The Ultimate in Domestic Violence

While murder is the most heinous of crimes, some explanations for killing such as self-defense can prove exculpatory. Recognizing that, the California Legislature has passed a bill to make admissible battered women’s syndrome in trials of domestic violence. Gov. Pete Wilson should sign the measure.

It would allow expert witnesses, such as psychiatrists or doctors, to testify about how battered women typically behave and would allow women on trial to detail the abusive histories of their spouses.

Because California law does not automatically allow the syndrome as a defense, women can testify about past assaults only at a judge’s discretion. Such a defense is particularly material when a woman attacks a sleeping husband, in contrast to more clear-cut cases of self-defense against a husband’s immediate assault.

The measure, AB 785, sponsored by Assemblyman Gerald R. Eaves (D-Rialto), is particularly timely because of the increase in domestic violence. Recently, the governors of Ohio and Maryland commuted the sentences of several women convicted of assaulting or killing their mates after reviewing evidence that would have been admissible if the battered women’s syndrome had been allowed as a defense.

The admission of battered women’s syndrome as a defense won’t gain acquittal for every woman who kills her husband. But it will allow battered women to explain to judges and juries the years of hell that they lived through, and what finally prompted them to take matters into their own hands.