Prosecutor Who Convicted 'Black Swan' of Manslaughter Claims Ballerina Faked Crying on Witness Stand

Former ballerina Ashley Benefield cried on the stand while she was on trial for killing her husband, tearfully telling jurors about the abuse she suffered during their marriage.

During the sensational “Black Swan Murder Trial” held earlier in 2024, Ashley, 32, was convicted of manslaughter in the 2020 shooting death of her husband, Douglas Benefield, 58, but acquitted on the more serious charge of second-degree murder.

She faces up to 30 years in prison when she is sentenced on Dec. 3.

Now, the prosecutor who tried the case claims that Ashley’s testimony was an exaggerated act.

In one of the most dramatic moments in the high-profile case, Ashley was asked to re-enact what led her to shoot her husband in Tampa on Sept. 27, 2020.

Suzanne O’Donnell, assistant state attorney for Florida’s 12th Judicial District, told NBC News’ Dateline that she asked Ashley to re-enact the shooting by stepping down from the witness stand. She said she had the lights turned up in the courtroom so that jurors could see her close up.

“Once I realized she was not really crying, I knew she had to get down in front of that jury,” O’Donnell told Dateline.

When Ashley stood in front of the jury, “she’s literally within feet,” of them, O’Donnell said. “And I wanted them to be able to see that.”

Making Ashley re-enact the shooting was “callous,” said Ashley’s lawyer Neil Taylor, Dateline reports.

“Whether or not the jury believed them to be real tears, I can only tell you they acquitted her of murder,” he told Dateline.

Prosecutors said that Ashley killed her estranged husband in her mother’s Lakewood Ranch home in 2020 because she wanted sole custody of their young daughter and didn’t want him in their lives anymore.

​​“This case is about a woman who very early on in her pregnancy decided she wanted to be a single mother,” O’Donnell told the jury in her opening statement, according to The Post and Courier. “And she did not want the father of this child to have any visitation [and] … she would stop at nothing to obtain that goal.”

Ashley’s attorney argued that Ashley killed her husband in self-defense.

“Thirty years older than Ashley, he was obsessed with her and he successfully portrayed himself as he was not in an effort to win her hand in marriage,” Taylor said, per WFLA. “Despite promoting himself as a religious, honorable, and decent human being, Benefield was a manipulative, cunning, and abusive man who insisted, absolutely insisted on control.”

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The two met at a Republican party fundraiser in 2016 when Ashley was a 24-year-old ballet dancer and Doug was a 54-year-old Navy veteran and technology consultant. They wed 13 days later. Then Ashley became pregnant with Doug’s child.

According to prosecutors, Ashley accused Doug of emotional abuse and claimed he’d tried to poison her with heavy metals, all in an attempt to rid him from her life, Fox 13 reports. 

In Sept. 2020, Ashley planned to move with the couple’s daughter to Maryland, where Doug also planned to relocate.

On Sept. 27, 2020, Doug was helping Ashley pack for the move when she shot him.

Ashley told police her husband had tried to attack her and she had shot him in self-defense.