Responses : Battered Women’s Law Is Helping

The Battered Women’s Syndrome statute, introduced in the Legislature by the Los Angeles city attorney’s office and enacted in California in 1991, establishes the right of prosecutors to present the common experiences of battered women in prosecutions of defendants accused of domestic violence crimes. The bill was sponsored by the city attorney and the Women Lawyers Assn. of Los Angeles and drafted with the assistance of the California Alliance Against Domestic Violence. It is the only BWS statute in the nation that specifically includes prosecutors.

Since 1986, the city attorney’s Domestic Violence Unit has, as a policy, advocated the use of this type of evidence in domestic violence prosecutions in which an expert’s testimony helps the jury to understand the nature of domestic abuse and the effect of violence on the victim. Although domestic violence is common, jurors often bring to court their own prejudices and expectations about the causes of the violence and a profile of the “typical” victim and perpetrator.

Most jurors are baffled when the victim testifies on the defendant’s behalf, denying the events she described to the responding officer or when she minimizes the level of violence--describing a brutal assault as a push--at trial. Jurors are unaware of the level of intimidation and threats used by defendants to persuade the victim to change her testimony.

Ultimately, effective prosecution of batterers can reduce future prosecutions by stopping the batterer’s repeated cycle of violence and, we hope, we can reduce the need for the use of BWS evidence in trials of battered women who kill their abusers in self-defense.