A woman in Florida has gotten a one-year prison sentence for shooting her terminally ill husband to death at a hospital in early 2023.
Ellen Gilland’s attorney had argued for probation, essentially characterizing the case as a mercy killing. But the presiding judge sentenced Gilland to prison because of the trauma and distress she inflicted on nursing staff, other patients, and law enforcement who responded to the killing.
Gilland, 78, pleaded no contest in December to charges of manslaughter with a firearm, two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and one count of aggravated assault of a law enforcement officer with a firearm, according to the Daytona Beach News Journal.
She was arrested in January 2023 after shooting and killing her 77-year-old husband, Jerry Gilland, in his hospital room at AdventHealth Daytona Beach while he grappled with a terminal illness, according to police.
Authorities reported that Gilland was involved in a nearly four-hour standoff with police, during which she reportedly pointed the gun at a nurse and a hospital security officer – and fired the weapon in the direction of authorities.
Daytona Beach police reported that Gilland said she had made a murder-suicide pact with her dying husband, which she said they had been planning for about three weeks before his killing.
According to the Associated Press, Gilland was unable to carry out the plan to turn the gun on herself after shooting her husband.
Initially, Gilland was charged with first-degree murder. But the charges were later reduced after a grand jury indictment, according to Florida’s WESH 2 News.
Gillard had been free on a $150,000 bond from 3 March 2023 until Friday, when she was sentenced to 366 days behind bars and then 12 years of probation.
According to reports, when deciding the sentence, Judge Kathryn Weston said that she acknowledged and accepted the testimony from Gilland that her husband was suicidal. But Weston also took into account the testimonies from law enforcement and civilian victims who reported that Gilland had threatened them with a firearm.
During the trial, a nurse testified that he left his job after Jerry Gilland’s killing.
“I didn’t feel safe any more, so I just needed to find other places to go,” Hector Aponte said, according to KBTX News 3. “I got nightmares. I do go to a psychologist, helps me out with it.”
According to testimony, the killing caused significant disruption, affecting the care of more than 30 of the hospital’s patients, who had to be relocated away from Jerry Gilland’s room for their safety, the Daytona Beach News Journal reported.
Ellen Gilland spent 42 days in pre-trial detention in the Volusia county jail, which will be credited toward the completion her sentence, as reported by Spectrum News 13.
On Friday, Weston also ordered Gilland to write letters of apology to the police and civilians whom she affected with her husband’s killing.
Gilland had been facing a punishment ranging from probation to 10 years in prison after her no-contest plea.
