Dear Editor,
Lisa Haley, Dacia Bourne and Melisha Cylus are to face judge and jury for killing their partners. All three were reportedly abused by their now dead partners. This situation can very easily end up victimising the abused a second time because Guyana, like the wider Caribbean, does not accept battered women’s syndrome (BWS) as a defence.
The number of women globally who have committed violent crimes is very small. Women are far more likely to be victims than perpetrators. However, when women have been convicted of murder or manslaughter, in a significant number of cases the victim is a male partner or male family member and there is a history of domestic violence. But it’s not only the justice system that’s inherently biased. Even women themselves sometimes oppose the ‘justification’ of murder via battered women’s syndrome as a PAHO consultant so adamantly put it in an email exchange.
A 2016 study entitled “Women who kill in response to domestic violence: How do criminal justice systems respond?“ found that in almost all jurisdictions covered, there is no separate basis in law for a history of abuse to be considered and generally, women have to rely on existing legal defences (eg. self-defence, provocation, or temporary insanity). These typical defences tend to be ill-adapted to women who have experienced prolonged abuse.
Courts are not equipped with the right guidance, or show a reluctance, to take victimisation consistently into account as a factor either in establishing culpability or in sentencing.
Some promising practices have developed in a few jurisdictions researched (e.g. a number of Australian and US states), establishing defences or partial defences for abuse cases, or enabling greater weight to the mitigating circumstance of domestic violence to be given when establishing culpability or in sentencing.
BWS was recognised in the US, Canada, UK and Australia in 1990, 1991, and 1992, respectively, where expert testimony supported a defence plea and justified an abused woman’s actions. Subsequently, these countries modified their criminal laws and implemented BWS in three ways: by changing previous defences, introducing a new defence, or expanding expert testimony. Despite creating the perception of battered women as weak, helpless victims, BWS helped raise awareness of domestic abuse and the necessity for ungendering criminal legislation.
According to American University Literature and Journalism Professor Rachel Louise Snyder, one of the US leading writers on domestic violence, “Self-defense laws were written with the proverbial bar fight in mind – two people of equal ability, strength, and intent. Or they were written to say a man could protect his castle from intruders. But what if that person was not an intruder? What if that person had the same rights to be there as the person pulling the trigger? Or what if you’re talking about two people who are not unknown to each other, who know well how a given person will react to a situation in which their power and control is being called into question?”
She pointed out that, “Canada did a study like what we’re doing with the Regilla Project, (a project she started at Stanford University) and they discovered that more than 65 percent of the women imprisoned for homicide in their country killed someone who was abusing them. So, they essentially rewrote their self-defense laws so that size, weight, physical strength or ability, intent and domestic violence histories must be taken into account.
In the case of nations that do not accept BWS as a defence Professor Synder said, “Although our current self-defense laws should allow for these elements as they’re currently written, judges will bar a lot of this type of evidence. They’ll cite hearsay or irrelevance or any number of statutes. Judges have incredible power. I would like to see our laws rewritten to reflect this very different reality that victims of domestic violence endure.”
Indeed, laws in Guyana and the Caribbean need to also be so rewritten. Thus, The Caribbean Voice calls upon Minister Dr. Vindhya Persaud to lead this charge and persuade the government to do what is necessary to strike another nail by enabling BWS to become law in Guyana. We also call upon women’s organizations, women’s rights and domestic violence activists and advocates and the President of Guyana to place BWS at the top of their efforts to equalize the legal playing field as far as domestic violence is concerned.
Yours faithfully,
Annan Boodram
