Opinion ID: 1988843
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Battered Spouse Syndrome

Text: The battered spouse and battered child syndromes have different origins but in recent years have undergone a parallel development. In the context of providing support for the assertion of self-defense when the defendant (woman or child) kills an alleged persistent abuser in the absence of a contemporaneous provocation that the public at large would find indicative of an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm, they have become recognized, by some courts and in some of the literature, as kindred doctrines. Dr. Lenore Walker, an academic and clinical psychologist, is usually credited with first describing the battered spouse syndrome, which she called the battered woman syndrome. See Lenore E. Walker, THE BATTERED WOMAN (1979); also THE BATTERED WOMAN SYNDROME (1984) and Battered Woman Syndrome and Self-Defense, 6 Notre Dame J.L. Ethics & Pub. Pol'y 321 (1992). Dr. Walker identified a battered woman as one who is repeatedly subjected to any forceful physical or psychological behavior by a man in order to coerce her to do something he wants her to do without any concern for her rights. She described three phases to the battering cycle, which, she said, may vary in both time and intensity. Phase I she referred to as the tension-building phase, in which minor incidents of physical, sexual, or emotional abuse occur. The woman is not severely abused, but the batterer begins to express hostility toward her. See Hope Toffel, Crazy Women, Unharmed Men, and Evil Children: Confronting the Myths About Battered People Who Kill Their Abusers, And The Argument For Extending Battering Syndrome Self-Defenses To All Victims Of Domestic Violence, 70 S. Cal. L.Rev. 337, 349 (1996), citing Walker, THE BATTERED WOMAN SYNDROME, supra, at 95. Phase II consists of an acute battering incident, in which the batterer typically unleashes a barrage of verbal and physical aggression that can leave the woman severely shaken and injured. Toffel, supra, 70 S. Cal. L.Rev. at 349, citing Walker, THE BATTERED WOMAN SYNDROME, supra, at 96. Phase III is a contrition stage, in which the batterer apologizes, seeks forgiveness, and promises to change. The apparent transformation of the abuser back into a loving partner, according to Walker, provides the positive reinforcement for remaining in the relationship. Id. The essence of the syndrome is that this cycle repeats, and, indeed, Walker asserts that the syndrome does not exist unless it has repeated at least once. Worse, perhaps, than the mere repetition, is the fact that, over time, the cycle becomes more intense, more frequent, more violent, and often more lethal. See People v. Humphrey, 13 Cal.4th 1073, 56 Cal.Rptr.2d 142, 921 P.2d 1 (1996). One aspect of the syndrome is what had been described as learned helplessnesswhere, after repeated abuse, women come to believe that they cannot control the situation and thus become passive and submissive. See Toffel, supra, 70 S. Cal. L.Rev. at 350, citing Walker, THE BATTERED WOMAN SYNDROME, supra, at 45-47, 49-50. The etiology of this aspect is described in Erin Masson, ADMISSIBILITY OF EXPERT OR OPINION EVIDENCE OF BATTERED-WOMAN SYNDROME ON ISSUE OF SELF-DEFENSE, 58 ALR 5th 749, 762-763 (1998): Through experience, the victim learns that when she attempts to defend herselfby reaching out to others or trying to leavethat she will be the victim of more severe violence. The batterer blames the abusive relationship on her inability to respond to his ever-increasing demands so that the most effective short-term method of reducing incidents of violence is to be more subservient. This is a key aspect in the purported relevance of the syndrome in a self-defense context, as it offers an explanation of why the defendant, having been previously subjected to abuse, simply did not leave the home or take some other action against her abuser. In State v. Allery, 101 Wash.2d 591, 682 P.2d 312, 316 (1984), the court observed that expert testimony explaining why a person suffering from the battered woman syndrome would not leave her mate, would not inform police or friends, and would fear increased aggression against herself would be helpful to a jury in understanding a phenomenon not within the competence of an ordinary lay person. Another aspect of the battered spouse syndrome directly relevant in a self-defense context, is that the victim becomes able to sense the escalation in the frequency and intensity of the violence and thus becomes more sensitive to the abuser's behavior. See Walker, supra, 6 Notre Dame J.L. Ethics & Pub. Pol'y at 327-328. As described by Elizabeth Bochnak, WOMEN'S SELF-DEFENSE CASES: THEORY AND PRACTICE (1981), quoted in Bechtel v. State, 840 P.2d 1, 12 (Okla.Crim.1992): The battered woman learns to recognize the small signs that precede periods of escalated violence. She learns to distinguish subtle changes in tone of voice, facial expressions, and levels of danger. She is in a position to know, perhaps with greater certainty than someone attacked by a stranger, that the batterer's threat is real and will be acted upon. Walker's studies indicated that retaliation by the abused woman often occurred when the cycle lapsed back from Phase III to Phase I. She noted that the women whose cases she studied felt that they simply could not cope with further assaults: None of them stated she intended to kill her man; each said that she only wanted to stop him from hurting her more. Walker, THE BATTERED WOMAN, supra, at 70, quoted in State v. Williams, 787 S.W.2d 308, 312 (Mo.App.1990). In describing the cases in which the woman had been tried for murder, Walker recounted that several factors were common to all of the cases: First, each woman stated that she was convinced the batterer was going to kill her. Violent assaults had taken place previously in all of the these cases. In the final incident, however, something different was noted by these women which convinced them that the batterer really was going to kill them this time. Id. at 312, quoted in State v. Williams, supra, at 312. [4] Dr. Walker has opined that the battered woman syndrome constitutes a subgroup of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is recognized by the American Psychiatric Association as a mental disorder. See DIAGNOSTIC AND STATISTICAL MANUAL OF MENTAL DISORDERS, American Psychiatric Association, 4th ed. § 309.81(DSM-IV), although, as critics have pointed out, DSM-IV does not, itself, mention the battered woman syndrome. Other writers have compared the battered spouse syndrome to the Stockholm syndrome of traumatic bonding, which offers an explanation of why hostages sometimes come to identify with their captors. See Toffel, supra, 70 S. Cal. L.Rev. at 351-356. Walker's works, along with those of other researchers and clinicians, coincided with a growing awareness that domestic violence was, indeed, a serious problem that, for too long, had been ignored, or at least been given insufficient attention, by the legal, law enforcement, and social service communities, and the ensuing decades saw increasingly strident demands for both comprehensive and focused remedial action. One aspect of this was the attempt by criminal defense lawyers to offer this syndrome in support of a self-defense argument when the woman eventually reacted by killing her abuser, and one finds a burgeoning plethora of cases in the 1980's and 1990's in which courts were required to deal with the issue. Those seeking recognition of the syndrome in that context turned as well to the State legislatures, which responded, as the courts did, in different ways. Cases in which this syndrome has been offered in support of a self-defense argument have fallen into two categories: the confrontational category, where the killing occurs when the defendant uses deadly force in response to a contemporaneous physical attack; and the non-confrontational category, where the defendant kills her partner while he is sleeping or is otherwise distracted or incapacitated. See Masson, supra, 58 ALR 5th at 764. [5] In most of the cases, the defense asserted was what, in Maryland, would constitute perfect self-defense, requiring not only that the defendant have harbored the honest subjective belief that she was in imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm, but that her belief be a reasonable one. The syndrome was sought to be used, through both an evidentiary foundation of antecedent abuse and expert testimony regarding the syndrome itself, to persuade the trier of fact that, under the circumstances, the woman's belief was not just real but also reasonablethat the reasonableness of her belief had to be judged through her eyes and in light of her experience. That proved less difficult, of course, in the confrontational setting, which has been estimated to constitute about 75% of the cases, [6] where the victim was usually the initial aggressor who provoked the final confrontation that ended up lethal. That element of the defense was not the real issue. The issue was more the reasonableness of the defendant's reaction, and, in those cases, the effort often proved successful, at least at the appellate level. See, for example, Bechtel v. State, supra, 840 P.2d 1; Bonner v. State, 740 So.2d 439 (Ala.Crim.App.1998). The courts proved more leery in the non-confrontational setting, accounting for about 20% of the cases. There, the issue tended to focus on the reasonableness of the defendant's belief that she was in some imminent danger when the defendant was not, at the moment, directly confronting her and may, as noted, even have been sleeping or completely passive at the time. See Com. v. Grove, 363 Pa.Super. 328, 526 A.2d 369 (1987). Defenses of this kind do not always remain neatly in their original boxes. Apart from the issue of its applicability in the non-confrontational setting, questions arose whether the syndrome was limited to wives trapped in a marital relationship with their abuser or included as well ex-spouses and women involved in less formal relationships, whether it included males subject to repeated abuse by female partners, whether it included children who killed abusive parents, or elderly or dependent parents who killed abusive children, or same-sex persons involved in a homosexual communal relationship, whether it included anyone involved in a relationship with a persistent abuser. These questions surfaced in Maryland when, in 1991, the General Assembly considered legislation (H.B. 49, which was enacted, and S.B. 141, which passed but was vetoed) that officially recognized the battered spouse syndrome. [7] The bill, as introduced and as enacted, used the term battered spouse syndrome, which, in § 10-916(a), was defined as the psychological condition of a victim of repeated physical and psychological abuse by a spouse, former spouse, cohabitant, or former cohabitant which is also recognized in the medical and scientific community as the `battered woman's syndrome.' Evidence was offered to the legislative committees that, although that syndrome had been recognized in a number of other States, there was no controlling Maryland precedent and some judges were allowing evidence of the syndrome while others were not. The intent of the bill, according to the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee Floor Report on H.B. 49, was to clarify that the court has discretion to admit evidence of repeated physical and psychological abuse of the defendant by the alleged victim and expert testimony on the battered spouse syndrome. (Emphasis added). The bill achieved that purpose through § 10-916(b), which provides: Notwithstanding evidence that the defendant was the first aggressor, used excessive force, or failed to retreat at the time of the alleged offense, when the defendant raises the issue that the defendant was, at the time of the alleged offense, suffering from the Battered Spouse Syndrome as a result of the past course of conduct of the individual who is the victim of the crime for which the defendant has been charged, the court may admit for the purpose of explaining the defendant's motive or state of mind, or both, at the time of the commission of the alleged offense: (1) Evidence of repeated physical and psychological abuse of the defendant perpetrated by an individual who is the victim of a crime for which the defendant has been charged; and (2) Expert testimony on the Battered Spouse Syndrome. (Emphasis added). It is clear, from both the language of the bill and its legislative history, that the law was intended to cover only the battered spouse syndrome as then generally recognized. Although the bill used the terminology battered spouse syndrome, it made clear that it was applicable as well to former spouses, cohabitants, and former cohabitants, and was equated with the broader term battered woman's syndrome. There is no indication, however, that, by including cohabitants and former cohabitants, the bill was intended to apply beyond the adult domestic relationship. John Brumbaugh, a distinguished professor of criminal law and evidence at the University of Maryland Law School, advised the sponsor of the companion Senate Bill, and through him, the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, that the bill was too limitedthat the situation is broader than that of the battered spouse, and includes battered children and battered parents, for example. The implicit suggestion to so broaden the bill was rejected. The other written testimony offered in support of the bill focused on the plight of battered women and spouses. The letter from Judith Wolfer, who apparently had a hand in drafting the legislation, is particularly germane in this regard. She regarded the bill as applying to abuse of the defendant by his or her partner and described the syndrome in much the same way that Dr. Walker had done years earlier. She stated that the cyclical nature of an intimate battering relationship enables a battered spouse to become expert at recognizing the warning signs of an impending assault from her partnersigns frequently imperceptible to outsiders. A second pertinent limitation, explicit in the statute and well-documented in its legislative history, is that the admission of battered spouse syndrome evidence is discretionary with the court. The statute says that the court may admit this evidence, and the Senate Judicial Proceedings Floor Report makes clear that admission was intended to be discretionary. Ms. Wolfer noted that limitation in her testimony: House Bill 49 does NOT require the court to admit this evidence in every case. The bill has been purposefully written in permissive language ... Suggestions to make admission mandatory were made and rejected. Congresswoman Constance Morella wrote to the House Judiciary Committee that Maryland judges must be required to admit evidence of battering and expert testimony on battered woman's syndrome in criminal cases in which the defendant is a battered woman. (Emphasis added). The Legislative Office of Maryland NOW, the Women Legislators of Maryland, and Ms. Wolfer, on behalf of her three organizations, were content with the permissive language, however, and that, as noted, is how the statute is worded. [8]