Woman says she killed her husband to escape ‘absolute hell,’ sentenced to prison

A woman convicted of shooting her husband to death while their three children were downstairs watching cartoons has been sentenced to 40 years to life in prison.

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Julie Harper was sentenced Friday in the death of 39-year-old Jason Harper, a popular math teacher and volleyball coach in Carlsbad.

Harper cried as she addressed the court for nearly 40 minutes, telling a Superior Court judge that her husband was a different person behind closed doors who put her through “absolute hell.”

But Judge Blaine Bowman told Harper he found her claim that the shooting was accidental inherently unbelievable and that she was “no doubt a danger to society.”

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In written statements, the couple’s children wrote about wanting their mother to have a lengthy sentence.

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