She didn’t have to kill the bastard.

Barbara Sheehan hated her husband like a communicable disease, a bitterness she shared with her kids, plus probably 40 percent of American wives who fantasize daily about plugging their hubs.

But to actually do it?

In 2008, Barbara pumped 11 bullets, from two guns, into the body of her ex-cop hubby, Raymond, Sheehan while he was in a vulnerable position in their Howard Beach home — in the bathroom, shaving.

Yesterday, Barbara was acquitted of murder, having convinced a dozen Queens jurors that she was no coldblooded killer, but a battered woman who had no choice but to reverse role-play Bonnie and Clyde, or die.

KILLER WIFE IS ‘BULLETPROOF’

A ‘SWUNG’ JURY

In walking away from a murder charge — she still has to answer to a weapons conviction — Sheehan, 50, becomes the latest female to benefit from “battered woman’s syndrome.’’ It’s a last-ditch defense for those with no apparent reason to kill. In it, a female, and it’s always a female, can freely admit that she rubbed out her unarmed and unsuspecting husband, and get away with it.

The syndrome has grown in recent years from a legal defense into a full-fledged industry. It comes complete with a library of books by shrinks employing what prosecutor Debra Pomodore called “pseudoscience,’’ plus legions of marching supporters and lawyers who specialize in women’s victimology.

Just declaring oneself a battered woman is enough to change the subject. The violent suspect becomes the aggrieved party. And the dead guy changes from an innocent victim into the posthumous guilty party.

VIDEOS:



SHEEHAN NOT GUILTY OF MURDER



SISTER MAKES 911 CALL IN SHEEHAN CASE

But by turning a courtroom into a circus there is one casualty: the truth.

We may never know for certain if Barbara Sheehan was tormented or tormentor.

She testified during her nearly monthlong trial that her husband was an armed monster who punched her for no reason, often held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her when she promised to leave.

Prosecutors offered an alternate version.

Here was a woman whose spouse liked to engage in gross and kinky sex, sometimes in a diaper, sometimes with other people.

Her son, also named Raymond, 21, was confronted with an e-mail in which he wished his father “f—ing dead!’’ Though not for beating his mother, something about which he never complained. But because his father cheated on Mom.

This family needed a shrink, not a revolver.

And then there was the matter of Raymond Sr.’s insurance money. The wife benefitted handsomely from her man’s death.

Days after she was released from Rikers Island, she wrote to the financial firm where Raymond had worked in security, asking for details of his insurance policy.

But never mind. When battered women’s syndrome is invoked, even asking these questions is a violation.