Battered Women Charged with Homicide: Expert Consultation, Evaluation, and Testimony

ABSTRACT

Expert testimony on “Intimate Partner Battering and its Effects” (IPBE) and “Battered Woman Syndrome” (BWS) is offered in courtrooms to assist the factfinder in making more informed decisions in cases involving battered women defendants. Such testimony situates a battered woman’s behavior in the context, thereby making sense of behavior that might appear dysfunctional, inappropriate, culpable, or otherwise impossible to understand from an objective frame of reference. Expert participation in battered women’s criminal cases can be influential at many junctures in the case. This paper explores potential roles for expert consultation. such as educating prosecutors and defense attorneys, potentially influencing charging/plea decisions. Forensic evaluation reports document a battered woman’s history and responses to IPV that can be relied upon by defense attorneys to develop more effective legal defense strategies pertinent to IPV history. Experts may assist in jury selection and provide general or case-specific testimony that may provide an alternative framework within which a defendant’s thoughts, actions, and behaviors can be more appropriately understood within the context of intimate partner battering. At the post-trial stage, experts may assist in sentencing, state and federal post-conviction proceedings, clemency, probation, and parole proceedings. Post-conviction and habeas corpus claims often relate to expert testimony that was either not offered at trial in a battered woman’s first trial, or excluded by a judge. In those cases, an expert may assist by preparing a declaration in support of a habeas corpus petition and/or testifying at any subsequent hearing to explain the myriad ways in which expert participation might have led to a more lenient outcome in the original trial.

KEYWORDS:

• Battered women who kill
• intimate partner homicide
• expert witness

Acknowledgments

I would like to express deep gratitude to my friend and colleague, Dr. Terri L. Weaver, for her insightful comments and thoughtful feedback on several drafts of this manuscript. I would also like to offer my heartfelt appreciation for the support I have received over many years, from the amazing staff at the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women (NCDBW). Finally, I’m grateful for the battered women charged with homicide and their attorneys who took the risk to trust in my efforts and abilities to explain the inexplicable. Cindene Pizzell and Jill Spector, amazing attorneys at the NCDBW also provided helpful feedback on this manuscript. Any mistakes in explaining complex legal concepts are all mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ While this paper focuses on intimate partner violence and homicide among heterosexual cis-gender couples, space limitations and lack of research on same-sex, and transgender IPH cases preclude their discussion here.

² Use of the term, “battered woman,” instead of victim or survivor is used throughout this manuscript because it is consistent with statutes and case law governing admissibility of expert evidence in battered women’s criminal cases.

³ While it is beyond the scope of this article, it is important to note that prosecutors also rely on IPBE or BWS testimony in their prosecution of batterers. The author has regularly served in this capacity. It may also be relevant in family or dependency court settings to understand counterintuitive victim behavior in the context of IPV.