Battered Women’s Syndrome Plea and a Defendants Financial...

When battered woman’s syndrome has been used as a plea of self-defense, especially in cases of homicide, it has highly been scrutinized. According to recent research, characteristics associated with the syndrome form a standard that jurors use to judge battered women. This study would evaluate how characteristics of a defendant would affect a juror’s legal decision-making, in a case of a woman pleading not guilty under terms of self-defense, who were suffering from battered woman’s syndrome. To discuss the role of the battered women’s syndrome in relation to how characteristics of a victim affect legal decision-making it is important to define what battered women’s syndrome is. Battered women’s syndrome is the array of physical and†¦show more content†¦Because the violence that battered woman face is continual and the woman are not on equal physical grounds, they usually â€Å"strike† back, and this is usually reflected in the circumstances surrounding the killing like using a weapon (Schuller Vidmar, 1992). Furthermore, because of the unequal fighting grounds, woman usually do not attack during a direct confrontation (i.e. during a beating), but rather at some point outside of a confrontation, usually due to perceiving that there is no escape from her situation other than attacking back (Schuller Vidmar, 1992). Because woman strike back at their abusers; battered woman’s syndrome has been used in courts as a plea when their actions were believed to be in self-defense (Hodell et. al, 2011). And when a battered woman kills her abuser, they must convince a jury of the rationality of her lethal actions to successfully advance a plea of self-defense (Schuller et al., 2004). When jurors believe that under the given circumstances a defendant’s behavior was justified under the law a jury can find a defendant not guilty by reason of self-defense (Hodell et al., 2011). Recent research in case’s of self-defense suggest that when using the battered women’s syndrome certain characteristics of the defendant could interfere with the accused sentencing (Russell, Ragatz, Kraus, 2012). The problem is that when defendant’s claim to be battered they may be at a disadvantage in the courtroom when their characteristics, experiences