FILLMORE — Carole Alden stood and took a deep breath before she spoke at her sentencing.
"To begin with, I loved my husband," she said.
The Delta woman was sentenced Thursday to serve up to 15 years in prison on charges of manslaughter and desecration of a body in connection with the murder of her husband, Martin Sessions.
"I am sorry," Alden said. "So sorry that he is not here to try to repair the damage that he participated in as well."
Alden claims she shot and killed her husband after years of enduring his beatings and drunken rages. Speaking in court, she said she doesn't know how to fix substance abuse.
"I don't expect anyone to forgive me," she said. "I did the best with what I had."
Behind her, Sessions' daughter, Edee, sobbed. She was comforted by her aunt, Rosemary Salyer.
"She knew his past. She knew what she was getting into," Salyer told the Deseret Morning News afterward.
It was an emotional day in court for people on both sides of the controversial murder case. At the center is Alden, an artist known for her whimsical, larger-than-life sculptures of animals. She had numerous supporters in court with her. Many have sent letters on her behalf to the judge, pleading for leniency.
Alden said she was a victim of domestic violence.
Millard County sheriff's deputies said that on July 28, 2006, Alden bought a .38 Special revolver at a pawn shop. That night, Sessions came home drunk and was punching walls and throwing things, she told deputies in a videotaped interview played at her preliminary hearing.
Fearful of her life, Alden told deputies she hid in a laundry room and then shot him. He stumbled back, then fell forward on his face. The air conditioning was blowing his shirt, she said, and she thought he was still breathing.
It was then, she told deputies, she placed a pillow over his head and shot him again. Alden then called her daughter, who lives in Fillmore.
"It's over, and I'm OK," Alden reportedly said.
She then dug Sessions a grave in the back yard, but he was too big for her to move. Alden said she tied a rope around his waist and hauled him out of their trailer home with her Jeep. She called a friend and told him what she had done. He told her to call 911. She did, but her friend already had called police.
"I still believe Carole was a victim of domestic violence. She behaved like an abused woman behaves when cornered," said Sylvia Huntsman, a volunteer chaplain at the Millard County Jail who has ministered to Alden since she's been incarcerated.
Fourth District Judge Donald Eyre seemed to acknowledge that when he sentenced her, giving her credit for a year she's already served in jail.