WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Marcia Thompson stood encircled by her family, their eyes closed and hands upraised. She prayed in the courtroom, on trial for killing her husband — a charge she has never denied. But there were extenuating circumstances, her attorneys said, and killing someone is not always the same as committing murder. 

Terry Thompson would have killed his wife had she not beaten him to it, the lawyers said. Made to defend herself first from her abusive husband, then again from the legal fallout of killing him, Marcia Thompson faced a lifetime in prison if jurors didn’t believe her.

They did. The jury acquitted Marcia Thompson of first-degree murder Monday after deliberating for an afternoon. Their decision followed undisputed emotional testimony about a husband who beat his wife relentlessly, who threatened to kill her and her family if they ever called the police, and who called her worthless up to the moment she killed him.

Few facts were in dispute during this month’s trial in a courtroom in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Marcia Thompson, a 44-year-old U.S. Customs agent, was the first to admit she shot her husband while he lay unarmed on the living room couch on Aug. 9, 2019. Prosecutors conceded that years of physical and sexual violence predated the shooting. The question for jurors was her state of mind when she killed him.

Assistant State Attorney Jo Wilensky suggested Marcia Thompson was “fed up” with the constant abuse she endured at their home in The Acreage. Rather than report her husband to police and file for divorce, the prosecutor said she took matters into her own hands.

"Terry Thompson should have been prosecuted," Wilensky said. "Not executed."

Marcia Thompson shot unarmed husband 9 times, 6 in the back

Florida’s self-defense law permits the use of lethal force in response to an immediate threat to life, but Wilensky maintained that there was none. Terry Thompson lay in his underwear with his feet propped up, his arms upraised to shield himself, when his wife shot him three times with her service-issued handgun.

He rolled off the couch and lay face down on the ground. She shot him six more times in the back.

“She knows what imminent danger looks like, because she lived through it,” Wilensky said, referring to the physical and sexual abuse Marcia Thompson testified to earlier in the trial. “This was not it.”

Marcia Thompson said her husband promised to kill her in the minutes leading up to the shooting, but it wasn’t enough to say he would do so, Wilensky said. The prosecutor urged jurors to consider the difference between a verbal threat to kill and an actual attempt.

Marcia Thompson's attorney, Jessica Mishali, called upon forensic psychologist Michael Brannon to testify that a battered woman’s experiences affect her perception of imminent danger. Victims of repeat violence may fear death in a situation others would not, he said.

Mishali also told jurors not to put too much credence in the fact that Terry Thompson was unarmed. His wife didn't know it at the time, she said.

Terry Thompson kept a gun in the closet, a golf club in the living room, a machete by the bed and knives hidden throughout the house — sometimes in between the couch cushions where he lay the morning he died.

Crime-scene investigators said they found no weapons hidden within Terry Thompson's reach, but he didn't need one to kill his wife, Mishali said. He'd demonstrated time and again that his hands alone could do the job.

Psychologist says abuse victims are at greater risk of violence when they leave the relationship

Marcia Thompson testified that she met Terry Thompson at the University of Florida in 2000, when she was 20. They dated for several years before marrying and having two children. He was 13 years older than her and charming.

His affection soon turned to jealousy, her lawyers said. Terry Thompson — who is not alive to dispute the allegations, prosecutors reminded jurors — began insisting that his wife keep her phone on her at all times of the day. Missed calls and unanswered texts incensed him, ever paranoid that his wife was seeing someone else.

Marcia Thompson said he controlled what she wore, where she worked, who she saw. He reminded her often that she wasn’t a good enough mother, a hard enough worker, a pretty enough wife. Her hair was wrong, and so were her clothes.

In 2007, he accused his wife of cheating. Marcia Thompson said that in a fit of rage, he pushed, punched and choked her before sexually assaulting her with a lotion bottle. During another incident, he dragged his wife down the street by her hair while she held their baby in her arms, prompting passersby to call police. A relative of Marcia Thompson's testified that she once looked like she'd gone through several rounds of boxing.

Terry Thompson followed each violent outburst with an apology. His wife forgave him every time.

When asked why Marcia Thompson didn't leave her husband, Brannon said women who leave their abusers are at greater risk of violence than those who stay. A tearful Marcia Thompson told jurors she didn't believe she could end the relationship and survive.

“I thought, maybe it’s better if I die and this is all over,” she testified. “But then I worried about the kids. I said I can’t do that to them. I have to try to protect them, too.”

During prosecutors' last opportunity to address jurors, Assistant State Attorney Karen Black emphasized the premeditated element of the first-degree murder charge. Marcia Thompson spent 15 minutes in her room getting ready for work, listening to her husband berate her from the living room, before she rejoined him there and shot him to death, Black said.

The prosecutor urged jurors to time out those 15 minutes in the deliberation room and consider exactly how long Marcia Thompson had to make that decision.

"Someone with battered-spouse syndrome can still commit first-degree murder," Black said. "That's what she did here. She committed first-degree murder."

Terry Thompson's ex-girlfriend describes similar abuse

Tereca Benton paced outside of the courtroom Friday. She said she'd driven 12 hours to tell jurors about the yearslong abuse she endured at Terry Thompson's hands — nearly identical to that which Marcia Thompson described — but was told when she arrived that she couldn't. Circuit Judge Cymonie Rowe deemed her testimony impermissible evidence.

Had she been allowed to testify before the jury, Benton said she would have described the first time Terry Thompson punched her hard enough to leave two black eyes. And the time he dragged her through her home by her hair, chunks of it spooling in the shower drain afterwards. And the time he squeezed her with so much pressure, it left the bruises of four handprints down her arm.

Benton said he alienated her from her friends and colleagues who saw him only as a charming, well groomed and church-going man. When she heard the news of Terry Thompson's death, Benton said she breathed a sigh of relief and thanked God that it wasn't she who'd killed him.

"I don't know her," Benton said of Marcia Thompson. "But I was her."

Back in the courtroom, Thompson's family members exclaimed and wept the moment the verdict was read, prompting the judge to yell at them to stop. When reached for comment Tuesday, State Attorney's Office spokesperson Marc Freeman said prosecutors disagreed with the jury's decision but respected it nonetheless.

The verdict concludes a case that lingered in the criminal justice system for nearly five years. Prosecutors never offered a plea deal during that time, Mishali said.

Marcia Thompson remained under house arrest for the entirety of the pre-trial proceedings. She left the courthouse Monday evening with the family and friends who packed the courtroom gallery each day of the trial, thanking God for heeding their prayers.

Hannah Phillips covers public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Network. You can reach her at [email protected].