Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 11, 1994 TAG: 9401110193
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: MANASSAS LENGTH: Medium
Looking tired but composed, Lorena Bobbitt was whisked through a phalanx of TV cameras and reporters to face charges of malicious wounding in the same courtroom where her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, was acquitted of sexually assaulting her in Round 1 of the Bobbitt battle in November.
She faces up to 20 years in prison.
In opening remarks to the jury of seven women and five men, Bobbitt's attorneys indicated they plan to argue that she was driven to the mental edge by years of physical and verbal abuse by her bar-bouncer husband - driven to the point where, on the night of June 23, she cut off his penis with a kitchen knife in a temporary fit of insanity as he lay sleeping following what she says was a bout of forced sex.
Beaten so badly that she sometimes looked like she had been attacked "by a wild animal," pressured into having an unwanted abortion and constantly humiliated by her muscular, 200-pound, ex-Marine husband, Lorena Bobbitt was the "classic battered woman," said defense attorney Lisa Kimler. In the end, Kimler said, Lorena Bobbitt was driven over the edge by one sexual assault too many in the four-year "reign of terror" that was her marriage.
"What we have is Lorena Bobbitt's life juxtaposed against John Wayne Bobbitt's penis," Kimler said. "It was his penis from which she could not escape and . . . I submit to you that at the end of this case you will come to one conclusion: that a life is more valuable than a penis."
Drawing on testimony from friends, acquaintances and medical experts, the defense team will try to convince the jury that Lorena Bobbitt surrendered to an "irresistible impulse" when she went into the kitchen of her Prince William County apartment, came back with a knife, and severed her husband's penis after he forced himself on her following a night of bar-hopping with a friend.
John Bobbitt, taking the stand as the prosecution's first witness, denied that he had forced his wife to have sex with him on the night in question. He said she had initiated the love-making that evening by fondling him in bed, but he was "too exhausted to perform" and quickly fell asleep.
by CNB