After years of abuse, an Orlando jury acquitted a woman of murdering her former stepfather, who later became her husband, concluding that she acted in self-defense.
Danielle Redlick, 46, was overcome with emotion after the decision was read on Friday afternoon.
On Thursday, the jury began deliberations and acquitted her of second-degree murder on Friday.
She was convicted of tampering with evidence but not of stabbing NBA executive Michael Redlick, 65, to death at their Winter Park home.
According to one jury, the state allowed too much space for reasonable doubt.
‘When you have a history of abuse, and so many other factors, and you can’t say 100 percent because this is someone’s life that is being determined,’ the juror said, according to WESH 2.
‘We can only do the best we can and the jury was happy with the selection.’
They met in the late 1990s, when he began dating Kathleen Aquino, her mother.
Following her breast cancer diagnosis, Michael and Kathleen married in late 1999 to give her access to his health insurance coverage; she died later that year.
Prior to his murder, Redlick, who worked at the University of Central Florida’s DeVos Sport Business Management Program as the director of external affairs and partnership relations, told a witness that his wife was ‘crazy – but as long as I hide the steak knives, I should be good.’
On January 11, 2019, Danielle said Michael stabbed himself after discovering romantic text messages from another man on her phone. He had a heart attack, she subsequently said.
She then modified her narrative to say she stabbed him in the shoulder in self-defense, admitting she stabbed him but claiming he was strangling her at the time.
The couple had been married for 17 years and had two children, 11 and 15, together.
The scene of the home after Redlick called 911 to report her husband had been stabbed – 11 hours after police claim it happened – is shown in images and video from the investigation.
In the meantime, they discovered she had been using a dating app.
Red streaks on the flooring and blood splatters on the walls of the kitchen, living room, and master bedroom were reported by police.
After officials discovered bloodied towels, a mop, and a bucket, prosecutors said there were clues Redlick tried to clean up the scene.
A bloody knife was discovered on the floor, and two others were discovered in the sink.
Michael Redlick died after a stab wound to the torso that cut the basilic vein, according to an amended autopsy report.
Police were told by the medical examiner that he would bleed out in five to six minutes.
Danielle Redlick declined to talk about the night her husband died in an interview with detectives at an Orlando hospital.
They had gotten into an altercation over a text sent to her by another man, she explained.
‘He found a text from another man to me,’ she told Winter Park police, in a January 12, 2019 interview at AdventHealth Orlando.
‘We had had some issues and, last year, he basically cheated on me and it was a big, long drawn-out thing.
‘And we finally came around to living together again and possibly trying to work it through, but I think that really wasn’t happening and, in my mind, it was inevitably going to probably separate again.’
The state prosecutor, Sean Wiggins, told the jury that the couple’s home after the murder was a “horror scene.”
‘The evidence will show that, from the start, this defendant did everything she could to avoid responsibility for her actions,’ he said in his opening statement.
In closing arguments, one of her public defenders, Andrew Parnell, claimed that Michael Redlick abused her throughout the couple’s relationship.
Michael’s anxieties about his age and need for erectile dysfunction treatment, according to him, led to aggression towards Danielle, which included punching her, pinning her down, strangling her, looking her in the eyes as he attacked her.
Parnell claimed she was trapped, tied down, and smothered in her kitchen, believing she was about to die at the hands of her own husband.
On Friday, he was asked how Danielle was doing outside of court.
On August 2, she will be sentenced for tampering with evidence.
‘Her reaction? Happy again to be able to go home,’ Parnell said. ‘Very happy to be able to go home.’