At the end of an otherwise interesting list of convicted people various feminists would pardon — including Assata Shakur, The Amiraults, and all nonviolent drug users (a suggestion that would save millions of tax dollars) — one feminist wrote:
I would pardon every woman convicted of killing her husband before the self-defense plea was admissible in all 50 states because, after all, it probably was. We live in a country where the biggest risk factor for the death of pregnant women is homicide and the number of women killed by their husbands or partners constitutes 41 percent of all women killed (only 11 percent of men killed are done in by their wives or partners). It’s not a far leap of logic to think that those women were making sure they didn’t become part of that 41 percent statistic.
Virtually all of that is wrong.
I would pardon every woman convicted of killing her husband before the self-defense plea was admissible in all 50 states because, after all, it probably was.
First of all, there has never been a time when pleas of self-defense were inadmissible. My guess is that she means any woman convicted of killing her husband before expert testimony on battering and its effects (what used to be called “Battered Women’s Syndrome”) was admissible in all states.
Second of all, it doesn’t appear that the inclusion of excluded expert testimony on battering often changes the outcome of a trial. To quote from a congressional report:
With respect to the disposition of cases, a review of state court cases found that convictions of battered women were reversed in less than one-third of the cases appealed and that, of those reversals, less than half were due to erroneous exclusion of, limitation of, or failure to present expert testimony on battering and its effects.
These findings suggest that, contrary to popular misconceptions, the introduction of expert testimony on battering and its effects does not equate to acquittal for a battered woman defendant.
Still, I agree that expert testimony on battering should be included in any relevant case, and probably juries and judges aren’t giving it as much weight as they should. So there are certainly some good pardons in there. But let’s face it — there are also women who kill husbands for motives other than self-defense.
We live in a country where the biggest risk factor for the death of pregnant women is homicide…
We really don’t. Pregnant women in the US are about eight times as likely to die of medical causes (such as bleeding during childbirth) than they are of homicide. Car accidents come second, and homicide comes third.
It’s unclear if homicide is any more common among pregnant women than it is among non-pregnant women of a similar age (young women are both more likely to be murdered and more likely to be pregnant than other women). But maybe it is — the reporting system isn’t great, and some scholars say that homicide of pregnant women is badly undercounted. But there’s no way it’s so undercounted that homicide is “the biggest risk factor.”
I’ve seen feminists make this false claim before. It’s too bad, because it obscures the biggest preventable cause of maternal death in the US — which isn’t murder, but inadequate health care. Better prenatal care could save hundreds of women’s lives every year.
…and the number of women killed by their husbands or partners constitutes 41 percent of all women killed (only 11 percent of men killed are done in by their wives or partners).
This is misleading and wrong.
It’s wrong because the real numbers are actually a lot more extreme: only 2.5% of men murdered are victims of intimate homicide, versus about 33% of women murdered.
It’s misleading because a portion of that difference isn’t caused by more women being killed by intimates, but by more men being murdered by strangers. In 2005, 1,181 out of 3,545 women who were murdered, were killed by boyfriends or husbands, while 329 of the 13,122 men who were murdered, were killed by girlfriends or wives. To just report the percentage of intimate homicides, without reporting the difference in the total number of murders, creates a false impression.
(Crossposted at Blog By Barry.)
I think I recall reading that the “homicide is the leading cause of death among pregnant women” came from a single study of young women in a high-crime area of Maryland…
There are lots of good lists in that link but I’d pardon everyone.
Which is one of the many reasons I’m never going to be presient of the United States.
Hmm, her percentages are wrong but not as misleading as you make them out to be: She implies that there are about 3.7 times as many women murdered by their intimate partners than men. Your total numbers give a ratio of about 3.6 :1 .
Pregnant women in the US are about eight times as likely to die of medical causes (such as bleeding during childbirth) than they are of homicide. Car accidents come second, and homicide comes third.
“Medical causes” is not a single cause of death. There are multiple medical reasons that women die in pregnancy and childbirth, some partially or entirely preventable with better medical care. Some preventable only with more liberal use of abortion in very high risk pregnancies. Some just not preventable. In any case, comparing a single cause of death like homicide to all medical causes of death is misleading. The MVA statistic I’ll give you though.
With respect to the disposition of cases, a review of state court cases found that convictions of battered women were reversed in less than one-third of the cases appealed and that, of those reversals, less than half were due to erroneous exclusion of, limitation of, or failure to present expert testimony on battering and its effects.
If we assume that the number of convictions reversed was close to 1/3* (i.e. 30% or so) and that close to half of these cases were reversed because of erroneous exclusion of testimony on battering, that means that nearly 1/6 of all convictions were overturned due to exclusion of testimony on battering and its effects. This suggests that reviewing all cases in which women were convicted of killing their partners prior to the common use of the battered women’s syndrome defense would be reasonable. 1/6 is a lot of people, particularly to be serving murder convictions. Quite apart from the question of justice, if they are of no threat to the public, it’s a waste of taxpayer’s money to keep them in prison.
*Which I think is a good assumption because if it were much less they would have used a different benchmark.
Very good post. Interesting. I’d heard all these numbers tossed around too, but never given them that much thought.
Some things certainly jump out. The use of self-defense legal as a justification for homicide charges is older than these hills, for obvious reasons. Back in the day, and sometimes even now, police protection wasn’t all that great, and if someone came at you with a weapon and you killed them in the act, everyone came to the common-sense conclusion. Of course. This has always been true, whether you are a battered woman, a 250 pound male weightlifter, whoever. If you kill them in the act.
The problem with the battered woman is obvious. If she had killed him while he came at her, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, because no one would ever have charged her even, much less convicted her.
The “battered woman” defense only comes into play when she murders him some other time than the heat of assault. So, does the battered woman defense boil down to the idea that any time anyone, male or female, has a grudge against anyone they are justified in murdering them, say, in their sleep? This way lies madness.
On the other hand, male judges tend not to understand the dynamics here, where a woman can be in a state of psychic bondage, in terror, and can see no other way out. The trick of course is distinguishing those cases from the fact that, as Amp says, “… there are also women who kill husbands for motives other than self-defense.” The actions and motives of women are not automatically good and pure, any more than are those of men.
The best comment going. If everyone were so interested in all that in the health of young pregnant women and their babies, this would be step one. It’s so obvious that it’s hardly worth saying, except apparently it still needs to be said.
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