202 H Court and the Legal System—F:amily Forensics
assailant is released. Because of the way our legal system is structured, a person is
rarely detained for attempted murder if he simply makes threats. If the victim presses
charges, the perpetrator will experience at most a night or two in jail, which will
more than likely enrage him even more.
In recent times, shelters and special interest groups have been organized to help
women in battering relationships. Unfortunately, as the number of shelters has
increased, so too have the number of domestic homicides. Once the perpetrator
targets his victim, there is little that law enforcement is able to do to prevent the
crime from eventually occurring (Snow, 1997).
Considering the lack of effective support available for victims of domestic abuse,
the victims themselves have begun to take matters into their own hands. Although
husbands are more likely to be the perpetrators in domestic homicides, wives com-
mit a substantial portion of these murders. The percentages vary according to race.
According to one study, in white couples, 38% of the victims were husbands while
62% were wives. These results were significantly different in comparison to Black
couples. In Black couples, the disparity between victim gender was slim. "[Forty-
seven percent] of the victims of a spouse were husbands and 53% were wives"
(Dawson & Langan, 1994). No meaningful explanation for this racial difference has
been supplied thus far.
The fate of women who kill their abusive husbands has become the topic of
many debates in recent years. Some would consider these women to be acting in
self-defense, while others would argue that there are other avenues that battered
women should take. In terms of Carla, the women in the vignette presented above,
it she grabbed a knife to protect herself prior to Charlie reaching for the pot of
water and Charlie died as a result of his wounds, should she be charged with and
convicted of murder?
In situations such as this, women have tried a variety of strategies for defend-
ing their fate during trial. Some have pled insanity, self-defense, guilt, and more
recently, battered woman's syndrome. It has been hypothesized that women who
are the constant recipients of physical and verbal abuse by their spouses suffer from
a mental disorder known as battered woman's syndrome. Several expert psycholo-
gists and psychiatrists have defended this theory. Their testimony enables jurors to
"understand why the women endured such allegedly serious abuse for so long, why
they did not leave their abuser, and why they felt it was necessary to use deadly force
at a time when she was not being battered" (Ewing, 1997, p. 34). Of course, those
women who have killed their abusers at the time of their abuse are more likely to find
success in a self-defense plea as opposed to women who kill while not in immediate
danger. Although battered woman's syndrome is becoming increasingly popular in
the mental health arena, it has yet to receive substantial support in the courtroom.
In the case of People v. Aris (1989), Dr. Lenore Walker, a clinical and forensic psy-
chologist, testified in Ms. Aris' defense on the premise of the battered woman's syn-
drome. The jury found Ms. Aris guilty because her husband was sleeping at the time
of the offense and therefore her actions could not be considered self-defense (People i>.