A Study On Attribute Of Battered Woman’s Homicide Cases

The behavior of battered women killing their husbands has been a hot issue widely concerned by the society.While sympathizing with the tragic plight of battered women,people are also actively hoping to find a way out for them.However,according to our country’s jurisprudence on such cases,such acts are often punished as intentional homicide and are not justified in defence.Because it does not meet the conditions of time and limitation in the elements of legitimate defence,this approach is inappropriate.Because abused women’s act of "using violence to confront violence" has its own criminal characteristics and reasons,in their special situation,abused women often have no choice but kill their husbands,without other possibilities of self-help.Therefore,they would choose the most violent form of "using violence to confront violence" —killing,Simply criminalizing as intentional homicide would be unfair to abused women.According to the criminal law of our country,the main reason for judging the unjustifiable defense of abused women is that the subjective factors of abused women are not taken into account,only the objective judgment criteria are adopted for the conditions of time and limitation of justifiable defense.We should re-establish the judgment standard,combine the subjective factors of abused women,draw lessons from foreign experience,discuss how abused women can establish self-defense.First of all,the author analyzes the current situation of judicial cognizance of battered women’s husband killing cases through typical cases.Through the analysis of two typical cases of battered women killing their husbands,this paper illustrates the current situation of this kind of cases in our country,that is,the conviction of intentional homicide.Secondly,this paper puts forward the major problem for discussion: the dispute on the nature of the behavior of battered women killing their husband.Scholars dispute on whether the act of killing a battered woman’s husband is a criminal act or an act of justifiable defense.The focus of the controversy is whether the case meets the time and limit conditions of justifiable defense,and some hold a positive attitude,And then the behavior is considered as justifiable defense;while some other hold negative attitude,and then identify the behavior as a criminal act.The author comments on the two attitudes and thinks that these both of the two attitudes are improper in judging whether the case is justifiable defence or not.Thirdly,it puts forward the criteria to judge the behavior attributes of battered women’s husband killing.At present,the judgment of time condition and limit condition of legitimate defense in our country mostly follows the objective judgment standard,that is,the social average person standard.The objective judgment is unreasonable in many ways.Combining the extraterritorial experiences,the common law system mostly uses the subjective judgment standard,that is,the standard of the actor;the criminal law of Canada adopts the way of subjective judgment as main method and objective judgment as complement,and regards the behavior of husband killing of the abused woman as self-defense initially,and applies psychological battered women’s syndrome to the case.Abused women’s syndrome consists of the concepts of "cycle of violence" and "acquired sense of helplessness",showing the cyclical changes in violence and the sense of helplessness embodied in this cyclical change in violence.It reasonably explains why the abused woman does not leave her husband and kills him,so that the abused woman is judged to be self-defense,which is worthy of learning by our country’s criminal law,and our country should adopt the combination of subjective and objective criteria,to re-characterize the husband murdering of battered women.Finally,it proves that the behavior of killing husband of abused women in our country should be considered as legitimate defense.Considering the subjective factors of battered women,it introduces the battered women’s syndrome,and combines the five elements of the establishment of legitimate defense in our country,discusses the establishment of self-defense of battered women’s killing of their husbands.In judicial practice,women who have been in a domestic violence environment for a long time should get special attention of the special psychological state that their special experience presents.We should not analyze the behavior of husband killing in the case of forced execution from the perspective of the general people of society.We should fully consider the unique perspective and psychological state of abused women in the context of respecting the objective facts,and further realize the fairness of justice.