Women Who Kill Their Abusive Spouses

Women Who Kill Their Abusive Spouses

In the last several decades, criminologists and social scientists have begun to pay a greater attention to cases of battered women who kill their abusive spouses. Many of these women who kill their husbands claim they do it to defend themselves. Nevertheless they are often convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to imprisonment. Until recently, battered women were viewed by the public as either "mad" or "bad" (Noh, Lee, & Feltey, 2010) who should be punished as murderers. But lately scholars have begun to argue that killing an abusive spouse must be justified in extreme cases and codified in the law (Ewing, 1990). This paper is of the opinion that women who kill their abusive spouses should have the right to defend themselves in the court before any verdict is issued.

According to legal systems of most civilized nations, self-defense is justified when one is under an imminent danger of physical harm or bodily injury and that the use of lethal force can prevent the abuse from happening. It is natural then to argue that women who are severely beaten, tortured, psychologically abused, and raped on a regular basis, with no access to help, may use lethal force to protect themselves. They might have used force to stop their spouses from inflicting more damage to them. To understand the gravity of the situation with battered women, it is important to look at some of the abuses they endure. According to Ewing (1990), depending on situations, battered women who kill their spouses have been "kicked, strangled, burned, scalded, shot, and stabbed" and have been attacked with guns, razors, and even automobiles. Many of them have suffered "cuts, bruises, lacerations, broken noses, broken bones," and many have been "sexually abused by their batterers: forced to have sexual intercourse, sexually abused with a variety of objects, and compelled to engage in group sex, bestiality, bondage, and other sadomasochistic sexual acts. Many of these women have been raped in front of their children" (pp. 581-2). The persons who go through these experiences must have the right to defend themselves before the jury.

Those who argue that women who kill their abusive spouses must be punished as murderers also have valid points. For example, women can leave abusive husbands instead of waiting until the situation leads to manslaughter. They can also report the cases of abuse to police or other responsible agencies. It should also be asked whether manslaughter is the legitimate response to abuse in a given situation. Most importantly, not punishing women who kill their spouses for being abusive may set a bad precedent where the legal limbo may be exploited by abusive wives who kill their husbands for the purpose of money, property, or other illegitimate reasons. Wives, just like any other human beings, must be held accountable for their actions, especially when they murder someone.

Although both sides have legitimate arguments, women should still be allowed to defend themselves in court. It is clear that in many cases they have no other option than to use lethal force. The key point one should keep in mind is that allowing women to defend killing of abusive husbands as acts of self-defense does not necessarily mean they will be acquitted in all cases. The argument of this paper is that battered women must have the right to defend themselves because their justifications for murder might be legitimate. It is then up to the judges and the jury to decide whether such women's arguments are justifiable. Punishing them without giving a platform to defend themselves is to reverse the principle of the presumption "innocent, until proven guilty."