BY JANICE MORSE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
HAMILTON -- When Sherry Mariana was a child, her father beat her repeatedly and let her brothers do it, too; he once watched idly as a pit bull terrier bit her all over her body.
She married at 16 and was beaten so badly while five months pregnant that the twins she was carrying died.
She kept associating with men who hit her; she went to hospitals, but lied about the way she was hurt.
She was ashamed. She was embarrassed.
And often, Ms. Mariana said in testimony Thursday, she "just blacked out" the abuse rather than deal with it.
That history -- gathered through interviews -- convinced two expert witnesses that Ms. Mariana, who is standing trial for the murder of her boyfriend, has suffered a lifetime of abuse, court testimony revealed Thursday. But the experts disagreed on whether Ms. Mariana acted in self-defense -- and whether she was afraid specifically of Herman Colwell Jr. -- on the morning he was shot to death.
Those appear to be the central issues a Butler County Common Pleas Court jury must begin deliberating todayafter lawyers give closing arguments in Ms. Mariana's trial. It began Monday.
Ms. Mariana, 36, spent nearly two hours testifying in her own defense Thursday -- and spent about half that time crying, even bawling, as lawyers asked about the events leading to Mr. Colwell's Dec. 21 death.
She testified that Mr. Colwell, 27, had been hanging around her for about three or four months and was becoming increasingly jealous and controlling.
Ms. Mariana said he had slapped her, giving her a black eye; he moved into her house without permission and wouldn't leave; he purposely bit her on the cheek and inside the front of her lower lip -- an injury that she displayed for the jury at the insistence of her lawyer, Clayton Napier.
On the night of Dec. 20, Mr. Colwell allegedly became enraged when he learned she had been socializing with another man. She said Mr. Colwell was "acting crazy" when she returned home early Dec. 21. He shoved her, striking her head against her car door, she said. Mr. Colwell, tests showed, had alcohol, marijuana and large amounts of cocaine and amphetamines in his body.
Ms. Mariana, who has a history of chronic pelvic pain, said Mr. Colwell forced her to have sex. While allegedly being attacked, she didn't cry out, she said, because "I didn't want my son to see me."
Her son, David, 19, was sleeping in a nearby bedroom; he later called 911 after hearing the shot that killed Mr. Colwell. He said he saw a shotgun on the floor and his mother standing near Mr. Colwell's body.
Both mother and son testified they were afraid that Mr. Colwell would kill them.
Dr. Roger H. Fisher, a Fairfield clinical psychologist who testified for the defense, said Ms. Mariana convinced him that she didn't intend to hurt Mr. Colwell.
"She told me she thought he'd respect the idea of her holding a gun and that would be enough," he said. Further, Dr. Fisher said, Ms. Mariana believed the gun was unloaded. It had been unloaded for safety during her recent move to a new house; she didn't know her son had reloaded it, Dr. Fisher said.
Ms. Mariana said she doesn't remember the shooting. "I don't remember how I got there. I've told the police everything, but they don't believe that," she said. Ms. Mariana said she only remembers parts of what happened. She cited repeated blackouts and a feeling of being outside her body, watching rather than participating in the action. "I can't explain it," she said several times.
A clinical psychologist who testified for the prosecution, Dr. Nancy Schmidt Goessling of Cincinnati, acknowledged battered women sometimes report such "out-of-body" experiences. She also said Ms. Mariana's below-average intelligence impedes her expression of abstract concepts.
However, Dr. Goessling said she didn't believe Ms. Mariana could employ the so-called "battered woman's defense" because during a two-hour interview, Ms. Mariana didn't report any specific fear of Mr. Colwell's behavior escalating that night.
But Dr. Fisher, who said he spent 15 hours talking with Ms. Mariana, interpreted her incommunicativeness differently: "She's a very difficult person to extract information from. Her usual mode is to deny and cover up."
