Ed Murder is fine ... if you're a woman

[Lamuella]

Not knowing the details it may even have been that the jury really were only given the direction of a conviction for manslaughter; murder may never have been on the cards. If that's so it could be this was a case prosecuted because it was in the "public interest" (under the general heading of "people shouldn't kill other people") rather than because of concerns about public safety and the like.

if Wikipedia can be relied upon (and as always that's a big if), then first degree murder was on the table in the Mary Winkler case:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Winkler

On April 19, 2007, the jury came back with the verdict: guilty of voluntary manslaughter. Prosecutors had asked that Winkler be convicted of first-degree murder, but the jury settled on the lesser charge after deliberating for eight hours

 

[joesixpack]

Here in the UK the attitude used to be that domestic violence was not a police matter (my wife is from the North East and had direct experience of this). Fortunately that has changed.
Yes, domestic violence is cause for arrest. It may be cause for leaving but that option is not always easy or even open to the victim. Both of the women I know (wifey being one) who have been subject to long term abuse and torture (no other word for it) have left with nothing, just the clothes they stood up in.
As for justification for murder, I see no one here saying this but it is a reason and cause of manslaughter.

No, I don't think people are excusing murder and I don't mean to imply this. What I do see is a total lack of skepticism about her claim. Based on the article I see no real evidence of a pattern of abuse from her husband other than her claims.

Women make false charges of domestic violence in divorce and child custody cases, so I'm more than certain that they do the same in order to escape punishment in murder trials.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

No, I don't think people are excusing murder and I don't mean to imply this. What I do see is a total lack of skepticism about her claim. Based on the article I see no real evidence of a pattern of abuse from her husband other than her claims.

Women make false charges of domestic violence in divorce and child custody cases, so I'm more than certain that they do the same in order to escape punishment in murder trials.

I'm just assuming that there was a heck of a lot more evidence presented to the jury than we have got from a couple of articles.

 

[joesixpack]

Here in the UK the attitude used to be that domestic violence was not a police matter (my wife is from the North East and had direct experience of this). Fortunately that has changed.
...

I forgot to address this. Domestic violence against women has been taken very seriously here in the US for over three decades. And rightly so. Australia, The UK, and the US all have domestic violence shelters. Yes, it's tough to leave an abusive situation, but I have friends who have done so successfully.

Domestic violence of the type your wife experienced is not the only dynamic. Very often the woman is the initiator of physical violence. In cases where the violence is mutual (i.e., the man is retaliating/defending himself) the man will always be taken into custody. In cases where the woman is the sole perpetrator of the aggression, the police are not so eager to act, especially when the husband asks them not to (generally because they fear further retributive violence when the woman is released).

The three police visits to the house in response to domestic disturbances with no arrests made is typical of female-on-male violence. The knee-jerk reaction to this article (and to the issues of domestic violence in general) is "that poor woman". This is fine for melodrama and fairy tales, but real life is much more complex. Abuse flows in both directions, but the court system is biased against men if favor of "the weaker sex".

I was in an abusive relationship for several years. Or, if I were a woman it would have been considered abusive. I was abused fiscally and emotionally. In divorce and custody cases, a man can have a restraining order placed against him for shouting at his wife. This doesn't go both ways, however. My ex shouted at me constantly and at one point tried to provoke me into a more serious altercation while secretly videotaping me. Everyone who knew us as a couple thought my ex was horrible, everyone who didn't know us thought I had abandon her and was a terrible human being because the cultural narrative in domestic disputes generally casts the woman as the victim and the man as the perpetrator.

The article makes quite clear why she killed her husband. It was because of his affair.

 

[joesixpack]

I'm just assuming that there was a heck of a lot more evidence presented to the jury than we have got from a couple of articles.

I would hope that there's more to this case, but I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't.

 

[SanityGap]

I forgot to address this. Domestic violence against women has been taken very seriously here in the US for over three decades. And rightly so. Australia, The UK, and the US all have domestic violence shelters. Yes, it's tough to leave an abusive situation, but I have friends who have done so successfully.

Domestic violence of the type your wife experienced is not the only dynamic. Very often the woman is the initiator of physical violence. In cases where the violence is mutual (i.e., the man is retaliating/defending himself) the man will always be taken into custody. In cases where the woman is the sole perpetrator of the aggression, the police are not so eager to act, especially when the husband asks them not to (generally because they fear further retributive violence when the woman is released).

The three police visits to the house in response to domestic disturbances with no arrests made is typical of female-on-male violence. The knee-jerk reaction to this article (and to the issues of domestic violence in general) is "that poor woman". This is fine for melodrama and fairy tales, but real life is much more complex. Abuse flows in both directions, but the court system is biased against men if favor of "the weaker sex".

I was in an abusive relationship for several years. Or, if I were a woman it would have been considered abusive. I was abused fiscally and emotionally. In divorce and custody cases, a man can have a restraining order placed against him for shouting at his wife. This doesn't go both ways, however. My ex shouted at me constantly and at one point tried to provoke me into a more serious altercation while secretly videotaping me. Everyone who knew us as a couple thought my ex was horrible, everyone who didn't know us thought I had abandon her and was a terrible human being because the cultural narrative in domestic disputes generally casts the woman as the victim and the man as the perpetrator.

The article makes quite clear why she killed her husband. It was because of his affair.

Domestic violence has been taken seriously in the UK for many years now. Some areas were slower getting the message and it continued to attract the old predjudices e.g. "she probably deserved it" which I have heard said.

Just because you believe that women very often are the initiators does not make it so. Abuse does flow both ways but the evidence shows that it is a very biased flow.

My ex wife was very much like your description, however most of my friends thought her barking mad. Fortunately for me she decided her boss was a better bet.

Yes, the article does make it clear why she killed her husband,
"For the first time in your life you had confronted your husband, had found the courage to be assertive to the person who had mistreated you for 20 years,". It appears to me that the affair was the tipping point.

 

[Information Analyst]

You know it's funny, but I remember reading an FBI report that wives were more likely to hire or find a third party to kill their spouses for them. This would seem to skew the results and make them much harder to prosecute which is what most of the stats are based on. I'll have to try and find that to support my argument (I read it quite a while back, so give me a little time).

Perhaps in the US, but in the UK contract killings for domestic reasons are not particularly common, so I don't think there's any danger of them having a significant effect on the figures I quoted.

 

[Sledge]

Well I believe that the temporary insanity plea is BS for one.

So what?

 

[sadhatter]

Regardless of gender, this is sometimes what needs to be done in order to get a person away from an abusive partner.

By condemning the action wholesale, what one is saying is that the person who starts a physical conflict also gets to be the one who decides its going to end. And that simply is not right.

If you choose to beat your partner , your starting a physical conflict, as the aggressor , you do not also get to decide when it ends. But the fact that many people let the aggressor decide when it is going to end contributes to the ease of which abusive partners commit their abuse.

Choosing to sleep in the same place as someone you started a physical conflict with is just silly, or to be more specific, it is bad tactics. But abusers do this constantly, and when someone takes advantage of this lapse in tactics, it is no different than an attacked person at a bar, turning the tables of a fight when the aggressor chooses to show off to the crowd.

 

[NoahFence]

It would seem murders fine if your a woman. I guess men's lives mean nothing in our modern societies.

If it's proven that a woman was battered by her husband, and this is the result, I'm good with it. More power to her.

 

[Travis]

I'm sorry but can someone point me to where they said that evidence was inconsequential and were deciding the case based on gender?

 

[NoahFence]

Well I believe that the temporary insanity plea is BS for one. Also, people leave abusive relationships without killing people all the time. And lastly all the abuse I've seen in my life has come at the hands of women not men so I take the idea that men are more abusive than women with a grain of salt.

And women try to leave those relationships and get murdered or beaten all the time, too.

Why are you biased?

 

[A Laughing Baby]

I don't see anything in this thread that supports the idea that murder is acceptable if you're a woman. OP, can you clarify that concept a bit for me?

 

[joesixpack]

Domestic violence has been taken seriously in the UK for many years now. Some areas were slower getting the message and it continued to attract the old predjudices e.g. "she probably deserved it" which I have heard said.

Just because you believe that women very often are the initiators does not make it so. Abuse does flow both ways but the evidence shows that it is a very biased

Actually, it's not just me who says it.

flow.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/glenn-sacks/researcher-says-womens-in_b_222746.html

There are more scholarly articles but I'm in a hurry and I don't wish to wade through all the stupid "Men's movement" rubbish that seems to cloud this debate.

Bottom line, though women initiate DV as frequently as men, they are about 2/3rds more likely to suffer injury. Men simply strike back harder. The best predictor of whether a woman will be injured by her partner is how frequently she uses violence.

My ex wife was very much like your description, however most of my friends thought her barking mad.

Your friends (and mine) had a more intimate knowledge of your relationship than a jury would. How about if you were dead and unable to defend yourself in court while she sat in the stand and went on about 10 years of emotional and physical abuse?

Fortunately for me she decided her boss was a better bet.

I both feel your pain and know your joy. My ex decided to become a lesbian. Our breakup was the greatest thing that could have ever happened for me, and I imagine you had much the same sense of relief while your ex was jumping ship.

Yes, the article does make it clear why she killed her husband,
"For the first time in your life you had confronted your husband, had found the courage to be assertive to the person who had mistreated you for 20 years,". It appears to me that the affair was the tipping point.

Actually the article simply begs the question. Other than her assertion, there appears to be no evidence (at least not in that article) of 20 years of mistreatment. The total lack of skepticism of that claim is, as I've said before, indicative of the general public's willingness to believe without any supporting evidence a woman's claims of victimization. Had a man been on trial for murder, after 20 years of the same abuse alleged by this woman, would the jury have been so lenient? Would the press have simply repeated his assertion without mountains of evidence to support it?

This is not just about the court case. The very nature of the article and it's total lack of skepticism in re the killers suffering exposes the horribly slanted public perception of domestic violence in the west.

Domestic violence is a serious problem. Because it has been hijacked by groups steeped in identity politics it has been turned into a "women's issue". That's BS. I had a woman working for me a few years back. I'll not mince words, she was a very butch lesbian. Her very fem GF regularly abused her. She came to work with a huge bruise on her throat one day (Kicked in the throat by her partner). I asked her if she called the cops. Yes, she had, but nothing came of it because the police are stuck in the mindset that men are perpetrators of violence. Sucks when your a victim of one, though.

 

[joesixpack]

Perhaps in the US, but in the UK contract killings for domestic reasons are not particularly common, so I don't think there's any danger of them having a significant effect on the figures I quoted.

I don't think he's saying it's common, he's simply saying that women are more likely than men to do so.

 

[sadhatter]

I don't see anything in this thread that supports the idea that murder is acceptable if you're a woman. OP, can you clarify that concept a bit for me?

What he is doing, is wedging in a real concept, that abuse of men tends to be ignored, with an over the top premise, that women killing husbands is ignored unjustly.

It is the kind of post i might think of writing at 2 am, then sleep on it and think better of it. There is no denying males who get abused in any way by females, are treated with a raised eyebrow, but that has nothing to do with someone taking advantage of a lapse in tactics of an abuser and winning the physical confrontation

 

[A Laughing Baby]

What he is doing, is wedging in a real concept, that abuse of men tends to be ignored, with an over the top premise, that women killing husbands is ignored unjustly.

It is the kind of post i might think of writing at 2 am, then sleep on it and think better of it. There is no denying males who get abused in any way by females, are treated with a raised eyebrow, but that has nothing to do with someone taking advantage of a lapse in tactics of an abuser and winning the physical confrontation

But the title of this thread implies--actually, it is pretty explicit about it--that murder is acceptable if you're a woman. As in, if you're a woman, murder is an okay thing to do. I still haven't seen anything that supports such a conclusion, so I'm wondering if maybe someone could clear up this misunderstanding.

 

[sadhatter]

But the title of this thread implies--actually, it is pretty explicit about it--that murder is acceptable if you're a woman. As in, if you're a woman, murder is an okay thing to do. I still haven't seen anything that supports such a conclusion, so I'm wondering if maybe someone could clear up this misunderstanding.

Its not coming, even the op doesn't think that, they just knew that if they put that in the thread title, versus saying " Women seem to get away with more violent self defense." he would get more views.

I mean really this should just be another " Males get shafted in regards to abuse claims." thread, and as much as that is true, we have done it to death and the op knows no one would bother with it if it said that.

 

[A Laughing Baby]

Its not coming, even the op doesn't think that, they just knew that if they put that in the thread title, versus saying " Women seem to get away with more violent self defense." he would get more views.

I mean really this should just be another " Males get shafted in regards to abuse claims." thread, and as much as that is true, we have done it to death and the op knows no one would bother with it if it said that.

That's a dangerous way of thinking, lest he (I'm assuming naive is a he) start to believe such ridiculous premises as this one simply because he found a court case that had an outcome he disagreed with.

 

[joesixpack]

Regardless of gender, this is sometimes what needs to be done in order to get a person away from an abusive partner.

Do you really think a man would have a murder charge reduced to manslaughter with a suspended sentence if the genders were reversed? Call me skeptical on that one.

By condemning the action wholesale, what one is saying is that the person who starts a physical conflict also gets to be the one who decides its going to end. And that simply is not right.

I'm still unclear where is was clearly demonstrated that victim was the initiator of the violence. Was there a part of the article that I missed?

If you choose to beat your partner , your starting a physical conflict, as the aggressor , you do not also get to decide when it ends. But the fact that many people let the aggressor decide when it is going to end contributes to the ease of which abusive partners commit their abuse.

Certainly the police will respond and arrest the man (unless he's a cop, but that's another discussion). Here in the US at least, if a woman calls the police because she is beaten by her husband he will go to jail. Not certain clear that this ever happened in the 20 year marriage, at least not by that story.

Choosing to sleep in the same place as someone you started a physical conflict with is just silly, or to be more specific, it is bad tactics. But abusers do this constantly, and when someone takes advantage of this lapse in tactics, it is no different than an attacked person at a bar, turning the tables of a fight when the aggressor chooses to show off to the crowd.

Again, you apply zero skepticism to the claim that he was an abuser. And even if there was a history of violence in that home, I fail to see how homicide was the only reasonable recourse.

Again, ask yourself if you honestly think a man could pull off this defense successfully in a murder trial, or if the press would glibly repeat his assertions of abuse without a mountain of evidence to prove it to the readers.