After three years of marriage, Anita Smithey shot her husband, Robert Cline, three times. She said he was raping her in their bed. She said the three shots she fired were in self-defense. “He had violent sex with me,” she told the police. But the police didn’t believe her. They said Anita Smithey was a killer. In February 2015, Smithey was found guilty of second-degree murder and handed a 40-year prison sentence.
Prosecutors convinced a Seminole County jury that after shooting Cline, Smithey stabbed herself in the side with a knife in order to make herself appear the victim. Prosecutors told the jury that she and Cline sometimes “played date rape and sometimes used a knife.” The Smithey/Cline murder case will be featured 48 Hours on April 25 at 10pm on CBS.
