A woman who killed her policeman husband has been given a 10-year jail sentence after her original conviction for murder was quashed on appeal.

Kim Galbraith, 33, had originally been given a life sentence in June 1999 after she was found guilty of shooting dead her husband Ian, 37, as he slept in the bedroom of their home in Furness in Argyll.

But appeal judges overturned Galbraith's conviction and ruled that she should face a retrial in a case which led to legal precedent.

She pleaded guilty on Tuesday at the High Court in Glasgow to culpable homicide on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Kim Galbraith said her husband abused her

Galbraith had told the judge at her trial that years of sexual abuse by her bullying husband had driven her to shoot him.

She was found guilty, but her lawyers challenged a ruling that evidence of mental illness was required before an accused could be held to be not fully responsible for their actions.

They claimed the ruling was contrary to the interests of justice.

The Crown accepted that the direction given to the jury at the original trial was unsound and told the court it did not oppose a change in the law.

The court heard how Galbraith stole her husband's loaded rifle and shot him in the head from close range while he was sleeping.

Galbraith initially alleged that two masked men had broken into her family home, shot her husband, raped her and set fire to the house.

First offender

On Tuesday, the judge, Lady Smith, described Galbraith's actions that night as "shocking events involving violence that is of a staggering degree.

"Your plea of culpable homicide has been accepted on the basis that you were of an abnormal mental condition and preoccupied that you were being sexually abused by your husband, of which there is no objective evidence."

At the earlier trial Galbraith said that she had been subjected to years of abuse at their home in Argyll.

Lady Smith said that although Galbraith was a first offender she had used a rifle and there was no option but to issue her with an extended sentence, which will see the 33-year-old put under supervision when released.

Lady Smith backdated the sentence to 14 January, 1999, the date Galbraith was first taken into custody.

Galbraith was led away from the dock to begin her sentence at Cornton Vale prison in Stirling.