RALEIGH -- Experts say strangling someone to the point of unconsciousness is one step away from murder. North Carolina law says it's a misdemeanor.

"When someone puts their hands on someone's throat and squeezes, that's prehomicidal behavior," said Kit Gruelle, a nationally recognized domestic violence expert based in Chatham County. "It needs to be treated as such. It needs to be the highest level of felony they can possibly make it."

A subcommittee of the state House Select Committee on Domestic Violence meets today to try to make that happen.

Members of the committee, created last year by House leaders, hope to offer legislators a package of domestic violence bills May 10.

Proposals to make nonlethal strangulation a felony would increase penalties from at most five months in jail to as much as 2 3/4 years in prison.

The subcommittee is considering two proposals; one will head to the full committee next week. One increases the maximum penalty to 2 3/4 years, the other to 10 months. But those penalties apply only to the worst career criminals.

Robin Holland, for one, wants more prison time for offenders such as her former husband. In 2002, Michael Angelo Holland, 30, was convicted of beating and strangling girlfriend Thelma Lee Davis of Chatham County into unconsciousness, along with unrelated drug charges. He served five months in prison.

Michael Holland of 1676 Airport Road in Chapel Hill now faces felony charges of strangling Robin Holland. The felony charges came about because he had two prior assault convictions. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 17 months in prison.

According to Robin Holland, Michael Holland held her six inches off the ground Aug. 8 and strangled her until she lost consciousness.

"I thought I was going to die," she said.

Under current state law, any defendant found to have committed the same assault, without the same criminal record, would face a misdemeanor and five months in jail at most.

Marriage and divorce

Robin Holland, 40, said the couple married in April 1993 after Michael Holland wooed her with his good looks, charm and cooking skills. They had a boy and a girl together.

Then, she said, the abuse began. She said he tied her up in a chair with electrical cord and cut off her curly red hair with a knife. He broke the neck of her Himalayan cat, a gift from her father, right in front of her, she said.

They divorced after a few years.

After Michael Holland got out of prison in September 2002, he reconnected with his former wife. Robin Holland said he wanted to spend time with their two children. At the time, she said, she was in a vulnerable place as a single mother raising three children; a son from an earlier marriage suffered from an inherited degenerative brain disease that leaves children blind, bedridden and unable to communicate. (He died last month.)

Robin Holland thought things with her former husband would be different this time around. She said Michael Holland was the charming, helpful man she had married. For a while, things were better.

'He almost killed me'

But the incident in August left her bruised and battered.

She said he first pushed her face-first into a wall of Sheetrock and kicked her down the front steps of their home. As she lay in the yard, she said, he ordered his 200-plus-pound Rottweiler, Stalin, to attack her.

She couldn't open one of her eyes for four days. She had cuts, bruises and dog bites on the back of her head, her arms and her legs. Her 10-year-old daughter, who witnessed the attack, cried at the sight of her.

Michael Holland's lawyer, Ben Atwater of Siler City, declined to comment about Robin Holland's description of the attack. Efforts to reach Michael Holland this week were unsuccessful.

It took Robin Holland seven months to leave Michael Holland after the dog attack. But not before social workers took the two youngest children away because she stayed with him. "I take full responsibility. I chose him over my kids. That's why they aren't with me," she said.

Her life now has changed. She lives alone and is working to have her two younger children back.

Michael Holland, out on bail, will return to court April 19 in Pittsboro. If he accepts a plea offer, he could spend at most a year in prison. That gives Robin Holland little consolation.

"He almost killed me," she said. "He's only going to get 10 to 12 months. That is sick."