Lynn Benton Murder Conviction Overturned By Oregon Appeals Court

OREGON CITY, OR — In the roughly 12,000-person city of Gladstone, everyone might not know everyone but pretty much everyone knew Debbie Higbee-Benton. Her hair and beauty salon were a fixture for more than two decades. Her husband, Lynn Benton, had been a member of the Gladstone Police Department for longer.

Most people knew Lynn Benton back to the days when the officer turned sergeant had been Lynne Benton, a female member of the force. It was only after meeting Higbee that Benton started transitioning to Lynn from Lynne.

On May 28, 2011, Benton's colleagues in the department responded Higbee's salon after getting a call from 911. There, they found Higbee dead. An autopsy soon after revealed a gunshot wound to the back and evidence that she'd been strangled.

Police arrested a mother and son, the son claiming that they'd been paid $2,000 by benton to kill his wife.

Benton was fired months after his wife was killed though, ostensibly, t had nothing to do with his wife's murder. At the time, police said that it was because he'd had pornography on his department laptop and because, as Lynne in 1993, Benton married a Brazilian man for the purposes of getting him citizenship.

Benton was arrested the following year.

At trial, it was disclosed that Higbee, who started dating Benton in 2008, had objected to Benton's decision to transition to male, with happened two years later. Despite the disagreement, the two got married that year.

Benton admitted having a temper and being abusive of Higbee after they were married. He had been afraid that if it came out, he would lose his job. In April 2012 – a month before the murder – he moved out.

He would be found guilty of murder, attempted murder, and conspiracy.

Some of the evidence against Benton came from a jailhouse informant and that's where the path to the overturning his conviction began.

The Court of Appeals found that the jailhouse informant had crossed the line and become an active agent of the state in his dealings with Benton. the court ruled that that was a violation of Benton's rights.

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District Attorney John Wentworth, who had prosecuted the case as a deputy district attorney, could try Benton again or appeal the ruling of the Appeals Court.

Wentworth's office says that they are reviewing their options.