Wife Gets 40 Years in Slaying
A Buena Park woman who fatally shot her husband after she caught him in a sex act with a 16-year-old girl was sentenced Friday to 40 years to life in prison.
Sherry Derosiers, 31, was convicted May 19 of second-degree murder.
Orange County Superior Court Judge William Froeberg rejected a request by Deputy Public Defender Dan Bates to reduce the conviction to manslaughter.
Derosiers testified during her trial that she found her husband, Danny Derosiers, and the neighborhood teenager engaged in oral copulation in the couple’s home on Dec. 20, 2001.
Attorneys for both sides said the girl left as the couple argued, but then returned a short time later.
Derosiers’ attorney said her return escalated the confrontation.
Deputy Dist. Atty. Carolyn Carlisle-Raines, who had sought a first-degree murder conviction, said the amount of time that passed between the time Derosiers saw her husband with the girl and the moment she shot him was crucial to the case.
She also said Derosiers apologized to her husband before shooting him and that he was backing away when he was hit.
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