Type:	Thesis
Title:	The treatment of women who kill their violent male partners within the Australian criminal justice stystem
Authors:	Bradfield, Rebecca
Keywords:	Homicide;Legal issues;Criminal justice responses
Year:	2002
Publisher:	unpublished thesis
Notes:	Bradfield’s PhD thesis provides an empirical study detailing the legal outcome and circumstances of the killing in the 76 cases identified where women have killed their male partners. She examines the reliance on the various defences to homicide (diminished responsibility, provocation, lack of the requisite intent for murder, self-defence, insanity and automatism) and argues that the current approach of the Australian criminal justice system to battered women who kill reveals sympathy for their situation but a failure to consider adequately whether these circumstances provide the basis for self-defence. She proposes a shift in the current evidentiary approach to battered women who kill from the ‘battered woman syndrome’ framework to the reception of social framework evidence in its own right. The thesis makes 13 recommendations in its conclusions including statutory reform to the defence of self-defence, that the defence of provocation be abolished and that judges recognise the legitimacy of the accused’s motivation of self-protection as a mitigating factor in the imposition of sentence.
Contents:	Conclusions and recommendations Bibliography Appendix. Ch. 8: Punishing the woman - sentencing women who kill their male partners Ch. 7: Understanding the woman - the admissibility of evidence of domestic violence Ch. 6: The 'frightened' woman - the defence of self-defence and homicide Ch. 4: The 'appropriate' woman Ch. 3: Homicide and the framework of the defences to murder Ch. 2: Filling in the picture - the backdrop of domestic violence Ch. 1: Setting the scene - spousal homicide Ch. 5: The 'angry' woman - the defence of provocation and homicide
URI:	https://anrows.intersearch.com.au/anrowsjspui/handle/1/17837
Physical description:	439 p.
Appears in Collections:	Miscellaneous

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