# Expanding Justifiable Homicide for abused people (mostly women) **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 31, 2009, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expanding-justifiable-homicide-for-abused-people-mostly-women/523141 "2009-12-31T03:42:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expanding-justifiable-homicide-for-abused-people-mostly-women/523141/61 "2010-02-17T19:06:44Z")
> [@AJM1234](#): > > As regards to whoever posted " so if i slapped my wife once, does that give her the right to shoot me?" You should really look up the definition of domestic violence. I promise you one single incident is deffinately not the definition of abuse. Actually, a single incident can be domestic abuse. > [@](#): > > Any abusive, violent, coercive, forceful, or threatening act or word inflicted by one member of a family or household on another can constitute domestic violence. [Cite.](http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Domestic+Violence) Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expanding-justifiable-homicide-for-abused-people-mostly-women/523141/62 "2010-02-17T19:08:14Z")
> [@AJM1234](#): > > Till you have gone through the hell of domestic violence I do not belive you should be able to warrant a response. > > \ > > And while I do not condone killing someone I can see how that was her only option. And in my opinion justifiable homicide laws do need to be expanded when dealing with domestic violence cases. > > \ > > She would rather spend 10 years in prison than one more year with him, and she knows her children are safe, it is sad she is even in prison but do to the laws and the restraints of those present laws that is the outcome, remember her “freedom” before jail was not freedom at all. She was living in worse conditions than any jail could present to her. First I disagree that someone needs to experience a thing to have an opinion on it. I have never experienced being President of the United States to get a full realization of what that job is like but I certainly feel it is ok to comment on the job he is doing. As a member of society I very much believe I can comment on whether domestic violence laws should be expanded to cover justifiably killing someone. The problem, as noted in this thread, is just how do you write such laws so they are not abused? How much effort must the person doing the killing be shown to have made prior to taking this last resort? Just how bad does the violence need to be? How long must it occur for? What are the standards to “prove” all these allegations? You simply could not write a law to cover all that in a useful fashion and trying to do so would open a hell of a can-of-worms. Also remember that 15% of domestic abuse victims are male ([cite](http://physical-abuse.suite101.com/article.cfm/male_victims_of_domestic_violence)). Certainly far less than female victims but not insignificant and your opening up the law to include killing these bastard abusers would encompass killing some violent women too. I agree this woman had a helluva time and I, for one, do not blame her at all and feel her killing this guy was justified. The problem here was in the incredible assholishness of the prosecutors. They have a lot of discretion and chose to be jerks about it. Despite that I think she had a shot at a self-defense defense or jury nullification on this one (although granted that is a tough one to pull off but this one could well have managed it with a good attorney). If nothing else I would hope the governor would commute her sentence. Point being she had other options after killing the guy within the law as it stands. Some combination of jerk prosecutors and (my assessment) bad defense attorney added insult to injury in her case. Opening up the law to make it easier to kill someone is just a bad idea even if you think the jerks totally have it coming. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expanding-justifiable-homicide-for-abused-people-mostly-women/523141/63 "2010-02-17T19:55:02Z")
> [@AJM1234](#): > > Till you have gone through the hell of domestic violence I do not belive you should be able to warrant a response. In Wendy Moldonado’s case, leaving was not an option. This man was insane. Legally. He tortured her and her sons. You CANNOT escape those types of people. I thank God everyday that I was not in her shoes. I was a victim of domestic violence only seven months ago, and my family is in law enforcent and luckily, with their help I was able to obtain proper documents to get buy me time to get out. But restraining order do just that and only that- BUY YOU TIME! They are not a permanent fix to your situation. If somebody is willing to knock you around and talk down to you every day, a piece of court-ordered paper will not do a damn thing. I do not think you fully understand what it is like to see the man you love turn into a monster. Often several women stay in loveless relationships because they have children, what makes you honestly think they could escape a crazy, abusive husband as well. It takes more than just the will to leave, especially when involving children. You have to be 100% sure that your children will survive if you leave. Moldonado did not live in a large town, nor was she financially able to pick up and move far enough from him. After twenty years with that SOB she had had enough, the police did indeed come to her house that night(the entire time her husband was inside with the other three children and made sure to remind her that he was in fact with them and to “make the cops go away or else”) the police left, even when the nieghbors flagged them down. That was the night she killed him. And while I do not condone killing someone I can see how that was her only option. And in my opinion justifiable homicide laws do need to be expanded when dealing with domestic violence cases. As regards to whoever posted " so if i slapped my wife once, does that give her the right to shoot me?" You should really look up the definition of domestic violence. I promise you one single incident is deffinately not the definition of abuse. This is a reoccuring abuse that takes place for a stint of time, it is not a one time, in the heat of the moment slap. This is numerous broken ribs, thousands of bruises, spousal rape, torture for years that leads up to these type of rare incidents. Be mindful that whatever hell Moldonado endured was one of the most sever cases of domestic violence anyone has ever heard of being reported. Most domestic violence survivors, like myself, saw only a glimpse of what she did, and I still cannot get over my “hell” She would rather spend 10 years in prison than one more year with him, and she knows her children are safe, it is sad she is even in prison but do to the laws and the restraints of those present laws that is the outcome, remember her “freedom” before jail was not freedom at all. She was living in worse conditions than any jail could present to her. I don’t want to turn this into a ‘poor mistreated men’ thread, but you’ve never been a man. I once gave a girl a note telling her how I felt about her and a few weeks later a dozen cops tricked me into going into where she works so they could try to arrest me for it. I didn’t know why at first but apparently I came on too strongly and made her uncomfortable. They let me go since I hadn’t broken the law (talking to someone and being awkward isn’t technically a crime), but the reality is accidentally making a woman uncomfortable by being awkward is something you never want to experience. Police work is supposed to appeal to professionals. But the reality is it is a field with heavy appeal for aggressive rednecks too. And until you’ve experienced their wrath, you don’t know either. You may be mentally scarred from an abusive man, I’m mentally scarred from that incident too, and probably always will be. It took me a long time to even begin to trust people after that. If they can change the justifiable homicide laws to require actual evidence and make it gender neutral, I’m for it. But the reality is you are going to have situations like the one listed above where a woman beat her ex-husband with a tennis racket and when he grabbed it away he was charged with assault. Things like that happen. Law enforcement is not as professional as you may think. I think the woman in the OP should be pardoned, and the laws should be changed. But there is no telling how many men will be torn down by it either. So it would have to be done really, really professionally and neutrally to account for gays and lesbians, female abuser/male victims, mutually abusive relationships, etc. I don’t mean to sound melodramatic, but in some ways what is being proposed is almost like going to the NAACP and telling them ‘we want to change the laws to give police and white people more rights to assault you if they think you are a threat’. Naturally there will be some pushback because sometimes the threats posed (by blacks against white or the police) are real, and some are just due to overactive imaginations and bigotry on the part of whites & the police. Some black people would get assaulted for committing crimes, some would get assaulted for DWB. You really, really have to make the system professional to do something like this (allow abused people to use justifiable homicide). As a society we are too prone to thinking of men as dangerous brutes and women as innocent victims, and that prejudice colors our behavior. So any laws have to compensate for that innate bias most people have. ---
**Author:** ![Otara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a88e4f/32.png) [@Otara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otara)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expanding-justifiable-homicide-for-abused-people-mostly-women/523141/64 "2010-02-17T20:56:45Z")
I think people are getting too caught up in the gender aspects. In my view the more useful issue is to consider whether different criteria are occurring in regards to being imprisoned by a stranger vs being imprisoned by a partner. There was the various people who were kidnapped by a stranger for many years. Does anyone think she would have been convicted of murder if she’d killed him to escape? What level of opportunity to escape would be required before a defense of homicide wouldnt be justified? I suspect it would be pretty high, because there would be little argument about the situation being reasonably viewed as potentially lethal, because the lethality would always escalate at the time of any attempt to escape. it almost seems like the longer you’re kidnapped for, the _less_ acceptance there is of using lethal force to escape. In my view the longer it has gone on, the more likely this will be seen as the only viable way to do so. Many of the positions against it seem to be more about the level of evidence required for it to be a valid case rather than real arguments about the concept. Eg at what point its reasonable to view the situation as one of kidnapping or imprisonment. Otara ---
**Author:** ![lee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lee/32/7455_2.png) [@lee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lee)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2010, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expanding-justifiable-homicide-for-abused-people-mostly-women/523141/65 "2010-02-18T07:51:33Z")
Every year I read some news story about some man who found and killed a woman who had left him because he was abusive. Most of them make the news because there was plenty of warning and there were restraining orders etc. One woman I talked to said that leaving her abuser would be like deliberately turning her back to someone holding a gun to her head. It would not make her safer and was likely to tick him off and be what it takes to get him to pull the trigger, and it would mean she could no longer see him so she could not even try to duck. Note well: I think that women do abuse men too, and some may be just as terrible as the men I read about in the news, but for whatever reason, I do not see stories about them in the news with the frequency that I do stories about abusive men. I think pardons are appropriate in the situation in the OP. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2010, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expanding-justifiable-homicide-for-abused-people-mostly-women/523141/66 "2010-02-18T12:47:26Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > . Also remember that 15% of domestic abuse victims are male ([cite](http://physical-abuse.suite101.com/article.cfm/male_victims_of_domestic_violence)). Certainly far less than female victims but not insignificant and your opening up the law to include killing these bastard abusers would encompass killing some violent women too. Actually, your link says “reported victims of domestic violence” - and points out that men seldom report it. > [@lee](#): > > Note well: I think that women do abuse men too, and some may be just as terrible as the men I read about in the news, but for whatever reason, I do not see stories about them in the news with the frequency that I do stories about abusive men. How many people would care? How many people would just shrug and say “He must’ve deserved it”? ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2010, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expanding-justifiable-homicide-for-abused-people-mostly-women/523141/67 "2010-02-18T16:37:27Z")
Reminds me of that ABC(?) program where they had actors pretending to be men and women in relationships. The pair doing the man abusing the woman had many people upset and calling the cops. But a lot of people smiled or thought “You go girl!” for the woman abusing man pair. It was disturbing. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expanding-justifiable-homicide-for-abused-people-mostly-women/523141.md?page=3)