Florida woman facing life in prison for stabbing ex-boyfriend to death over breakup
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Melanie Eam, left, is facing life in prison after being found guilty of second-degree murder for stabbing her ex-boyfriend James Barry, right, to death in Florida after he broke up with her. (Facebook)
A 22-year-old woman in Palm Beach County, Florida, is facing life in prison after being found guilty of stabbing her ex-boyfriend to death in Florida after he broke up with her, according to reports.
WPTV reported Melanie Eam will be sentenced on April 3 for the second-degree murder of James Barry in a Loxahatchee Acreage home in 2016.
Reports said her defense argued that the boyfriend of Barry’s mother, Guy Hand, fought with Eam about Eam and Barry’s tumultuous relationship. They argued that Barry got in the middle of their fight, winding up stabbed, by accident or negligence, WPTV said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}But jurors sided with prosecutors, who painted what happened as a crime of passion.
“You can use your common sense,” Prosecutor Scott Reid said to jurors, according to WPTV. “You’re sitting in a place where you’re safe, you’re with two officers. If you watched another man kill the person that you say you love, that’s when you say: 'Look, Guy Hand is the one who stabbed him. James and I were in an argument, Guy Hand came in.’ As the defense would have you believe, he got in the middle of it and he stabbed James.
"She didn’t say that.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}CBS12 reported that there was a hung jury last fall over whether to convict her of a murder charge or manslaughter, a less serious offense — necessitating this second trial.