Aaron Maldonado died that night in 2005, and Ms. Maldonado and their 16-year-old son, Randy, who participated in the killing, were arrested. Rather than face jury trials for murder, they accepted plea bargains that sent Randy to jail for 75 months and his mother for 10 years. At the sentencing hearing the judge said that he believed the Maldonados’ accounts of 20 years’ of horrific abuse, but that he couldn’t let them walk away, “because we don’t work that way.”

Image A documentary tells the story of Wendy Maldonado, who killed her abusive husband. Credit... Southern Oregon Public Defender's Office

The film tells this story almost entirely from Wendy and Randy Maldonado’s point of view, but it doesn’t feel one-sided; it’s easy to be convinced, as the judge was, of Ms. Maldonado’s credibility. The bulk of the film takes place in the four days before that April 2006 hearing. (After her conviction Ms. Maldonado was allowed to remain out on bail until her three younger sons’ spring break.) The cameras are inside the house as she packs for prison, bakes cookies, watches home movies and matter-of-factly recounts her husband’s brutal behavior.

The boys describe their father routinely smashing her head into the walls, and photographs show a sickening number of holes. Ms. Maldonado, embarrassed but determined, takes out her dental bridge to show her four remaining teeth.

Both Wendy and Randy Maldonado, who is interviewed in prison, describe a reign of terror in which any attempt to seek help or escape would have led to retribution against other family members. Viewers may wonder about that explanation, and wonder even more about the role of neighbors who say they were aware of the constant beatings and relatives who say they weren’t. But there’s no denying the suffering.

At the hearing the judge says, “Maybe you have an argument to take to the legislature to expand justifiable homicide under the law.” But on this day Wendy Maldonado  having, as she and many others see it, saved her life and the lives of her sons  says goodbye to her family and disappears through a door labeled “Intake.”