Court Opinion

ID: 9761023
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:28:43.581493+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:19.723858
License: Public Domain

VANCE, Justice,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent. The majority opinion is now authority for the proposition that a social worker who has worked extensively with women who have been battered and beaten by their husbands can qualify as an expert and express an expert opinion that a particular woman either was or was not suffering from a so-called “spouse abuse syndrome” at the time she shot and killed her husband.
At no place in the opinion, however, does the majority define what it means by the use of the term “battered wife syndrome.” Without question, the appellee was a battered wife. She testified to a long history of physical abuse by her husband. Not all women who suffer repeated and continuous abuse from their husbands suffer from a “battered spouse syndrome”, however. Some do and some do not. There is something more to the “battered wife syn*391drome” than a wife who has been repeatedly battered.
Some battered wives develop a sense of helplessness to the extent that, in their mind at least, the only escape from abuse is to kill the abuser. Call it what you will, this is a condition of the mind, perhaps of an irrational mind, but if a battered wife suffers from such a delusion, it may explain why it appeared necessary to her to kill her husband when, in fact, it would not under the circumstances, appear so at all to a normal person or to a juror. The existence of such a condition of mind can be used to support a plea of self-defense.
Because it is a condition of mind which may cause one to labor under a mistaken belief, it is essential that only those who are qualified to diagnose aberrant mental conditions be permitted to testify concerning whether a particular person has developed such a mental condition as a result of spouse abuse.
Unless there is some competent evidence that a “battered wife syndrome” is a generally accepted medical concept, I question whether the social worker should have been permitted to even describe the syndrome. I certainly do not believe that she should have been permitted to make the diagnosis that the appellee was suffering from such a state of mind. In that respect, the ruling of the trial court was correct, and I would affirm the judgment.
STEPHENS, C.J., joins in this dissent.