Battered Spouses

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.

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."

The case began like any of thousands that filter through the legal system each year. A frightened woman, beaten by her husband, went to court and got a protective order to keep him at bay. It wasn't until the next morning that J.E.T. Rutter, the now-retired Superior Court judge who signed that order several years ago, heard about the case's tragic outcome: the woman, unaware that she could get police to serve the order on her husband, had her sister do it.

A Lancaster man hung himself in a holding cell at the Antelope Valley Sheriff's Station in an apparent suicide just six hours after being arrested on suspicion of spousal abuse, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. A cellmate discovered Todd Fenske, 25, hanging from his bed at 4 p.m. Monday, said Deputy Angie McLaughlin. The cellmate, whose identity was not released, had been sleeping prior to discovering Fenske.

Football Hall of Famer Jim Brown was convicted Friday of smashing the window of his wife's car during a June 15 argument, but was acquitted of making terrorist threats against her. Deputy City Atty. Grace Lee said Brown could be sentenced to up to six months in jail under domestic violence guidelines and be fined as much as $1,000. Holding hands with his wife, Monique, in the doorway of the Hollywood Municipal Courthouse after the verdicts, Brown declared that he had been vindicated.

Women Helping Women, a nonprofit organization that assists battered and homeless women in becoming independent by providing clothing, haircuts, resume assistance and job-finding tips, may close soon if it cannot raise enough money for rent and payroll, volunteers said. The organization needs $650 to ensure that its doors at the Rea Community Center--an amalgam of helping agencies that sublet a former school on Hamilton Street from the city--stay open, said its treasurer, Roberta Kanter.

A 38-year-old Ventura woman who shot her sleeping husband and cut his body into pieces with an electric saw was sentenced Friday to 52 years to life in prison. Superior Court Judge Herbert Curtis rejected pleas for leniency as defendant Gladis Soto slumped over a courtroom defense table, her dark hair shielding her face.

The woman leafs through cards and letters, mementos of a life that very nearly killed her. She picks one up and reads from it, and her face glows bright with remembered love and comfort. It is 1978 again; she is a newlywed, and beloved. The letter was written by her husband eight weeks after they took their vows--but before the rape, the death threats, the bruises that would follow, the head smashed on the bathroom tiles, the suicide attempts, the therapy bills. Before the despair.

Omaima Nelson testified Thursday that she killed her husband in self-defense and then butchered the body so she could more easily dispose of the evidence. In gruesome detail, Nelson testified that she castrated her victim for revenge and boiled his hands to eliminate fingerprints. She also told a packed courtroom that she boiled the head and skinned the body of William Nelson. As shocking as Nelson's account was, her testimony was overshadowed by her psychiatrist, who spoke of cannibalism. Dr.

What are 16 years of an innocent man's life worth? And if the state acted responsibly in convicting him, should taxpayers foot the bill anyway? Both questions were put to members of the Legislature last week--on behalf of former Tustin resident Kevin Lee Green--in the form of a bill apparently unprecedented in California. The measure seeks to give him $770,000.