Convicted Survivors: The Imprisonment of Battered Women Who Kill

Chapter 10. Adjudication Processes

Chapter Ten
Adjudication Processes “The actual trial lasted three days. Picking a jury lasted two.” Introduction When a battered woman uses deadly force against her abuser, a prosecutor has the option to not prosecute based on justification, or to indict her for criminal homicide. The law divides criminal homicide into two classes of offense, murder and manslaughter, each of which is further differentiated based on the person’s state of mind at the time of the killing. In California, women who kill their abusive partners may be charged with first degree murder (e.g., premeditated , intentional killing), second degree murder (e.g., deliberate killing without premeditation), voluntary manslaughter (e.g., deliberate killing due to serious provocation or heat of passion), or involuntary manslaughter (e.g., killing resulting from recklessness or extreme negligence). The available legal defenses for battered women homicide offenders tend to be quite limited since most admit to the killing (Ewing 1987). Most women accused of killing their abusive male intimates are charged with first degree murder (Sipe and Hall 1996). The following narratives demonstrate the difficulties and frustrations faced by women in the present study as prosecutors adjudicated their cases. Evidence of violent assaults against the women by their male intimates rarely entered the trial as evidence. Not infrequently , defense attorneys employed questionable strategies, demonstrated a lack of knowledge about the dynamics of abusive relationships, and/or seemed disinterested in the unfolding events. The reputations of abusive intimates were protected at the expense 103 of the battered women homicide defendants. Where available, I include information on the year and jurisdiction of the trials or plea bargains. Narratives Life without parole was the outcome for a woman who was thirtyfour years of age when she killed her sexually and physically sadistic husband. During subsequent legal proceedings, she reports discovering that her attorney failed to contact people she felt would support her defense case. The public defender did his job. He defended the public—I wasn’t the public. He had no experience with abuse issues. He hired a psychologist to come in. The first guy they had come in was a man, and I was really uncomfortable. I could not talk to a man. I’m like, “And what am I supposed to say to you?” He was a very nice man, but I couldn’t talk to him. This was in LA County in 1988. My attorney was trying to go with the battered woman thing except he provided no expert testimony . Even the psychologist that he had was just in family practice. Once he tried to say anything about the battered women’s syndrome, he asked, “So you have expert training in this field?” He said, “Well, no.” They more or less told him to shut up. So [he] testified and made it sound like he got his license out of a Cracker Jack box. At the age of twenty, a plea bargain netted a sentence of twenty-five years to life for a woman whose abuser killed her cat and tortured her sexually and physically. The Los Angeles County case took place in 1984 and provides further illustration of the gendered nature of intimate violence and its investigation. I couldn’t talk to the lawyer or the police about the rapes and the sexual abuse because they were all males. Maybe if there had been a woman to talk to . . . At first they offered a manslaughter but my public defender said no. Then, later, he said he had a conflict and couldn’t do my case. The other public defender said they offered me a twenty-five to life and, “If I take it to trial you’ll get the death penalty because this is my first murder case.” 104 Convicted Survivors The attorney in this case advised his client to turn down a plea bargain , which would have resulted in a much lower sentence than the final seventeen years to life she received. Her words also show how economic disadvantage translates into legal disadvantage. I had a public defender. I didn’t know anything about being battered. Well, there was this one girl . . . in [jail] fighting a murder case and she goes, “Was he beating you up?” I go, “Yeah.” She goes, “When you go back to court you ask them what about the battered woman’s syndrome—or tell them about you being battered.” When I went back in there, the...