In the late afternoon of a December day in Moscow, Tennessee, the life of 38-year-old Jack S. Jetton, a Caucasian male, came to an abrupt and violent end inside his own home. On December 16, 2015, Fayette County sheriff's deputies were dispatched to the Slayden Road residence after a distressing 911 call was received at 4:44 p.m. The caller was Jack Jetton's 35-year-old wife, Charis Jetton, who informed the dispatcher that she had just shot her husband.
Upon their arrival, law
enforcement officers discovered Jack Jetton unresponsive on the kitchen floor, having sustained a single gunshot wound to his chest. Also present in the home at the time of the shooting were the couple's three young children, aged 2, 3, and 12. The children were secured by the responding officers. According to an affidavit, Charis Jetton told authorities that a verbal and physical altercation had preceded the shooting. She stated that during the argument, she retrieved a. 380 pistol from a kitchen cabinet and shot her husband once in the chest. The weapon was recovered from the cabinet where she indicated it would be.
Charis Jetton was taken into custody and initially charged with second-degree murder for the death of her husband. She was booked into the Fayette County jail on a $300,000 bond. The case proceeded through the legal system, and ultimately, Charis Jetton pleaded guilty to the lesser charges of voluntary manslaughter and possession of a firearm during the commission of a dangerous felony.
The court imposed consecutive sentences of seven years for the voluntary manslaughter conviction and three years for the firearm charge, to be served in the Tennessee Department of Correction. An appeal was later filed by Charis Jetton, in which she sought an alternative sentence for the voluntary manslaughter conviction, arguing that she had been a victim of years of abuse. Evidence was presented suggesting she suffered from a mental illness. However, the appellate court affirmed the original decision, requiring her to serve the seven-year sentence in confinement. She had admitted during the investigation that she was not in fear for her life or of imminent bodily injury at the moment she shot her husband from a distance of no more than six to eight feet.
