In self-defense cases of battered women who kill their abusive husbands, defendants have used Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS) expert testimony to help justify their acts of self-defense. However, past research demonstrates that BWS is ineffective in persuading jurors because it pathologizes the defendant rather than rationalizing her behavior. Additionally, BWS highlights passive (i.e., stereotypical) features of a battered woman, and such testimony may not apply to a defendant with active (i.e., atypical) features of a battered women. The current study hypothesized that another type of expert testimony, Social-Agency Framework (SAF), will persuade jurors to render more lenient verdicts, and that the defendant’s passive or active response history will affect verdict decisions. Additionally, a meditational model predicted that the effect of mock jurors’ gender on verdict decisions will be mediated by their attitudes toward battered women. In a 3(expert testimony: BWS vs. SAF vs. control) x 2(response history: passive vs. active) x 2(gender: male vs. female) model, jury-eligible participants (expected N = 510) recruited from the website mTurk answered a survey measuring their attitudes toward battered women, read a mock trial transcript, and rendered a verdict. The results indicated non-significant findings for the effects of expert testimony and response history on verdict outcomes. A full mediation was found, indicating that gender acted as a proxy for jurors’ attitudes, influencing their verdict decisions. This study has strong legal implications that highlight the prevailing effect of attitudes and how those attitudes may override the effects of expert testimony and defendant response history.

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 52-53). Also available online (PDF file) by a subscription to the set or by purchasing the individual file.

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 52-53).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This paper’s focus on South Asian and Asian-American women in relation to Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS) originates from a limited amount of research on the self-helping behaviors of these women–especially those who have immigrated from the countries of Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Bhutan–as compared to other cultures (Sripada, 2020). The current literature surrounding BWS identifies lesser reporting on South Asian and Asian-American women with ethnic backgrounds from these regions (Kasturirangan, 2004). A journal by Yoshioka (2005) proposes that we consider the “world view” or intersectionality when considering domestic violence and to which many women are restricted as a result of a lack of access to resources. There are also current iterations of instruments being used that drive the discrepancy in cultural values. This literature review aims to identify those gaps in battered woman syndrome literature by analyzing cultural factors to help account for lowered disclosure rates.

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In Be Good, Sweet Maid: The Trials of Dorothy Joudrie (1999), Audrey Andrews recounts the life and trial of Dorothy Joudrie, a so-called wealthy socialite who was arrested in Calgary in 1995 for attempting to murder her estranged husband after decades of domestic abuse. Andrews tells Joudrie’s story in the form of a semi-auto/biographical text that quotes other scholarly and creative literary works in an intertextual dialogue about violence against women, post-World War II gender socialization, and the “battered women syndrome” defence. This thesis takes this highly referential dialogue as its starting point, and then extends Andrews’ cultural work by tracing a genealogy of colonialism in Canadian domestic violence laws with the help of selected intertexts – including Yvonne Johnson’s Stolen Life: Journey of a Cree Woman (1998), the trial of Angelique Lavallee, and Lorena Bobbitt’s infamous case. First, I source the epigraphs that Andrews strategically places at the start of each chapter and discern the layer of meaning that these external texts bring to Joudrie’s story in order to raise questions about how Andrews rearticulates the work of others and the politics of such a rearticulation. Second, I similarly frame Joudrie’s 1995 trial as a referential and intertextual discourse based in precedent established by the Supreme Court in 1990 when it ruled that expert testimony on the “battered woman syndrome” was admissible in the R. v. Lavallee case (Shaffer 1). This allows me to consider a consequence of the ruling often overlooked in feminist literature: due to the fact that the original defendant, Angelique Lavallee, was a Métis woman whose identity was erased in the courtroom and in case law, subsequent trials employing the “battered woman syndrome” defence repeat settler relations entrenched in colonial violence. Third, I expose how representations can fail by thinking through what Stephen Couser calls the auto/bio/ethics of life writing, which reveals the limits of Canadian laws and literatures. Ultimately, this discussion generates questions about who is considered human under the law and how life writing might re-imagine the “reasonable” human in more just and compassionate ways. / Thesis (Master, Gender Studies) -- Queen's University, 2012-07-28 10:28:24.988

Despite growing awareness of the severity of domestic violence, the lives of battered women are too often misconstrued by the Canadian public and the judicial system. The author argues that stereotypes of victimized battered women emanating from the courts and feminist theory may both prevent women who kill their partner from making valid claims of self-defence and generally undermine women's fight against oppression. The author reviews the doctrine of the battered woman syndrome and its application in the context of self-defence to illustrate how the courts' treatment of the doctrine conveys a narrow and incomplete depiction of battered women. An alternative theoretical framework based on battered women's partial agency is proposed as a means to address feminist theory's simplified representation of battered women. Various law and policy reform initiatives in the criminal justice system are explored to assess how the law may validate and promote battered women's partial agency.

Bakgrund: Kvinnors brottslighet utgör endast en minimal del av brottsligheten som existerar,eftersom det i regel är män som begår brott. Detta speglas av brist på kunskap om kvinnligaförövare. Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att belysa det studerade ämnet och på så sätt ökauppmärksamheten i samhället för kvinnliga mördare. Metod: En systematisk litteraturstudieutfördes om de gemensamma faktorer kvinnliga mördare har. Resultat: Kvinnor mördar somsvar på mäns våld i en relation, oftast i självförsvar. Ett flertal av de kvinnliga förövarnadödar en intim partner, i en nödsakad situation, som ett alternativ till att inte själv blimördade. De tenderar att lida av psykisk ohälsa, mörda i det gemensamma hemmet ochanvända kniv som mordvapen. Slutsats: Kärnan i ett proaktivt tillvägagångssätt är detförebyggande arbetet innan det dödliga våldet blir ett alternativ. Med kunskapen i hand är detav stor vikt att inledningsvis fokusera på partnervåld. Det är uppenbart att den kvinnligaförövaren agerar i rädsla och i självförsvar, vilket gör dem till egna beskyddare närrättsväsendet misslyckas. / Background: Crime committed by women constitutes a minimal part of the overall crimerate. Generally, men are the ones committing majority of crimes. This is reflected by a lack ofknowledge of female perpetrators. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to highlight thesubject studied and thus increase the overall attitude towards female murderers in order toclear up the confusion when solving these cases. Method: A systematic literature study wasconducted to investigate the common denominators among the female perpetrators. Result:Women commit murders in response to men's violence, usually in a relationship and inself-defense. The majority of the female perpetrators kill their intimate partner in fair of notbeing the victim of murder them selves, the motive strictly self-defense. The femaleperpetrators hold some common denominators; mental illness, the crime happen in thecommon home and a knife is usually the murder weapon of choice. Conclusion: The essenceof proactive approach is the preventative work ahead of the crime committed. With theknowledge at hand, law enforcement need to focus on partner violence. It is obvious that theperpetrator act in fear and in self-defense, making them their own protectors when the lawenforcement fails them.

This thesis focuses on the law of self-defense in the United States, in a context of domestic violence. The starting point is the work of Cynthia Gillespie, a US attorney whose groundbreaking work in 1989 shed light on the many legal obstacles battered women defendants face in Courts while pleading self-defense to homicide charges. Gillespie argued that some of the requirements inherent to the law of self-defense create unfavorable outcomes when applied to the context of domestic violence. The aim is to understand how the issue has evolved today, through the study of a single case ruled in 2019, “People V Addimando”. The conclusion is that there are some positive evolutions even if some severe obstacles remain. Some hope is to be found with the introduction of a new bill, the DVJSA, which is retroactive.