Court upholds 10-year sentence for woman who killed abusive father

AMMAN — The Cassation Court has upheld a Criminal Court ruling sentencing a 20-year-old woman to 10 years in prison after convicting her of murdering her abusive father in Zarqa, 22km northeast of Amman.

The defendant was first sentenced to death after being convicted of shooting her 48-year-old father while he slept at their home in November 2014. 

However, the same tribunal decided in March to reduce the sentence to 10 years in prison because the victim’s family dropped charges against her.

Court papers said the defendant plotted to murder her father with his own gun because “he was very abusive to her family”.

The suspect, who was a teenager at the time of the incident, told investigators that her father, who was married to two women, was “abusive, rough on everyone in both families and had prevented his children from continuing their education after the seventh grade, and going out to attend social gatherings”, court papers said.

The defendant plotted to kill her father almost five months before the incident to “put an end to the abuse”, according to the court documents.

On the night of the murder, the court maintained, the defendant went to the adjacent building where her father lived on his own and fired three times at close range as he slept, with gunshots in the head and in the back “to make sure he was dead”, the court added.

The defendant had contested the verdict claiming that “she committed the murder in self-defence and in a moment of rage”.

However, the Cassation Court ruled that “the defendant does not benefit from a reduction in penalty because the element of defence and rage do not apply in her case”.

“The defendant had plotted the murder almost five months before it occurred and she was not under any physical harm or threat by the victim when the murder occurred,” the higher court ruled.

The Cassation Court ruled that the verdict was appropriate and the Criminal Court had followed the proper trial procedures.

The tribunal comprised judges Mahmoud Ababneh, Basil Abu Anzeh, Mohammad Ibrahim, Mohammad Tarawneh and Daoud Tubeleh.