That she endured 18 years of abuse does not make me sympathetic, as I can't comprehend the mentality of an adult who would tolerate being abused. She killed him after he went to bed. That's not self defense; that's revenge.The opinions of people who either don't have the information they ought to have before speaking, or have it and decide that the interests they seek to advance are more important than truth ... those are always such worthwhile opinions.
Who cares whether you're sympathetic? Justice systems in civilized societies do not convict and punish people for crimes that they did not have the requisite intent to commit. People suffering from various psychological disorders may not be responsible for some things they do to the degree required for conviction and punishment. The disorder that results from long abuse is one.
It is recognized FACT -- recognized by those with the skills and honesty to assess such things -- that people who suffer from long abuse do feel themselves to be in imminent danger when another person in the same circumstances probably would not.
Any self-defence justification for an assault or homicide rests on
the reasonableness of the accused's apprehension of an imminent threat of grievous injury or death on the part of the person assaulted. A victim of long-term, systematic abuse may in fact have such a
reasonable apprehension in his/her circumstances.
I'm not stating my personal opinion. I'm repeating authoritative opinion.
It was evidently held in this particular case that the accused's claim to such a reasonable apprehension was not believable. There are many and various factors that can be considered in assessing the credibility of anyone's claims about anything. Her subsequent behaviour was indeed relevant. How she killed the man was relevant, although the fact that she did it while he was asleep is by no means conclusive evidence that she did not have the requisite reasonable apprehension that he would kill her at some time before too long if she didn't act. Again, not my personal opinion.
An interesting study of cases like this was done in Canada - a review of the sentences of women in penitentiaries for killing intimate partners who applied to have their cases reconsidered on this basis.
http://canada.justice.gc.ca/en/dept/pub/sdr/rtush-intro.htmlMany of the applicants' cases were rejected.
This is not a great case for showing (me) the injustice of minimum sentencing, as I have about a thimbleful of compassion for violent people.The amazing thing about RIGHTS is that one's entitlement to exercise them just doesn't depend on anyone else's personal opinion of one.
In Canada, most mandatory minimum sentences have been held to be unconstitutional as contrary to the guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment. Some stand: repeat impaired driving offences, use of firearms in the commission of crimes, murder; in those cases, the violation of rights has been held by the courts to be justified by the pressing concerns the sentences are designed to address.
In murder cases, there are mandatory terms (out of a life sentence) that must be served before parole may be applied for, but even there the courts have required that there be a "faint hope" clause, permitting a convicted person to apply for consideration of an earlier parole date. The application by the provincial cabinet minister convicted of murder-for-hire in the death of his wife some time ago was recently denied; I believe that the man who killed his severely and painfully disabled daughter, and whose sentence the Supreme Court upheld, will be applying:
http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/pub/2001/vol1/html/2001scr1_0003.htmlCivilized societies really just do not lock people up and throw away the key; the violation of rights that is the very nature of imprisonment -- the justified violation of the right to liberty -- is limited precisely by the need for justification.
Otherwise, if we all took a dislike to jaywalkers, we'd be locking them away for 35 years without parole too.
Either everybody's rights are respected and protected, or nobody can expect that his/her rights will be respected and protected. First they came for _____, and all that.
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