PANAMA CITY - A Canadian woman stood stone-faced as she received a 21 year, 8 month prison sentence Tuesday for her part in the bludgeoning death - apparently with a hammer - of her husband, an officer in Canada's air force.
Monique Turenne, 48, of Winnipeg, Manitoba, expressed no remorse and continued to insist she was innocent before Circuit Judge Michael Overstreet gave her the maximum possible sentence for second-degree murder under guidelines from 1996, when her husband was killed outside their Panama City home.
''There's other information that will come to light very soon,'' she told the judge and accused the state of ''malicious prosecution.''
Wearing an orange jumpsuit with ''Bay County Jail'' printed on the back in big black letters, she stood beside her lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Walter Smith, who said a notice of appeal will be filed Wednesday.
Overstreet noted that current guidelines, adopted two years after the killing, would have allowed him to impose a life sentence.
Relatives of the victim, Maj. David Turenne, 42, urged the judge to order the maximum while Smith asked for the minimum - 13 years - citing her lack of a prior criminal record.
''You are the worst kind of thief,'' the victim's niece, Mary Oscarson, 24, of Winnipeg, told Monique Turenne. ''You take away lives from innocent people. . . . You robbed your children of their father. . . . You are poison to your children.''
She, her mother and an aunt, both sisters of David Turenne, read statements while standing only a few feet away face-to-face with Monique Turenne, who had one son from a prior marriage and another with the victim.
In a rambling statement to the judge, Monique Turenne claimed her husband's family never had shown such support for him while he was alive. Oscarson's mother, Pat Turenne, 53, of Tyndall, Manitoba, afterward said the family felt relief and hoped the sentence would bring some closure to their grief.
''We ought to feel better,'' she said. ''It's hard to feel good at this. There's so many people that are hurt and children don't have a mother and so forth. But this is what is right.''
U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Ralph Crompton, 50, who said he was Monique Turenne's lover, was convicted of first-degree murder in 1996 and is serving a life sentence.
Monique Turenne also had been charged with first-degree murder, but her jury in June convicted her instead of the lesser included offense of second-degree murder.
''It's ironic that Mr. Crompton, who I believe was a puppet in her hands, is serving a life sentence and she will at one point in her 60s be able to once again see her homeland,'' said State Attorney Steve Meadows, who prosecuted both defendants.
Crompton testified at his trial that Monique Turenne set him up for a confrontation with her husband, who was part of a U.S-Canadian air defense unit at nearby Tyndall Air Force Base. They were fighting when Monique Turenne struck the victim with a hammer, Crompton claimed. The murder weapon never was found.
Monique Turenne returned to Canada, fought extradition and when finally tried declined to take the witness stand. Canadian police officers testified that she admitted setting her husband up for a beating but insisted he was not supposed to be killed. After her conviction, she claimed that a stranger broke into the family's home and committed the murder.
Last week, she filed papers trying to fire Smith, claiming he had done nothing to help her. She withdrew her request Tuesday after being assured another lawyer will handle her appeal.