National Spokeswoman for Battered Women: Is She Telling the Truth? : California: Brenda Clubine’s description of the events that precipitated killing of her husband doesn’t match her murder trial testimony. Gov. Pete Wilson denied her bid for clemency, saying she has ‘repeatedly lied.’

In interview after interview, Brenda Clubine paints her life as a cycle of endless abuse meted out by a husband who stabbed her, ripped the skin off her face and threatened to kill her before she finally, and fatally, brought an empty wine bottle down on his head.

From behind bars, she has transformed herself into a nationally recognized and impassioned advocate for battered women who killed in self-defense.

But is Brenda Clubine telling the truth?

The 42-year-old former waitress was convicted of second-degree murder in 1984, seven years before Battered Women’s Syndrome was legally recognized by California courts in self-defense arguments. She is serving a sentence of 15 years to life.

Now, contending that she suffered from the syndrome at the time of the killing, Brenda Clubine wants out.

For the last year, in national newspapers and on television talk shows, she has spun a heart-wrenching story--one that eventually prompted legal advocacy groups and two state legislators to demand her release.

But her woeful tale doesn’t match her murder trial testimony. Gov. Pete Wilson denied her clemency petition in May, saying Clubine has “repeatedly lied to the police, the court, the media and the board”--the Board of Prison Terms, which conducts parole hearings--about her husband’s murder, and even her own background.

Clubine, the governor said, did not suffer from Battered Women’s Syndrome. Even her own trial attorney, Theodora Poloynis-Engen, agreed with that assessment during a recent interview.

A spokeswoman for the Philadelphia-based National Clearinghouse for Defense of Battered Women declined comment on Clubine’s contradictory statements, and worried that debunking Clubine’s story could disparage battered women and the syndrome’s legal use.

“We are so eager as a society to discredit women,” Sue Osthoff said. “The main point here is that people continue to misunderstand battered women and the reality of their lives.”

Osthoff praised Clubine’s clemency efforts as “a model to other incarcerated women.”

Loosely defined, Battered Women’s Syndrome, or BWS, is a behavioral condition applied to systematically abused women who, in the face of imminent danger, kill their abusers in self-defense. Most states now allow the syndrome to be introduced as evidence, Osthoff said.

In a jailhouse interview with the Associated Press conducted after Wilson denied her clemency, Clubine said the governor “didn’t do his homework.” She angrily ended the interview by admonishing a reporter to check court documents.

“I don’t have to defend myself,” she said.

An Associated Press review of Clubine’s trial testimony, police interrogations, media statements and a 1992 book on abuse featuring her life’s story revealed widely contradictory accounts.

In those documents, she tells conflicting stories not only about how she killed her husband, but also about seemingly innocuous information such as when and how she met him, how long they were married and what he did for a living.

And although no one disputes that Robert Clubine struck her during their tempestuous, seven-month marriage, there is no agreement--not even from Brenda Clubine herself--on the frequency or severity of those incidents.

Clubine testified that on the night she killed her husband, he had slapped her twice. She also testified that she drugged him, gave him a back rub, then clubbed him with a wine bottle when he raised his arm. After that, while he lay unconscious, she stabbed him and stole his money, she said.

In the 1992 book “Wednesday’s Children,” which contains first-person accounts of physical abuse, Clubine told a completely different story. In this one, she said Robert knocked her front teeth out and slammed her head into a table before she whacked him with the bottle. She doesn’t mention drugging him and emptying his wallet.

To the Associated Press, Clubine said she struck her husband only once, during a long night in which “things got out of control.” She angrily denied taking his money.

Under oath during her murder trial, the prosecutor asked, “Is there a doubt in your mind you repeatedly hit him in the head with the wine bottle?”

“No,” Clubine replied.

“After you were done repeatedly hitting him in the head with the wine bottle, you twice stabbed him with a knife. Is that true?” the prosecutor inquired.

“Yes, sir,” she responded.

“After you stabbed him with a knife, you stole what money he had; isn’t that true?”

“Yes,” she testified.

Clubine’s best hope for freedom rests with the Board of Prison Terms, which twice has denied her parole. Her next hearing is scheduled for Oct. 29.

Her clemency campaign has included founding Convicted Women Against Abuse, a self-help group for women imprisoned before BWS was recognized by California courts.

The organization’s preeminent purpose is to persuade Wilson to follow the lead of Maryland’s and Ohio’s governors in granting clemency to incarcerated BWS sufferers. In 1990 and 1991, 26 women in Ohio and eight in Maryland were granted clemency. Similar drives have been introduced in at least 20 states, including New York.

Last year, Clubine and her group attracted the sympathies of Jackie Speier and John Burton, Democratic state legislators representing the Bay Area. The lawmakers paid for a full-page New York Times ad that carried Clubine’s picture and urged Wilson to pardon her.

Wilson thus far has considered 16 clemency petitions, and denied all but two.

Rejecting Clubine’s, he wrote, “The picture of Ms. Clubine at the time she killed Robert is not a portrait of a helpless and dependent victim of domestic violence. She apparently used the victim for her own selfish purposes, and I cannot excuse or forgive her for the murder of her husband.”