Battered Woman

Start counting to the number nine……… In those nine seconds a woman has been assaulted or beaten in the United States alone, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (Garrity, ncadv.org). That means every minute approximately seven people are a victim of abuse, 402 people every hour, and 9,648 people every day. These numbers are staggering and bring to light the seriousness of this issue. There are many subtopics within the category of domestic violence and I am focusing on the abuse that takes on the term “battered woman”. A battered woman is “repeatedly subjected to any forceful physical or psychological behavior by a man in order to coerce her to do something he wants her to do without any concern for her rights” (Walker,

Within an array of cases the female ended the abuse by running away, calling the authorities for help, or even killing the abuser. These are considered common responses to multiple inflictions of abuse. This being said, I am particularly focused on those cases where the female kills her abuser through preemptive means, meaning, a “potential aggressor is attacked without a clear and imminent show of force based on the potential victim’s perception of future danger” (Veinsreideris, 613). This often happens while the abuser is sleeping, watching tv or in any relaxed state where the victim feels she has more power and control over the situation. She acts upon that feeling and murders him. The female resorts to this tactic because of the consistent attacks on her. She feels as though she cannot get out of this cycle other than to kill her

The male is often found in a non-confrontational position, causing the woman to look even guiltier. The woman is brought to court in order to state her case as to why she is being accused of killing her husband. The woman usually takes the plea of Battered Women Syndrome as self-defense for her actions. As of 2004, battered woman syndrome statistically is the “most widely used self-defense plea by abused women who kill their abusers” (Wallace, 1749). These self-defense claims are troubling because the facts of these cases do not conform to traditional ideas of self-defense meaning that “typically the term self-defense conjures up images of a defender who is backed against a wall and facing imminent death, strikes out at the last moment to kill the attacker” (Faigman, 626). A battered woman however, often kills her abuser after an attack has ended or when no immediate danger is present (Faigman, 627). This is where the case becomes problematic because although the harm may not be “imminent by objective temporal measures, disagreement exists as to whether battered women’s subjective perceptions of imminent harm can be deemed reasonable” (Wallace, 1749). In this essay, I will explain why I believe that although domestic violence is terrible, Battered Women Syndrome is not a justification of self-defense in a legal