The couple, who'd been together about 20 years and married for four, had three children. According to the state Supreme Court decision out today, the couple argued often and McManus at times assaulted his wife. The fighting got worse, largely because McManus believed his wife was having an affair with a player on his softball team. Starting in March 1996, Kelly McManus relied on friends' protection from her husband's abuse.

On June 28, 1996, Joseph McManus packed belongings in a laundry basket and left the home following an argument. In the evening, after some drinks at several local taverns, McManus told a softball teammate, "If I can't have her, nobody is going to have her" and "If I can't have her, I will kill her."

Two of the children were home the early morning of June 29, 1996, when they heard McManus trying to get in the house, pleading with Kelly McManus to let him in. After he got in, he was heard pleading with her to sit down and talk. Eventually, McManus stabbed his 35-year-old wife with a kitchen knife. He kept stabbing her until their son hit him over the head with a coffee table, according to the high court decision.

At his Superior Court sentencing, Judge Judith Savage said: "Everyone is blaming themselves for this tragedy, but the blame, Mr. McManus, lies . . . with you."

McManus's appeal to the high court argued there were case errors, contending that he was entitled to a new trial because the state "deliberately failed to provide him with two statements" in the court process known as discovery, the high court decision says.

Other arguments were that: The trial court erred in denying his motion to disqualify one of the two prosecutors in the case; McManus should get a new trial because of his lawyers had a conflit of interest with one prosecutor; and the Superior Court erred in denying McManus' request for a mistrial. Also, appellate counsel for McManus argued in a supplemental brief that a life imprisonment was unwarranted in the case.

But the state Supreme Court decision states that after reviewing the case record, "we conclude that the trial justice captured perfectly the defendant's bad character and evil propensities. It comes as little surprise that an individual capable of committing such a brutal slaying would be the same individual who inflicted a lifetime of abuse on his wife and children."

Justice Francis Flaherty dissented, saying that while "there is no doubt this was a brutal murder for which the defendant was convicted of first-degree murder," he said after reviewing the record he did not conclude the case should be include in a narrow group of cases of the most heinous crimes "for which this most extreme sentence should be reserved." Flaherty states he would reduce the sentence to life imprisonment.