestic violence convictions.

Pop singer Bobby Brown has been charged with battery after a weekend domestic dispute with his wife, singing star and actress Whitney Houston, left her with facial injuries, police said Thursday. The 34-year-old Brown was accompanied by his wife as he turned himself in to authorities on Wednesday. He was released after receiving a copy of the charge, but is scheduled to appear in court for a preliminary hearing Jan. 7, said Fulton County police spokesman Kurtis Young.

A Bangladeshi court sentenced a man to hang for pouring acid on his 9-year-old wife, leaving her partially deaf and blind in one eye, a lawyer said. Swapan Gazi, who is in his 20s, attacked the girl after she refused to leave her parents' house for his. The 1998 attack occurred in Tongi, a town 20 miles north of the capital, Dhaka. Gazi's lawyers plan to appeal.

Michael Cooper, former Laker star and current assistant coach, was arrested for battery and assault last week after allegedly threatening his wife with a vase during a domestic dispute at their vacation home near Albuquerque, N.M., according to a police report released Monday. The report said a Corrales, N.M., police officer saw Cooper pull his wife, Wanda, off a bed by her ankle and raise his fist toward her before being restrained Wednesday night.

Dianna D'Aiello is on the phone. She sounds exhausted. She's been up since 6 o'clock Thursday morning. "I tossed and turned all night," she says. That was before she, her mother and an aunt drove together to the Orange County Superior Court building in Santa Ana, where D'Aiello took a seat in Department 40 and spoke of the man who raped her, beat her into a coma and killed her unborn daughter. Or of the men who did. "Why do you think Kevin wasn't there today?"

A Compton man with a history of spousal abuse is being sought for questioning in connection with the death of his wife. Authorities say he may have taken the couple's three young children to Mexico. The body of Martha Higareda, 29, was found Tuesday in her apartment in the 1500 block of Queensdale Street in Compton. Her husband, Juan Bravo Lopez, 41, has a history of spousal abuse, authorities said. "We want to talk to him," said Deputy Rich Pena, a Sheriff's Department spokesman.