One Minute to Nine

One Minute to Nine documents the story of eighteen years of fear and marital abuse suffered by one woman, which ultimately led her to kill her husband. When Wendy Maldonado finally snapped in May 2005, she admitted to a police dispatcher that she and her 17-year-old son, Randy, had killed her husband. She also told them that he had abused both of them every single day. That claim ultimately led to their arrest, with Wendy receiving a ten-year prison sentence and her son Randy being sentenced to seven years after pleading guilty to manslaughter.

The judge in the case gave the mother and son four days at home before they were sent to prison, and the film was shot during that brief period. They candidly recount the events that led up to the murder and discuss the years of ill-treatment and violence that left them feeling as though they had no option but murder. This leads to the central question of the film: is murder, however justified, ever a moral decision?