Spousal Homicide Research Articles

Domestic Violence and Spousal Homicide: The Admissibility of Expert Witness Testimony in Trials of Battered Women Who Kill their Abusive Spouses⋆

This article presents a review of the problem of domestic violence in Australia and, in particular, focuses on battered women who kill their abusive spouses. The experience of domestic violence is described in terms of the “cycle of violence” which appears to operate in abusive relationships. Four precipitating circumstances are discussed to further describe underlying psychological processes. Argument is advanced for the admissibility of expert witness testimony to trials of battered women who kill, as a means of providing insights and explanations not otherwise likely to be available in such cases.

Why is there an Exceptional Sex Ratio of Spousal Homicides in the United States? A Replication and Extension of Wilson and Daly

Wilson and Daly (1992) examined spousal homicide samples from the United States, Canada, Australia, and Great Britain and concluded: "For every 100 U.S. men who kill their wives, about 75 women kill their husbands; this spousal 'sex ratio of killing' (SROK) is more than twice that in other Western nations" (p.189). In this paper we examine the SROK for the United States using data obtained from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) to determine if Wilson and Daly's conclusion can be supported. While confirming Wilson and Daly's summary findings, our results show that the SROK is an elastic measure, varying over time, race, and ethnicity. In many segments of the U.S. population, the SROK is comparable to the sex ratio of killing for other Western nations. Moreover, the differences between various racial groups in the United States are greater than the differences between the U.S. and Canada, Australia and Great Britain, respectively. We suggest that socioeconomic factors and family structure are the major reasons for the disparity in the SROK for different racial groups in the United States and abroad. The implications of our findings for future research are discussed.

Marriage and Opportunism

SPOUSE abuse is no longer a secret. It has become a thorn in America's conscience. Abuse even warranted a lengthy Supreme Court discussion in an opinion on abortion.2 It is certainly worth thinking about whether anything systemic caused the apparent outbreak of violence in the home. If there is a legal "fix" that would remove incentives to abuse, and therefore reduce the incidence of abuse at the margin, we should know about it.

Spousal Homicide Risk and Estrangement

Frequencies of homicide victimization of wives and husbands, while cohabiting and when separated, are reported for all spousal homicides known to the police in Canada (1974-1990), in New South Wales, Australia (1968-1986), and in Chicago (1965-1990). In all three data sets, the degree to which spousal homicide victimization was female-biased was significantly greater when the couple were estranged than when they were coresiding. Victim counts and population-at-large estimates of coresiding and separated now-married spouses were combined to estimate differential homicide rates incurred by coresiding and estranged married persons. Wives in all three countries incurred substantially elevated risk when separated as compared to when coresiding.

WHO KILLS WHOM IN SPOUSE KILLINGS? ON THE EXCEPTIONAL SEX RATIO OF SPOUSAL HOMICIDES IN THE UNITED STATES*

A hitherto unremarked peculiarity of homicide in the United States is that women kill their husbands almost as often as the reverse. For every 100 US. men who kill their wives, about 75 women kill their husbands; this spousal “sex ratio of killing” (SROK) is more than twice that in other Western nations. Our analyses of spousal homicide samples from the United States, Canada, Australia, and Great Britain indicate that this contrast cannot be attributed to greater gun use in the United States, nor to a domain‐general convergence of the sexes in their uses of violence. Significant predictors of the spousal SROK include registered versus de facto marriage, coresidency versus separation, ethnicity, and age disparity, but the impacts of these variables are not sufficient to explain the differences between US. and other nations’victim sex ratios.

The Myth of Sexual Symmetry in Marital Violence

A currently fashionable claim is that violence against husbands is about as prevalent as violence against wives; spousal violence has been said to be symmetrical in its extent, severity, intentions, motivational contexts, and even its consequences. The evidence for this alleged symmetry derives from two sources: (I) surveys employing the “Conflict Tactics Scales” (CTS), a checklist of self-reported “acts” perpetrated or experienced, and (2) U.S. homicide data. We criticize the claim of sexual symmetry by reviewing other contradictory survey evidence; by showing that the CTS provides an account of marital violence that is neither reliable nor valid; and by demonstrating that the sexual symmetry of spousal homicide victimization does not reflect sexually symmetrical motivation or action—and is in any case peculiar to the United States. Confining self report data to a checklist of acts, devoid of motives, meanings and consequences cannot insure objectivity, validity or an adequate development of theory to explain violence.

Evolutionary social psychology and family homicide.

Homicide is an extreme manifestation of interpersonal conflict with minimal reporting bias and can thus be used as a conflict "assay." Evolutionary models of social motives predict that genetic relationship will be associated with mitigation of conflict, and various analyses of homicide data support this prediction. Most "family" homicides are spousal homicides, fueled by male sexual proprietariness. In the case of parent-offspring conflict, an evolutionary model predicts variations in the risk of violence as a function of the ages, sexes, and other characteristics of protagonists, and these predictions are upheld in tests with data on infanticides, parricides, and filicides.

Other “Truths” about Domestic Violence: A Reply to McNeely and Robinson-Simpson

Other “Truths” about Domestic Violence: A Reply to McNeely and Robinson-Simpson

Domestic Violence: A Medicolegal Review

This paper reviews the recent medical and legal literature in the field of spouse abuse. Domestic violence is a national phenomenon that directly affects victims of spouse abuse and indirectly conditions the children of the victims to accept violent behavior as normative. This paper characterizes the cycle of violence battered women encounter, describes their injury patterns, explores the dynamics of the abusive relationship, and discusses the factors that compel women to remain in such violent relationships. The second section describes many of the recent legislation designed to prevent spouse abuse. Next, this paper addresses the case law utilizing the "battered woman syndrome" as a defense for spousal homicide. The third section of the paper explores the often neglected topic of the battered husband.

The spousal-homicide syndrome

The relationships between murderers and their victims have traditionally been of great interest to criminologists. The sizeable literature encompasses the aggregate phenomenology of the subject’ as well as efforts to extract recurrent patterns from clinical case histories. 2 Several recent clinical studies have focused specifically on the killing of one spouse by the other,3 a phenomenon which occurs with some regularity in many societies and, in the United States, represents 15% of all homicides in any given year.4 The commentary on spousal homicide is surprisingly sparse, but the researchers appear to be in general agreement on several basic findings: These offenses are often end points in an intense but ambivalent relationship in which one spouse (or spouse equivalent), the eventual victim, assumes the role of “tormentor”5 and the other, the eventual aggressor, perceives himself or herself to be sorely abused but is unwilling or unable to terminate the relationship. The relationship often becomes cyclical, with periods of conflidt leading to short separations, followed by temporary reconciliation and the emergence of new