Gender-Based Violence: 45 Years of the Battered Woman Syndrome Defense
The Suffolk University Law Review welcomed Dr. Lenore Walker as the featured speaker for the 130th Donahue Lecture. Dr. Walker pioneered the Battered Woman Syndrome legal defense, authoring several books and testifying as an expert witness in numerous cases. She is currently the Chair of the American Psychological Association Working Group on Professional Practice Guidelines on PTSD and Trauma, and she is continuing her research through the Survivor Therapy Empowerment Program (STEP) for incarcerated females, alongside her forensic psychology practice that assists attorneys and evaluates clients raising self-defense claims in battered-partner cases and other cases involving trauma-based interpersonal violence. During this lecture, Dr. Walker chronicled her 45-year history with the Battered Woman Syndrome defense, diving into the victories, obstacles, and lessons for the future.
Dr. Walker’s early cases introduced important themes, such as the tendency for battered women to use force more than sufficient to kill—an entire firearm’s worth of bullets, for example—but nevertheless believe their partner was alive when voluntarily reporting the shooting to police. While some of the early cases saw Dr. Walker’s testimony barred because the concept of Battered Woman Syndrome was not listed in the official DSM registry as a diagnosis, as time went on she made progress one step at a time. She spent over a decade traveling around the country with many jurisdictions accepting her testimony about the impacts of trauma on women and even some of the more hesitant, slow-to-adopt jurisdictions offering resentencing options to this day. These efforts were not limited to the judicial branch, as Dr. Walker’s team also petitioned various state legislatures to adopt laws specifically permitting this type of testimony. Her mission was not universally successful, though, with some states like Michigan even now only accepting general testimony about Battered Woman Syndrome but still refusing the argument that a woman actually has Battered Woman Syndrome.
A few key milestones over the years Dr. Walker developed the defense include: the admission of evidence relating to the entire history of the relationship, as opposed to just the events surrounding the incident; the reframing of self-defense arguments for battered women around immanency (perceiving a threat soon to occur or get worse) instead of immediacy (threat is presently occurring); and the successful removal of the duty-to-retreat element of the castle doctrine, which had required women to flee from their own homes before using self-defense.
Throughout her journey, Dr. Walker observed the disconnect between the legal and scientific fields in their respective approaches to problem solving, with the former focusing on qualitative persuasion and the latter on quantitative experimentation. She advocates that a solution lies in a hybrid J.D./Ph.D. program that would empower attorneys to perform clinical psychological evaluations of clients to better support legal arguments.
Recording:
Watch the full lecture [here].
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