Killing Women and Women Who Kill:

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-31
Keyword(s):  
Women Who Kill

Women Who Kill Men

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
GORDON MORRIS BAKKEN ◽  
BRENDA FARRINGTON
Keyword(s):  
Women Who Kill

scholarly journals Battered woman syndrome and PTSD in women who kill their abusing partner: a study in medical jurisprudence

BJPsych Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (S1) ◽  
pp. S266-S266
Author(s):  
Sharmilaa Lagunathan
Keyword(s):  
Battered Women ◽  
Medical Condition ◽  
Battered Woman ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Rapid Review ◽  
Abused Women ◽  
Battered Woman Syndrome ◽  
Women Who Kill ◽  
Partial Defences ◽  
Diminished Responsibility

AimsThe aim of the study was to identify any symptoms or features of Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS) or Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that may be associated with, or explain, abused women killing their abuser; and the extent to which such identified symptoms or features have been deemed, or are potentially relevant, to past and now reformed partial defences to murder in English law. Hence two sub-studies were completed.MethodThe first sub-study identified mental symptoms of BWS or PTSD apparent in battered women who kill their abuser; achieved by identifying relevant research papers, through applying a ‘rapid review’ approach to three databases: PubMed, PsychInfo and PsychArticles. The second sub-study identified by legal research reported Court of Appeal (CA) judgments on women appealing their conviction of the murder of their abusive partner. It then analysed the legal approach taken towards evidence of the effects of abuse upon these women before and after relevant statutory law reform (although no CA cases were identified post-reform).ResultThe first sub-study identified and reviewed six symptoms or features, within three quantitative and three qualitative studies, that appeared to be associated with, or described by, abused women killing their abuser. These included helplessness, symptoms associated with PTSD, plus fear, isolation, experience of escalation of violence and cycle of violence. From the CA cases the perpetrators of killings that occurred prior to 04.10.2010 (the date of law reform) were usually successful in having their conviction overturned based upon diminished responsibility; but not provocation, because of the requirement of ‘sudden loss of self control’. ‘Loss of control’, which replaced provocation, appears highly likely to be capable of reducing murder to manslaughter based upon symptoms of BWS, or PTSD. However, the amended defence of diminished responsibility is likely to exclude evidence of BWS, but allow evidence of PTSD, because of its requirement of the defendant suffering from ‘a recognised medical condition’.ConclusionThis study demonstrated particular symptoms or features of BWS or PTSD associated with abused women killing their abusers plus their very different relevance to two partial defences to murder, pre and post law reform.

scholarly journals The offence/defence of infanticide: A view from two perspectives

2018 ◽  
Vol 82 (6) ◽  
pp. 470-481
Author(s):  
Helen Howard
Keyword(s):  
Mental Disorder ◽  
Postnatal Depression ◽  
Criminal Responsibility ◽  
Medical Condition ◽  
Moral Agent ◽  
Theoretical Rationale ◽  
After Effects ◽  
The Status ◽  
Not Criminally Responsible ◽  
Women Who Kill

This article asks whether the time is right for abolition of the offence/defence of infanticide. To this end, a two-pronged approach is taken, examining infanticide initially as an offence, and then as a defence. In terms of the offence of infanticide, consideration is given both to the concept of the ‘infanticidal mother’ and to the status of infants below the age of 12 months. When considering the defence of infanticide, examination is made of the exclusive nature of the defence and of the scope for an individual to be a ‘partial’ moral agent. The contradictory nature of infanticide, being both inculpatory and exculpatory, suggests the need for a theoretical rationale that justifies disallowing the offence/defence to, inter alia, those women who kill their own children over 12 months and to men who suffer similar ‘environmental’ postnatal depression. It is suggested that women who kill their children while suffering from the ‘after-effects’ of childbirth are either, depending on the severity of mental disorder, fully competent and therefore criminally responsible (although perhaps entitled to a lesser sentence due to a reduction in culpability) or fully incompetent, therefore incurring no criminal responsibility at all. This proposal can be achieved by recognising that there is a place for reduced culpability or a complete absence of responsibility to fall within the current defence of diminished responsibility or within the Law Commission’s recommended alternative to the insanity defence of ‘not criminally responsible by reason of recognised medical condition’.

scholarly journals The Pathologisation of Women Who Kill: Three Cases from Ireland

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 417-437
Author(s):  
Lynsey Black
Keyword(s):  
Lunatic Asylum ◽  
Women Who Kill

Summary Women who kill are frequently subject to discourses of pathology. This article examines the cases of three women convicted of murder in Ireland following Independence in 1922 and explores how each woman was constructed as pathologised. Using archival materials, the article demonstrates that diagnoses were contingent and imbricated with notions of gender, morality, dangerousness, and class. For two of the women, their pathologisation led to them being certified as insane and admitted to the Central Criminal Lunatic Asylum. However, pathologisation could be mediated by respectable femininity. The article also explores the pathways which facilitated judgements of pathology, including the acceptance of a framework of degeneracy, or hereditary insanity, and examines how women could be redeemed from the diagnoses of ‘insanity’.

Getting even? Women who kill in domestic encounters

1988 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Coramae Richey Mann
Keyword(s):  
Women Who Kill

Provocation as a Defence for Abused Women Who Kill

1998 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brenda M. Baker
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Domestic Abuse ◽  
Equal Access ◽  
Abusive Relationships ◽  
Abused Women ◽  
Supreme Court Of Canada ◽  
Actual Experience ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Women Who Kill ◽  
Self Defence

After the decision by the Supreme Court of Canada in Lavallee, Canadian women who are victims of serious domestic abuse have been able to invoke an ‘enlarged’ conception of self-defence to exonerate some acts of killing abusers. While concern remains about Lavallee, this judgement broke important ground in insisting on a more sensitive account of the actual experience of abused women, and in giving recognition to the reasonable fears that such women have for their lives. However, other than self-defence, there is no criminal law defence or plea that has been effective as a (partial) excuse or justification for killings by abused women. In this paper, I will consider the potential for a plea of provocation to serve such a role. Provocation has acquired some standing in other jurisdictions as a defence for abused women who kill but it has not as yet been effectively used in Canada. I will look at the appropriateness of provocation as a plea in some abuser homicides. The paper will discuss some ways in which the plea of provocation could be enlarged in scope and in normative power; the paper will also examine some shortcomings of the current understanding of provocation to serve a defence for women who kill. Since homicides by women make up a small fraction of all homicides, even a reformed defence of provocation would be rarely used. But the more important question is whether a plea which has been available to men for several centuries should not also be (much more) available to women who kill, and whether closer attention to the situations and perspectives of women in abusive relationships yields good grounds for thinking some kill as excusable or reasonable responses to serious provocation. The underlying concern is an equality concern; that women have equal access to suitable defences for their putative breaches of the criminal law, and that standards of reasonableness operative in criminal case deliberation be as responsive to women’s experience and women’s values as they are to men’s.

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