A senior domestic violence prosecutor told a Suffolk Superior Court jury today that Sylvester Mitchell’s wife “stabbed him to death in anger,” not fear, and that the crime was murder, not self-defense.

Addressing jurors during closing arguments in her murder trial, Assistant District Attorney David Deakin said SHARON FITZPATRICK (D.O.B. 7/26/71) chose to hide the knife she used to stab Mitchell rather than call for help after the fatal conflict that claimed his life in the early morning hours of May 5, 2007 – Mitchell’s 40th birthday.

“During the argument, she did the almost unthinkable act of picking up this knife and stabbing him,” Deakin said. “An eviscerating stab wound to the abdomen and a second stab wound that pierced his heart. And what did she do next? She didn’t call 911. She didn’t call for help. She hid the knife. No one called 911 until [the victim’s brother] came upstairs.”

Deakin, the chief of Suffolk County DA Daniel F. Conley’s Family Protection and Sexual Assault Bureau, reminded jurors that Fitzpatrick – who was employed as a 911 dispatcher at the time of the incident, but did not call 911 before, during, or after the incident – was charged with second-degree murder, not first-degree murder.

“No one is suggesting that she deliberately and premeditatedly planned to kill him,” the prosecutor said. He recounted the efforts of Boston Police homicide detectives to determine whether Fitzpatrick had, in fact, acted in her own defense when she stabbed her husband in their Evans Street home.

“Did he do something to you,” detectives asked in a tape recorded interview that Deakin recalled. “Did he hurt you?”

Fitzpatrick said he had not, instead telling investigators that her husband had come home with the fatal injury – a story replaced by a self-defense claim at trial. Investigators documented her physical condition in the hours after the incident and again days later, taking photographs that revealed she “didn’t have a scratch on her.”

A forensic examination of Mitchell’s body showed that he hadn’t suffered any defensive wounds, Deakin said, indicating that there had been no struggle.

“She lied to police over and over again,” Deakin said, “for the oldest reason there is – because she was afraid of what the truth would say about her actions.”

Prosecutors allege that Fitzpatrick was angry because Mitchell had come home hours later than expected. She had called him nine times while he was out with friends, then locked him out of their residence, the prosecutor said.

“Not once in that statement [to detectives] does she ever say she was worried,” Deakin said. “No, ladies and gentlemen, she told police, ‘I was mad.’ She wasn’t concerned about his well-being – she was angry …. This was punishment for what he had done that night.”

Fitzpatrick’s actions were not consistent with those of someone in fear for her life, Deakin said, noting that, in the moments before stabbing her husband to death, she slashed a tire on the minivan in which he’d driven home.

“She didn’t want him to take the minivan and leave her with no way to get around,” he said.

“After the defendant stabbed her husband to death, she did not call 911,” the prosecutor said. “There was a phone next to her bed and she didn’t call 911 …. What did she do? She took that knife and she placed it behind the mirror on the far side of the room. That was a deliberate placement …. She tried to hide the evidence.”

Deakin repeatedly called into question the notion that Fitzpatrick was in fear for her life when she stabbed him to death.

“The fundamental dynamic of domestic violence is fear,” said Deakin, a career DV prosecutor. “There is nothing she says and no way that she says it that would even suggest that she was afraid of this man.”

After closing arguments, Judge Judith Fabricant instructed jurors on the relevant law. They began their deliberations early this afternoon.

Paula Connor is the DA’s victim-witness advocate assigned to the case. Fitzpatrick is represented by attorney Rosemary Scapicchio.