Thursday, January 21, 2016
Staff report
YOUNGSTOWN
A woman who has served more than 81/2 years of her 13-year prison sentence for fatally shooting her boyfriend has asked the sentencing judge for early release from prison.
The request was made last week by Latoya G. Ingram, 38, who drew the prison time from Judge Maureen A. Sweeney of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court for the June 2007 death of her boyfriend, Sherman Moody, 54, of Logan Gate Road, Liberty.
Ingram, who initially was charged with murder with a firearm specification, pleaded guilty to the reduced charge of voluntary manslaughter with a firearm specification.
When police arrived at Ingram’s Byron Street residence, where the shooting occurred, Ingram told them she felt threatened by Moody, so she shot him.
Moody was shot multiple times with a pistol, which police found at the scene along with six spent shell casings.
In Ingram’s motion for judicial release, her lawyer, Douglas B. Taylor of New Middletown, cited her “long history of mental illness,” her having suffered years of abuse, and her not having any prior criminal record.
Robert J. Andrews, an assistant county prosecutor, declined to comment Tuesday on the prosecution’s position concerning the motion.
Judge Sweeney has not yet ruled on the motion.
Evaluations found Ingram sane at the time of the shooting and competent to stand trial, but a psychologist found that she suffered from battered-woman syndrome because of earlier abusive relationships she had been in and that she was mentally ill, Taylor said at Ingram’s sentencing.