Judicial reforms, a landmark court ruling by the Louisiana Supreme Court and changing attitudes about violence against women are bringing new hope to women serving life sentences in prison for killing domestic partners they claimed were abusive.
Using court records and media reports, Eyewitness News examined the cases of 139 women serving life sentences in Louisiana prisons. Our analysis found 21 convicted of murder with partners they say regularly left them battered and bruised.
But experts in domestic violence say the number of abused women in that population is likely much higher.
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“I would dare say in the vast majority of cases for some crime of violence against a significant other there's a high likelihood that that is the product of self-defense,” said Covington attorney Richard Ducote, who has defended decades’ worth of domestic violence cases.
Experts say victims of domestic violence are often shamed and blamed for not getting out abusive relationships by those who have never experienced it. In the minds of some women and men bearing the brunt of the abuse, if they will leave, they could die.
They would fight, split up, get back together
Laura Eugene and David Fluence lived the wild highs and swollen lows of a truly toxic relationship.
Friends said Fluence was muscular and attractive to women, likely a point of attraction for Eugene. But she would later tell investigators Fluence’s attraction to other women, and the violent fights that came along with it, led their relationship to take a deadly turn September 4, 2000.
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“When the fights would happen, they would split up, get back together, split up, get back together, that sort of thing,” said Veronica Nicholson, who admittedly did not know the couple well. But Nicholson lived down the street from them in Reserve and remembers seeing the red and blue lights from police often lighting up the façade of Laura and David’s Homewood Drive home.
“David was cocky. He was strong. Stronger than my momma. And some kind of way it just happened,” Dwayne Eugene, one of Laura’s oldest sons, said about the man who dated his mother more than five years.
Laura became pregnant with her fifth child, a daughter, shortly after she and Fluence had started their relationship, shortly after Fluence and his ex-wife had split, according to court records.
On intake interview forms Laura filled out at the Metropolitan Battered Women’s Program, she said she was dragged down the stairs when she was 8 months pregnant in 1995.
She called police on Fluence in January 1996 because he had taken her car. He called police on her for disturbing the peace two years later.
But from family members to neighbors, police and court records indicate the fights between the two often ended with Laura battered, sometimes bruised and even bleeding.
September 4, 2000, was different
“They were fighting over him seeing another woman. She admitted that,” said former St John the Baptist Sheriff’s Detective Todd Hymel, the lead investigator on the Eugene case.
“Me and my brother was in my bedroom. Until I heard noise,” said Dwayne Eugene. “David start beating on her. So, I’m hearing the walls, like, boom, boom like.”
Crime scene photos would later show a living room in disarray with a coffee table and end table with legs snapped, an artificial tree knocked over and papers scattered on the floor.
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When Nicholson drove down Homewood Place to head home that night, she said she saw Laura run out in the street screaming, “Help me! Help me!”
“My friend jumped out the car while it was still moving and she came back and said, he's on the floor, he's on the floor. He's hurt.”
Nicholson found David Fluence laying on the ground unconscious with his head nearly out the front door, feet pointed toward the interior of the house.
Nicholson started doing chest compressions and she coached Laura on how to try and breathe life into Fluence’s mouth.
The police report said Laura was still trying to do CPR on Fluence when the first officer arrived.
“She continued to just breath [sic] into his mouth saying he is gonna die,” Nicholson’s handwritten statement to police reads.
She couldn’t save him. David Fluence was dead.
A changing story
An autopsy found David Fluence died of a single stab wound to the heart.
When people first arrived at the scene, Laura told them a car had fallen on Fluence, then she said he had come home from a night of drinking with a stab wound.
The night of the murder, Laura told the detective that Fluence broke a broom, hit her on the face and slammed her on a chair in the living room. At her trial, she added Fluence had choked her until she lost consciousness. Then she went and got the knife, telling Fluence to stop before someone got hurt.
Laura said Fluence kept pushing her after she had gotten the knife and, “My hand slip.”
Hymel booked her on a 2nd Degree Murder charge and a grand jury later indicted her.
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Detective Hymel said two facts led him to reject investigating the killing as a justifiable homicide:
Laura’s changing story about what happened and her statement about the timing of the stabbing.
“She left, went to the bedroom, retrieved the knife, came back and had stabbed him. So, to me, that's not exactly in the heat of passion,” Hymel said.
Jurors later faced a similar question in Laura’s trial. One of the jurors in the case, who asked to remain anonymous said, “That’s what everyone was hung up on. Was it really in the heat of the moment or was it more than that?”
In Louisiana, prosecutors must prove the perpetrator had a specific intent to kill or cause great bodily harm to convict someone of 2nd Degree Murder. If murder is in “cold blood”, then manslaughter is the opposite, in the “heat of blood.”
And then there’s justifiable homicide. Louisiana’s justifiable homicide law reads, “When committed in self-defense by one who reasonably believes that he is in imminent danger of losing his life or receiving great bodily harm and that the killing is necessary to save himself from that danger.”
The conviction hinges on whether the belief their life was in imminent danger was “reasonable.” In cases involving domestic violence, that’s the key question, and that’s where a history of abuse and battered women’s syndrome comes into play.
Decades of research have shown a woman's "reasonable belief" that her life is in imminent danger can be clouded by a history of abuse.
For example, if argument after argument in a relationship ends with the woman beaten, and the beatings get worse, maybe she thinks, he could kill me anytime.
“Why did she wait until this particular point to defend herself when maybe she wasn't in an acute situation where she was about to be killed,” Ducote said.
Ruling could help women who turn to violence against an abuser
In June, the Louisiana Supreme Court issued a historic ruling in State of La. v. Catina Curley. A majority of the court, with one justice dissenting found juries' lack of understanding in cases like Laura Eugene's, is so great that providing evidence of past abuse is not enough for an adequate defense.
The court found attorneys must call experts to explain what impact that abuse may have had on the suspect's thinking.
Failing to do that could rise to the level of ineffective counsel, grounds for a new trial.
“Despite what we think is an inherent sympathy toward women who are victims of abuse, there is a subtle hostility toward them in the courtroom,” Ducote said.
A trial transcript indicates Eugene’s attorney Robert Faucheux never called experts to talk about battered women's syndrome.
Faucheux did want doctors to testify about Eugene’s state of mind of the time of the killing, including her diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, but the judge wouldn’t allow it.
It’s impossible to say whether that expert testimony would change the jury’s mind in any case, including Eugene’s.
One of the juror’s in Eugene’s trial said, “There were multiple things that made me think this was not an accident."
The juror went on to say testimony from Laura's children sounded coached, and that the jury also couldn't get past Laura's changing stories about what happened when people first got to the scene.
“Lying about what happened, if you accidentally stabbed him, say you accidentally stabbed him."
Laura testified she was scared.
The ruling in the Catina Curley case is providing hope for advocates and incarcerated domestic violence victims alike that, “There’s a pathway to right the injustice,” Ducote said.
It provides hope as well for the families of those in jail.
“I lost my mom and my dad. I had nobody to turn to. For nothing,” said DeVanna Eugene, who was four when her mother stabbed her father.
For the past 15 years, her relationship with her mother has consisted of weekly visits to prison.
“I used to wake up in the middle of the night and try to hold her and she wasn't there. And that just ruined me,” DaVanna said through tears.
Fifteen years into her life sentence, criminal justice reforms gave Laura Eugene and her children hope the state pardon board might give her another chance at life on the outside.
An audio recording of a hearing last July provides insight in the board’s questioning at her pardon hearing.
A board member says to Laura, “You claim that you’re a victim of domestic violence?” Laura replies, “Yes m’am.”
“But you were with the victim about 5 years before this happened,” the board member says.
“When I was pregnant with my daughter, at the time, it was starting to get violent then.”
The warden testified she's been a model inmate.
David Fluence has three other children from his previous marriage. WWL-TV attempted to reach six of Fluence’s family members multiple times, but none returned calls seeking comment.
“Despite the fact that we have sheriff’s office opposition, the judge who heard your case opposition, and the victim’s family opposition, I agree to commute your sentence to 99 years,” board member after board member told Laura.
They recommended to the Governor that she become parole-eligible after serving 30 years. In Laura Eugene’s case, she would be 72 when she got a chance at parole.
WWL-TV investigator Katie Moore can be reached at kmoore@wwltv.com; Follow her on Twitter at @katiecmoore