Dad beats mom and gets just 1 year in jail; 9-year-old daughter had to call 911 (Chandler, Arizona)

This is an excellent column by Laurie Roberts of the Arizona Republic. Dad JIM HANSON beat his wife who had left him the year before, leaving her with a broken nose and the need for 42 stitches in her face. Their poor, horrified 9-year-old daughter made the 911 phone call, after finding mom all bloodied on the floor. But don't cry for poor daddy, because he got a plea deal out of it. So he'll just get one year in jail.

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Laurie Roberts is a columnist for The Arizona Republic.

Wife beater's defense: she was unfaithful
The 911 tape begins with the screams of a little girl.

“My mom is hurt,” she cries, her voice flat over the edge into full-scale panic, as you might imagine when a 9-year-old finds her mother, beaten and bloodied on the floor

Pandemonium ensues as an operator tries to assess what's going on and in the background, you can hear the child's mother, talking as calmly as she can to her daughters, trying to reassure them that she's OK. Trying to teach them that what's happened isn't OK.

“Daddy's going to be in trouble,” she tells them. “You don't do this to people.”

If only the adults understood that. The ones at the county attorney's office who cut a quick plea deal and let this guy off with the lowest possible felony – one the victim says she learned about only after it was done. And the ones on the other side of the case, her soon-to-be ex-husband and his attorney, who said there was no excuse for what happened then blamed it on the woman with the broken nose and 42 stitches in her face.

“Everything started with an unfaithful wife,” defense attorney Jose Montano told the judge at Friday's sentencing. “An unfaithful wife going around with other people, provoking her husband.”
That's what he said. Honest.

Samantha Hanson split from her husband, Jim, about a year ago, not because she was seeing someone, she told me, but because she was fed up with the abuse -- the put downs in public and the emotional and physical hits in private.

She prosecuted once before, after he slapped her, she said, and threw her to the ground at a Super Bowl Party in 2007. For that he was allowed to go into counseling rather than face criminal charges. Apparently, he didn't learn much because on June 16, he dropped by her Chandler apartment and proceeded to beat her up as she cooked dinner for their daughters.

This, because she was on the phone and wouldn't tell him who she was talking to.

The Maricopa County Attorney's Office moved quickly, with a newbie prosecutor offering to drop two charges and reduce the aggravated assault count to the lowest possible felony. The deal would give him a chance to avoid jail.

Samantha Hanson and a Chandler police victim's advocate objected, saying they didn't learn about the plea deal until it was already done.

Barbara Marshall, a seasoned prosecutor who took over the case after Samantha raised a stink, told me the victim knew. She claims the office sent Samantha a letter a week after the June 16 incident and that she never responded, so the plea was offered. On July 1.

Quick work, that. A little too quick, if it's justice you seek and not just a cleared case.

On Friday, Marshall asked Judge David Palmer to give Hanson a year in jail, the maximum allowed under the plea. She said she doubted he would have gotten any more time behind bars had he gone to trial on the more serious charge.

That, of course, we will never know. Had Hanson and his attorney proceeded at trial as they did at Friday's sentencing, I'm guessing the guy might have been hammered.

“All he wanted to do is be able to see his kids, but what happened? She started going on out with the neighbors, ignoring Mr. Hanson's phone calls,” Montano said. “He wasn't allowed to see his children at night because she was partying late. That's when he decided to go over to the house.”

Where he found her making stir fry, preparing to watch iCarly with her 9- and 7-year-old daughters.

Hanson told the judge that he didn't punch her. No, this 6'2” 245-pound man just shoved her because he thought she was going for a gun

“The damage was done from her tripping and falling and hitting the wall and I was, at that point, in a fight or flight response ”

He then fled, leaving his young daughters to find their bleeding mother on the floor. There was no gun, by the way. (She had taken his gun when she left but says she stored it in her girlfriend's safe.)

Hanson's friends have rallied around him, calling him a devout Christian and “the most moral and truthful of men.” “I can find no flaw in his character,” wrote one, in a letter to the judge. Another called him “a hard working solid guy with solid morals and the strongest set of family values I know."

Well, the moral guy with the family values gave his wife a lip that was split all the way to her nose, a broken nose, a gash to her forehead and scars that she will carry the rest of her life.

But hey, she deserved it, right?

Fortunately, the judge saw through it, calling attempts to justify the beating “very very distressing to me.” Palmer gave Hanson nine months in jail and three years of probation, holding three more possible months behind bars in reserve in case he bothers her again.

It was best he could do, I suppose.

Not long ago, a Glendale woman and her daughter were stabbed to death by her husband, who also stabbed their son. At the time, I wrote a column wondering why she had been unwilling to testify against him when the abuse began.

I begin to see why.

(Column published Sept. 2, 2009, The Arizona Republic)