Shanahan Duty granted work release

    STATE – Dixie Shanahan Duty, 50, Defiance, convicted of second-degree murder in 2004 in the shooting death of her husband, Scott Shanahan, has been granted work release by the Iowa Board of Parole.
    The board made the decision on June 5, but hasn’t announced a date when the work release will be effective.
    Duty has been an inmate at the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women in Mitchellville, roughly 20 miles east of Des Moines, since her conviction 14 years ago.
    Work release means Duty will be allowed to leave the facility for employment purposes, and in the future, the work release center will monitor and determine if Duty is successful and she might be recommended for parole.
    Duty was first eligible for parole in 2014, but the parole board has denied parole each of the last four years.
Trial
    The Shanahan Duty trial was one of the most high profile cases in Shelby County and western Iowa.  A former reporter for the Omaha World-Herald, John Ferak, who covered the trial for the newspaper, chronicled the case years later in his book Dixie’s Last Stand.  Was it Murder or Self-Defense?
    A Shelby County jury on April 30, 2004 found Dixie, then 36, guilty of second-degree murder.  At trial, she had claimed she shot her husband in self-defense and had suffered years of verbal and physical abuse.
    Dixie originally was sentenced to 50 years in prison, and eligible for parole after 35 of those years, but then Gov. Tom Vilsack commuted her sentence to a minimum of 10 years in prison.  At the time, Vilsack said Scott Shanahan’s abuse of Dixie was “a contributing factor in the unfortunate series of events.”
    Many Shelby Countians still remember and know the story of Dixie that unfolded at trial.