BATTERED WIFE SET FREE : WOMAN WHO KILLED ABUSIVE HUSBAND RELEASED FROM PRISON.

Byline: Jeannette DeSantis Daily News Staff Writer

Brenda Aris killed her abusive husband in 1986, setting off a landmark legal case that affirmed the use of the battered women's defense in California courts.

And on Thursday, Aris was allowed to leave prison three years before the end of her 15-year sentence - the first commutation of its kind in California.

For Aris, none of these firsts could eclipse the pain of her past, as she walked out of the California Institution for Women at Frontera and into the arms of her children.

``I killed the man I loved, the father of my children,'' a tearful Aris said in an interview after her release. ``You don't ever get over something like that, but I honestly believed he was going to kill me.''

Gov. Pete Wilson understood Aris' plight and commuted her sentence in 1993.

``Although I cannot condone the killing, even of Rick Aris, and the choices made by Aris on that fatal night, I feel compassion for the woman who is before me,'' Wilson wrote.

The court record, he said, proved beyond a doubt that her husband was ``chronically guilty of the most extraordinary cruelty and severe physical abuse'' and had ``threatened to kill his wife if she ever tried to leave him.''

Aris' was one of 20 clemency petitions that Wilson reviewed so far from women who claimed their abuse drove them to murder. He shortened the sentences for only Aris and a 78-year-old, chronically ill woman.

It was a move that was supported by even the family of Rick Aris.

``They knew what I went through and although it wasn't right what I did, they understood,'' Aris said of her in-laws. ``They always expected to get a phone call saying that he had killed me.''

In fact, Aris said if not for her in-laws, the governor may have never granted her clemency.

``I am out because of them,'' she said. ``The only thing going for me that others didn't have was the victim's family on my side. I don't know why I was blessed with them.''

Much has changed since Aris was last free.

When she entered prison, her three daughters were 3, 6 and 9. Now they are 12, 16 and 19. Her oldest daughter has made her a grandmother.

``It will always be difficult for them to deal with this,'' Aris said, who expects to work for a local lumber company. ``There is a lot of adjusting to do and getting to know each other again.''

Her attorney, Chee Davis, said Aris was a ``classic battered woman'' who was pushed to murder by the abuse.

Aris first met Rick Aris, six years her senior, as a shy 16-year-old high school student from Norwalk. They married in 1977, when Aris was 17 and four months' pregnant with their first daughter.

During Aris' trial, witnesses testified that Rick Aris was violent and addicted to drugs and alcohol. They said they often noticed Aris with broken bones, black eyes, bruises and a wired-shut, broken jaw.

Rick Aris, an ex-felon, was unemployed for most of their marriage and often would steal Aris' welfare check. He beat Aris the day before she was to undergo a hysterectomy. The reason: He was furious that she could not give him a son.

On the night he was killed, Rick Aris had held a party for a friend headed to jail. By nightfall, a drunk and high Rick Aris had beaten his wife in front of the partygoers.

``He pulled my hair back real hard to where my neck felt like he was breaking it,'' she testified during her trial. ``He began hitting me and telling me that he didn't think he was going to let me live till the morning.''

Aris retreated to a neighbor's house and found a gun there.

She brought it home for protection, knowing that her husband would beat her again when he awoke. Terrified, she fired five bullets into him as he slept.

Aris was convicted of second-degree murder. She appealed because the judge had not allowed an expert on battered women's syndrome to testify that Aris suffered from the condition.

An appellate court ruled that battered women's syndrome is an acceptable defense, but it refused to overturn her conviction, saying she had not been in imminent danger when she shot her husband to death.

Aris' case prompted changes in California law on domestic abuse.

By statute, an expert may now testify as to the effect that domestic violence may have upon the physical, emotional and mental perceptions and behavior of the abused spouse.

``Women are given more leniency in court because of my case,'' Aris said, ``and attorneys are using my case to make sure testimony about domestic abuse is allowed at their trial. That is very important to me.''

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PHOTO (color) Reporters surround Brenda Aris on Thursday outside the California Institution for Women.

Peter Phun/Special to the Daily News