¶ … Crime Attenuant: How Lawyers Have Used P.M.S as a Criminal Defence for Women
Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS), the unique, often troubling physical and psychological symptoms that can accompany onset of menstruation in many women each month, has been used successfully in the past, and continues now to be used by lawyers worldwide (e.g., in the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, and elsewhere) in defence of women accused of crimes (Johnson, 1987; McArthur, 1989; Eastreal, 1991; Dershowitz, 1994). Specifically, PMS symptoms typically are "Symptoms that begin 7 to 14 days prior to a menstrual period and usually stop when menstruation begins (Griffith, 1995, p. 500). Actual physical and psychological PMS symptoms may include:
Nervousness and irritability; Dizziness and fainting; Emotional instability;
Increased or decreased sex drive; Headaches; Tender, swollen breasts;
Bloating, constipation, diarrhea, and other digestive disturbances; Fluid
retention that causes puffiness in the ankles, hands, and face; Higher
incidence of minor infections such as colds; Acne outbreaks; Decreased urination. (Premenstrual syndrome: PMS)
According to Easteal (1990) (as background to eventual use, in later decades of the 20th century and now, of PMS as a defence in criminal cases):
Nineteenth-century theoreticians, some ancient philosophers and cross-cultural menstrual taboos all supported a view of females as the victims of menstruation, and later, by the mid 1800s, more specifically their ovaries, and then in the 1920s, their hormones. It was not, however, until the early 1950s that the focus changed from menstruation to the menstrual cycle and the time period preceding the menses; the premenstrual era and its concomitant theories relating to deviant behaviour had arrived. Thus, PMS began to be used either as a defence or as a mitigating factor in a number of countries.
According to Dalton (1986) PMS symptoms typically differ, as to their intensity, not only among individual women (e.g., some women typically have none, or almost none, of the usual monthly PMS symptoms, while others may experience very severe ones) but also from one month to the next. Further, according to Dalton, women who suffer stress may also experience increased emotional symptoms of PMS (Premenstrual Syndrome). As Eastreal (1991) further notes, however, "only a small percentage of sufferers actually experience some of the more severe symptoms."
Further, Dalton (1986) [a U.K. physician who has testified, as an expert witness in support of various women using the PMS defence] (see Eastreal, 1991) describes the symptoms typically found, among women accused of crimes, who have use the PMS defence, as:
Depression . . . with ideas of right and wrong becoming confused . . .
[possibly leading to] shop-lifting, suicide, smashing windows or arson;
Irritability . . . with a complete loss of control . . . Psychosis induced by PMS
which usually lasts only for a day or two and can involve hallucinations, paranoia and total amnesia of behaviour (p.147).
Eastreal (1991) cites several court cases tried within the last few decades, in the United Kingdom (e.g., R v. Craddock (1980) and R. v. Smith (1981)), as well as in Canada and the United States, in which PMS as a criminal defence was successfully used in cases where women had been accused of crimes. According to Johnson (1987), in one case tried within in the United Kingdom, that of R. v. Smith (1981):
After a fight with her lover, a married man, English [who later took the surname Smith] drove her car at him ramming him into a lamp post. Charged with murder, English ultimately was put on probation with the restrictions of abstinence from alcohol and a year's driving ban, plus a directive to eat regular meals. Preceding the death, English had not eaten for nine hours . . .
this fact, coupled with the accused's [sic] severe PMS, resulted in a raised glucose tolerance leading to a blood sugar level drop and the over-production of adrenalin . . . physicians . . . testified...
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