Type:	Journal Article
Title:	An examination of a potential reform to the provocation defence: the impact of gender of the defendant and the suddenness requirement
Other Titles:	Psychiatry, psychology, and law
Authors:	Cheyne, Nicola Dennison, Susan
Keywords:	Legal issues;Criminal justice responses;Homicide
Year:	2005
Publisher:	Australian Academic Press : Samford Valley
Citation:	12 (2), 2005
Notes:	This article presents one of the first empirical studies in Australia to look at the potential biases in the application of the defence of provocation based on defendant gender and time between provocation and killing, to determine their impact on mock juror verdicts. An overview of the development of the defence of provocation is given. Proposed biases were tested by changing the defence to include a history of violence as provocative. University students (n=228) in Queensland gave verdicts for hypothetical scenarios of domestic violence, with variations of defendant gender and time of killing. Subjects had to determine 3 verdicts by using the Queensland Criminal Code definitions of murder and manslaughter, a summarised and a revised version of the provocation defence. It found that gender significantly impacted on verdicts. Time significantly impacted on all 3 verdicts, with delayed killings compared to immediate killings generating more guilty of murder verdicts. Significantly fewer ‘guilty of murder’ verdicts were given with a revised defence. Male defendants and defendants killing after a delay were significantly more likely to be found guilty of murder. This suggests that reform reduces bias but not according to time or gender. It found that, for all verdicts for both men and women who killed after a delay, they were more likely to be held guilty of murder than if they killed immediately following the provocation. The implication is that, as females are more likely to kill after a delay than men, the effect of delay will lead to increased ‘guilty of murder’ verdicts. This means the law creates a bias towards female defendants. It also found blame for the killing was more likely to be externally attributed for female defendants. However, verdicts did not differ according to the gender of the defendant when the current and a revised version of the defence were used. Some support exists for the potential reform to the defence by way of including a history of violence as provocation. However, the existing suddenness requirement has the potential to create a gender bias even when the history of violence is allowed since women are more likely than men to kill after a delay
URI:	https://anrows.intersearch.com.au/anrowsjspui/handle/1/13381
ISSN:	1321-8719
Appears in Collections:	Journal Articles

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