Overview

Testimony on battered woman syndrome (BWS), as a widely used self-defense strategy, has been accepted in all state courts of America. However, courts often hold that expert testimony on the BWS is inadmissible in presented evidence where (1) it is irrelevant and immaterial to the issue of whether the defendant acted in self-defence at the time of the battery; (2) the subject of the expert testimony isn't within the understanding of the jury; (3) the BWS is not sufficiently developed as an accepted scientific knowledge to warrant testimony under the guise of expertise; and (4) its prejudicial impact outweighs its probative value. For the first time in the legal scholarship, an attempt was made to use the Grounded Theory Model to analyze narratives and facts of twelve court holdings on BWS, to reach a facile consistency in defendants' sworn-in motivations on reasonableness and imminence of danger that made them kill their spouses in self-defense, also to find correlations between the expert testimonies of BWS, counts of charges, and the verdicts or dispositions rendered.Through inductive coding of the case narratives and expert testimonies, we then applied the Mantel-Haenszel method to produce pooled odds ratio of the codes. Kruskal-Wallis statistic was used for the ranked ordinal data; Poisson regression was used for prediction analysis as to the influence of narratives and expert testimonies (continuous variables) on the adjudications (dichotomous variable); Pearson linear correlations were used to find associations between the numerical variables - coded narratives and length of the sentence in prison.Findings suggest that expert testimony of BWS is admitted in 58.3 % of the holdings. In 14.3 % of hearings, the conviction is shifted from murder to manslaughter. The average duration of the battered women's sentence is 12.4 years. The charges are distributed for voluntary manslaughter (25%), reckless manslaughter (8.3%), possession of the firearms (8.3%), murder of the first or second degrees (16.7%), attempted murder of the second and third degrees (16.7%), assault of the second and third degrees (33.3%), kidnapping (8.3%), and breach of peace (8.3%). Expert testimony of BWS is influential when the defendant proves that she reasonably believed that she would be killed at the time of the incidence (relative risk (RR) 1.75), history of illicit drug or alcohol abuse by the diseased (RR 2.0), the aggressors' (diseased) former verbal assaults to kill the defendant (RR 2.0), and the aggressor's criminal history (RR 1.4). These testaments are in substantial component associations with the judgments in favor of the defendant (r-square 0.89-0.91, p

Full Product Details

9781500946593

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

Naira R. Matevosyan is a medical doctor (MD, PhD) who also holds a law degree (Master of Science in Jurisprudence/MSJ) from Seton Hall University School of Law. This book was written in 2014, before her actual studies in the Law School. Naira was admitted by Emory University Law School in August 2013 for a Juris Master (JM) program, but she deliberately deferred because of financial constraints. Emory Law School kindly held her place for two years; in the meantime, Naira was allowed to audit Criminal Law and Constitutional Law classes (for free) at Emory Law for two semesters and was a welcomed visitor at Emory Law. In December 2014, Naira was simultaneously admitted by Duke University Law School and Seton Hall Law School for MSJ. She graduated Seton Hall Law School and earned her Master of Science in Jurisprudence (MSJ) degree in January 2016. A member of the Federal Bar Association (FBA), Naira Matevosyan has presided as a panel judge in the 19th Thurgood Marshall Moot Court Competitions held in March-April, 2016 at the Superior Court of DC, and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Other law books written before her studies at Seton Hall Law School: Maternal-fetal conflicts, from torts to criminal justice: Medical-legal study of 120 cases, The Battered Woman Syndrome, Synesthesia: The Phenomenon and its Presentation in Torts and Criminal Justice, Dissociative identity disorder in the courtroom: A guide to forensic testimony, Court-visited surgical errors: A guide to forensic testimony, Advanced tort law in surgical profession: Analysis of 50 cases, Spleen, Procreative Liberty, Rhabdomyoma & Rhabdomyosarcoma, and Court-visited erroneous diagnoses and surgeries of parathyroids. Books written after earning the Law Degree from Seton Hall: Reproductive Health Law Survey: Essays and Multiple-choice Q & A, Isoimmunization in Pregnancy: Medical & Legal Survey, Cervical Dystocia: Medical & Legal Survey, Capgras and Fregoli Syndromes in Criminal Justice: A Guide to Forensic Testimony.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available