Woman Given 2-Year Term in Shooting : Courts: She alleged that a neighbor raped her, and when district attorney declined to prosecute, she shot the man eight times. He survived.

A Los Angeles woman who shot her alleged rapist eight times was sentenced to two years in state prison Thursday.

Noting that defendant Elizabeth Gooden, 26, “has had a history of not being able to control her temper,” Los Angeles Municipal Judge Gary Klausner denied Gooden’s request for probation and ordered her imprisoned.

Gooden shot her neighbor, Wilson Piquet, outside his Crenshaw District apartment last July after the district attorney’s office refused her request to file charges against him for allegedly raping her twice.

After shooting Piquet once in the chest at point-blank range, Gooden shot him seven more times in the arms, legs and buttocks. Piquet, a school bus driver, survived.

The district attorney’s office maintained that there was insufficient evidence to support Gooden’s rape accusations.

Gooden, who originally faced an attempted murder charge, pleaded guilty last month to a reduced charge of assault with a deadly weapon.

Klausner admitted that the alleged rape probably prompted Gooden to shoot Piquet, but he explained to the defense that it was not enough to keep her out of prison.

“When you say she is not a danger to society, counsel, I cannot agree with that,” he told Gooden’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Mark Zuckman.

Klausner said his decision was based, in part, on the prosecutor’s allegations that Gooden once stabbed another man she accused of hitting her and physically beat a woman she suspected of secretly dating her boyfriend.

Zuckman maintained that Gooden had never been convicted of any of the alleged crimes.

“She’s law-abiding, and she’s intelligent,” Zuckman said. “She’s not a danger to society. Now, perhaps she’s a danger to rapists.”

Zuckman called the sentence “unfair.”

“It’s disappointing,” Zuckman said. “I really was hoping she’d get probation. She’ll be out in about eight months. It could have been worse. She could have gotten a longer term for the attempted murder charge.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Patricia Wilkinson conceded that the rape allegations complicated the case.

“Any time you’re dealing with an individual claiming they have been assaulted, and they take matters into their own hands, you have a difficult situation,” the prosecutor said. “But you just can’t go out and take the law into your own hands and shoot someone.”

A clinical psychologist who examined Gooden months after the alleged rape maintained that the defendant was suffering from “rape trauma syndrome.”

She said the condition compelled Gooden to shoot Piquet.

“The (sentencing) decision reflects a lack of understanding about the emotional distress of rape victims,” said the psychologist, Dr. Nancy Kaser-Boyd, who attended Thursday’s hearing. “Gooden’s action was a result of her mental state.”