VISTA (CNS) - A Carlsbad woman who fatally shot her husband during an argument while their children watched cartoons downstairs will not have her sentence reduced in light of a recent gun law.
Julie Elizabeth Harper, 45, was convicted in October 2015 of second-degree murder in the death of her husband, Jason Harper. She was sentenced to 40-years-to-life in prison.
This year, the 4th District Court of Appeal found Harper's case is affected by a new law (Senate Bill 620) that took effect in 2018. The law gives judges the ability to add a "gun enhancement" to a defendant's sentence because they used a gun in the crime.
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In sentencing Harper in January 2016, Bowman said her testimony that her husband, a popular math teacher and volleyball coach at Carlsbad High, came at her in a rage and that she shot him accidentally was "inherently untrustworthy and not worthy of belief."
Harper's attorney, Gloria Collins, argued in court documents that the gunshot Harper fired was not an "execution-style" shot but rather a single shot that entered her husband's side and "unfortunately struck him in the heart."
WATCH JULIE HARPER'S EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH 10NEWS (JAN. 2016):
