Paralyzed husband sentenced in Stonington domestic violence case
Bryan J. Marshall, who became paralyzed in 2013 after cutting his wife's throat, setting fire to their Mystic home and jumping out a second-floor window during a domestic dispute, was sentenced last week to four months in prison followed by four years of probation.
The victim, Adrienne Amero-Marshall, who had been married to Marshall since 2003, survived the assault. They have since divorced.
Marshall, 53, most recently of Chicopee, Mass., had pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and third-degree arson in April as the case was headed to trial. Under a plea agreement worked out between prosecutor Lawrence J. Tytla and defense attorney William F. Dow III, he faced up to a year in prison when he went before Judge Hillary B. Strackbein for sentencing on July 11.
Dow argued for a fully suspended prison term based on Marshall's condition and because, he said, it would be a hardship for the Department of Correction to care for him during his incarceration. Marshall is a paraplegic, confined to a wheelchair or bed, who also suffers from other medical conditions and from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a sentencing memorandum Dow submitted to the court.
"He experienced a spinal cord injury," Dow wrote. "He is unable to walk. He is unable to balance. He is unable to go about any of his daily affairs unassisted. That is the prison to which he will be confined far beyond on any authority vested in this Court."
The judge had told Marshall when he entered his guilty plea that it was unlikely she would give him a fully suspended sentence. She imposed the sentence of eight years, suspended after four months served, followed by four years probation.
Court staff had checked with the correction department, where officials indicated they would accept any inmate that was sentenced to prison time and said that Marshall likely would be confined in a prison infirmary. He is being held at the Corrigan Correctional Institution in Montville, according to the DOC website.
Marshall claims he doesn't remember the incident that led to his arrest. His psychotherapist submitted a letter to the court indicating he suffers from "dissociative amnesia," or the inability to remember important aspects of a traumatic event.
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