Battered Women's Syndrome in Practice in China's Courts

This blog entry continues the previous discussion on husband-killing (mariticide) by critically examining an article by Chen Min, an attorney and domestic violence advocate, on the use of the battered women’s syndrome (“BWS”) in homicide cases.

The link between the lack of legal protections and husband-killing

I originally envisioned that this blog would focus on China’s recent experiments with protection orders in domestic violence situations. My internet searches, however, disclosed numerous media articles on battered wives who kill their abusive husbands. While the data is too limited to draw any definite conclusions, I hypothesize the following: 1) China has an unusually high-rate of mariticide; 2) This unusually high-rate is due to the lack of effective legal protections (e.g., protection orders), forcing battered wives to adopt extra-legal measures, such as killing their abusive husbands. (See Angela Brown and Kirk Williams, “Exploring the Effect of Resource Availability and the Likelihood of Female-Perpetrated Homicides,” 23 Law and Society Review 75 (1989), arguing that battered women in countries with fewer domestic violence resources have higher rates of homicide committed by battered women.)

The Scope of the Problem
It is difficult to gauge how many women kill their husbands due to abuse in China. Small-scale studies and informal sources, however, suggest that the vast majority of women convicted for homicide killed their husbands and were motivated, at least in part, by the desire to escape further abuse. For example, a 1999 study by the Shaanxi Research Meeting on Women’s Studies, Marriage and the Family (陕西妇女理论、婚姻 家庭研究会) randomly selected 101 homicide cases from the Shaanxi Women’s Prison. In 64 of those cases, the victim was the prisoner’s husband. In a 2005 article* published by Life Daily (生活报) in Heilongjiang Province, an unnamed prison official is quoted as stating that 80% of women prisoners who were convicted for homicide killed their husbands and that, within this group, over half of the prisoners suffered from long-term domestic violence at the hands of their husbands.

(* “Reporter interviews three women convicts who killed their husbands: Young women cannot stand the violence and hack their husbands to death”)

The “Battered Women’s Syndrome” in China: Defending Women Who Kill Their Abusive Husbands

An article by Chen Min, A Retrospective on Implementing the Battered Women’s Syndrome in China, examines her own and others’ efforts to defend women on trial for killing their abusive husbands. In particular, Chen Min describes four cases in which defense attorneys attempted to introduce expert testimony regarding “battered women’s syndrome” (受虐妇女综合症理论). Below is a synopsis of the results:

Case 1: In the first case, a court in Ningjin County, Hebei Province rejected the defense’s request to offer Chen Min’s expert testimony regarding battered women’s syndrome due to “the lack of legal basis” (法律依据). Nonetheless, the court apparently accepted the fact that the defendant had suffered from domestic violence and specifically found that the decedent-husband was “seriously at fault” (有严重过错). Unfortunately, the article fails to tell the reader how the finding that the decedent was at fault affected the court’s legal analysis or the ultimate outcome in the case.

Case 2: In the second case, the procuratorate (检察院) in the Haidian District of Beijing invited Ms. Chen as an expert on domestic violence to examine the defendant before the initiation of criminal charges. According to Ms. Chen, the case is significant because it is the first example of a basic-level judicial agency inviting an expert witness to testify regarding the battered women’s syndrome. Ironically, Ms. Chen determined that the defendant was not “under the influence” of the battered women’s syndrome.

Case 3: In a 2002 homicide case before the Supreme Court in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Liu Kui, the defense attorney, employed BWS theory to convince the court to suspend the execution of the defendant’s death sentence for two years. Unfortunately, the article does not say how Mr. Kui used the BWS. However, based on the outcome of the case, Mr. Kui apparently did not argue (or the court did not accept) that the defendant’s use of deadly force was justified as self-defense.

Case 4: In the fourth and final case, the author, Chen Min, employed BWS theory to convince the court (Jiaozhou City (胶州市), Shandong Province) to consider the defendant’s eighteen years of past abuse as an extenuating circumstance (酌定从轻情节) in her sentencing. In light of this history of abuse, the court sentenced the defendant to eight years imprisonment – the lightest sentence in that type of case, according to local attorneys.

Conclusion
Ms. Chen’s article shows that Chinese court may be willing to consider BWS and/or past domestic violence in criminal cases against women who kill their husbands. Unfortunately, the exact legal function of BWS is not clear. Is BWS a new and independent defense? Or are defense attorneys using BWS in support of pre-existing defense theories, like self-defense or extenuating circumstances? To be continued...