Spousal Homicide: A Woman's Right to Self-Defense

Domestic violence is no laughing matter, many women, children, and even men are affected by its emotionally and physically damaging results, and these results can span a victim's lifetime. Without downgrading the very real problem of domestic violence towards children and adult males, for the purpose of this paper we will be focusing on intimate violence towards women. More specifically we will discuss spousal homicide involving women who kill their male abuser in non-violent situations. Many legal professionals contend that such an act does not qualify for a plea of self-defense because the woman was not facing "immediate" danger at the time of the murder. However, battered women who engage in non-confrontational killings of their abusers should be able to successfully assert the claim of self-defense using battered women's syndrome to support this claim because their history of abuse and knowledge of future abuse meets the qualifications of a self-defense claim.

The claim of self-defense is a complicated one and requires specific criteria to assert an effective plea. According to Henry Campbell Black, "Essential elements of self-defense are that the defendant does not provoke difficulty and that there must be impending peril without convenient or reasonable mode of escape. The law of 'self-defense' justifies an act done in the reasonable belief of immediate danger..." (1220). There are many interpretations as to what the rightful claim of self-defense is, and because of the ambiguity of the definition and necessary elements, the debate concerning the battered women's rights to a self-defense claim rages on.