Battered Woman Syndrome
Ibn-Tamas v. United States
471 F.2d 923 (1973)
The Facts
• Marriage characterized by recurring violent
episodes
• Mr. Ibn –Tamas shot by defendant after 4 years
of marriage
* conflicting testimony about the day of the shooting
Trial Court Finding
• Victim was ambushed and shot due to fear of
losing home, impatience, and financial gain
• Testimony on BWS inadmissible
The Defense: BWS
• Dr. Lenore Walker offered as a defense expert
on the subject of “battered women”
– Described phenomenon of “wife battering”
– Offered opinion on the analogizing her patients with
the defendant
• Psychosocial factors of battered women
– Low self-esteem, depression,
maladaptive attributional style
– Learned helplessness
Why does BWS matter?
• Dr. Walker’s testimony would have served two basic
functions
– General credibility of the nature of the marriage
– Strengthening a self-defense argument and reasonableness of
the actions taken
• Testimony rejected on three grounds
– Goes beyond those acts which the jury is entitled to hear about
– Invades the province of the jury
– Unnecessarily describes victim as a batterer, which is not at
issue here
The Appeal
• “Because Dr. Walker’s testimony was central to the
defense theory of the case, we cannot conclude that
the…exclusion of the testimony…was harmless.”
• Dyas test for admissibility:
– Beyond the natural understanding of the average layman
– Expertise of witness
– “State of the pertinent art or science” allows a reasonable
opinion to be asserted by an expert
Applying the Dyas Test
• “Beyond the average layman” test is met
because of goals served by testimony
• Dr. Walker’s expertise is a matter of fact—
remanded
• The concept of the battered woman—
sufficiently developed?
– BWS construct vs. methodology
Rejected again
• “As Frye soundly requires, more needs to be known by
the court initially in the specific area of the science
before its admissibility will be warranted.”
• Mixed reception of BWS in clinical circles
– Difficult to reliably diagnose
– Never validated as a bona fide condition
• Growing use of BWS in courts
– Violence Against Women Act of 1994
• Recognized domestic violence as serious crime
• Called for report on the medical and psychological bases of BWS
• Emphasized that there is no “battered woman’s defense”
The Battered Woman Syndrome
Study
• Goals:
– To identify variables which would assist in
understanding battered women
– To test two theories specific to understanding
the violence:
• Learned helplessness
• The Walker cycle theory of violence
Methods
• 403 women interviewed
– Self-identified
– Taken from six-state region, mostly from Denver metropolitan area
– Recruited using referral sources (shelters, human service agencies,
hospitals, and private practitioners) and direct advertising
– Screened by project’s definition of battering
• Definitions
– “A battered woman is a woman, 18 years of age or over, who is or has
been in an intimate relationship with a man who repeatedly subjects or
subjected her to forceful physical and/or psychological abuse.”
– What do we mean by “intimate,” “repeatedly,” and “abuse?”
Methods (cont.)
• No control group
– Some comparisons were possible through the use of published
norms
– “each woman served as her own control” for identical questions
asked about battering and nonbattering relationships
• Small incentive to participate
• Questionnaire
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Developed specifically for this study
200 pages
Open- and closed-ended questions
Standardized scales for psychosocial factors (depression,
attributional style, and perceived attitudes towards women)
– Novel questions developed for numerous variables of interest
Results
• Support found for both learned helplessness and the
Walker Cycle theory of violence
• Women’s behavior in battering relationships varies
directly with what they perceive will be effective in
minimizing injuries and staying alive
• Battered women tended to be more depressed, to have
maladaptive attributional styles (learned helplessness),
and lower self-esteem than comparative norms indicated
• No significant differences across racial or socioeconomic
lines
Limitations
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Non-randomized, self-selected sample (thought size made up for this)
No control group (comparison norms often not available)
Definition of the battered woman
– Homogenization of extent and nature of abuse
– Differences in experience not controlled for in data analysis
•
Low external validity
– Limited racial and geographic diversity
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Fatigue issues
Interviewer bias and reliability issues
Small pilot group (n = 20) for new scales in questionnaire
Quality of self-report data (behavioral response styles of battered women)
Doesn’t specify what constitutes a “pattern,” a “distinct syndrome,” a
“tendency,” etc. (especially difficult without control group)
The “Rotten Social
Background” Defense
United States v. Alexander and
Murdock
471 F.2d 923 (D.C.Cir.1972)
Facts
• Alexander and Murdock, both African-American males,
at restaurant when five white male Marine lieutenants
and a woman friend entered
• The two groups exchanged stares. Alexander verbally
challenged the marines, one of whom responded with a
racial epithet.
• Alexander and Murdock drew guns and began shooting,
killing two and wounding two others.
• Murdock raised the insanity defense, but was convicted
of second-degree murder. Alexander found guilty of
assault with a dangerous weapon.
The RSB Defense
• Murdock argues: The environment in which he was
raised—his “rotten social background”—conditioned him
to respond to certain stimuli in a manner most of us
would consider inappropriate
– Because of this conditioning, he was denied any meaningful
choice when the racial insult triggered the explosion
– Asked jury to liken his RSB resulted in the same kind of
behavioral control impairment to that experienced by a paranoid
schizophrenic or one suffering from a similar diagnosable
condition
– Asked jury to consider degrees of insanity, and degrees of
responsibility, and on that basis reduce the degree of defense
• Rejected in Stewart v. United States
District Court
• Psychiatrist testified that Murdock suffered from impaired behavioral
controls rooted in his RSB, but refused to label him insane
• Second psychiatrist attempts to label Murdock as “paranoid with
sociopathic trends”
– judge refuses to admit the testimony, “on the ground that in the
absence of underlying factual data, the jury could properly give it no
weight whatever.”
• Trial judge’s instructions:
“We are not concerned with a question of whether or not a man had a
rotten social background. We are concerned with the question of his
criminal responsibility. That is to say, whether he had an abnormal
condition of the mind that affected his emotional and behavioral processes
at the time of the offense.”
• Jury found Murdock sane and sentenced him to twenty
years to life.
The Evidence
• Psychiatrist offered opinion based on battery of
psychological tests
– Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale; Bender-Gestalt Test;
Thematic Apperception Test; MMPI; Rotter Incomplete
Sentences Test
• Found that Murdock was alienated and sullen, with
“paranoid and sociopathic trends almost ingrained and
severe enough to be diagnosed as a character disorder”
• Judge dismisses this kind of evidence as a matter of
opinion
The Appeal (Bazelon)
• When the trial judge concluded that the testimony was
inadmissible, he should have granted Murdock’s motion
for a mistrial, and ordered a new mental examination, by
experts capable of explaining their conclusions to a court
– The defense’s failure to prepare the witness adequately or
pursue the examination further may have deprived the defendant
of the essence of a substantial defense, giving Murdock grounds
for a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel
– Murdock was entitled to rely on the government to provide a
legally adequate examination
Evaluating the RSB Defense
•
An exculpatory mental illness need not be reflected in
some organic or pathological condition
–
•
The trial judge erred in instructing the jury to disregard
the testimony about Murdock’s social and economic
background
–
•
“mental illness…includes any abnormal condition of the mind
that substantially affects mental or emotional processes and
substantially impairs behavior controls.”
The testimony may have persuaded the jury that the
defendant’s behavioral controls were so impaired as to require
acquittal, even though the impairment might not render him
clinically insane
Psychiatrist for prosecution counters
Evaluating the RSB Defense (cont.)
• Even if we were to consider the defense, the community must still
decide what to do with Murdock
• Four “unattractive options”:
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Narrow limitations on the diminished responsibility defense
Expand the defense to include defendants like Murdock
Hospitalization
Confine the defendant exclusively on a prediction of dangerousness
• Bazelon not prepared to abandon the “disease” model
– Provides a rationale for detaining dangerous persons following acquittal
• Convictions and sentences affirmed
Bazelon’s Moral Journey
•
“We sacrifice a great deal by discouraging Murdock’s responsibility defense.
If we could remove the practical impediments to the free flow of information
we might begin to learn something about the causes of crime. We might
discover, for example, that there is a significant causal relationship between
violent criminal behavior and a “rotten social background.”
•
Acknowledges the likely role of mediating and moderating factors:
– Income redistribution and social reconstruction are indispensable first steps
toward solving the problem of violent crime
•
“Law’s aims must be achieved by a moral process cognizant of the realities
of social injustice…[two conditions of punishment on p. 22]
Final Thoughts
• RSB defense = “living in a ghetto defense”?
– Slippery slope?
– Adverse social and subcultural background is statistically more
criminogenic than psychosis.
– Like insanity, it also severely impairs the freedom of choice
– Defense: “One may argue that insanity diminishes the capacity to reject
what is wrong and adhere to what is right. So does the ghetto—more
so.”
• RSB Makeover
– “Urban psychosis”: State v. Morgan (no), State v. Taylor (yes)
– “Urban Survival Syndrome”: a defensive mind-set prevalent in innercities. People v. Boney: “Poor urban areas foster a cycle of violence
and despair, and a look, bump or glance leads to extreme violence.”