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ORI GIN AL ARTICLE
Mad, Bad, or Reasonable? Newspaper Portrayalsof the Battered Woman Who Kills
Marianne S. Noh Matthew T. Lee
Kathryn M. Feltey
Published online: 1 December 2010
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
Abstract A heated debate about battered women who kill abusive male partnersstarted in the 1970s. In this study, we tracked the public discourse on battered
women who kill by coding 250 newspaper articles published between 1978 and
2002. Using four typifying models, we found that leading explanations for why
battered women kill medicalized then criminalized their actions; they were mad
then bad. We also found that reporters used quotes from claims makers supporting
conventional or medical typifications of battered women to a much greater degree
than statements from alternative, feminist sources. In conclusion, simplified, sen-
sational and conventional understandings of crime causation drove the social con-
struction of the battered woman who kills. She may be mad or bad, but rarely has
she been portrayed as reasonable. Suggestions for promoting feminist narrative in
the media are also provided.
Keywords Battered woman syndrome Battered woman Domestic violence Media analysis Gender and crime
M. S. Noh (&)Department of Sociology, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada
e-mail: [email protected]
M. T. Lee K. M. FelteyDepartment of Sociology, University of Akron, Akron, OH, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
K. M. Feltey
e-mail: [email protected]
123
Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110130
DOI 10.1007/s12147-010-9093-9
A woman killing her husband is like killing the king, but a man killing his wife
is like killing any other person. (Sir William Blackstone 1786, as cited in [12])
Introduction
When extenuating factors are diffuse or difficult to understand, courts routinely hold
defendants legally responsible for acts of violence against another person.
Conversely, when such factors are straightforward and understandable, they are
more likely to absolve individuals of personal responsibility [19]. In cases involving
the battered woman who kills her abusive husband or boyfriend, defense attorneys
have presented the Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS) clearly and convincingly
enough in some criminal trials that jurors have accepted BWS as supporting
evidence in the defense of temporary insanity and in some cases lawful self-defense
[17]. However, BWS as part of a legal defense strategy has been said to ultimately
excuse, rather than justify the offense [17, 19, 27, 56]. This is problematic for two
reasons. First, excusing the offense stigmatizes women who use the temporary
insanity defense. Second, it excludes women who are determined to have been
rational at the time of the act from using the BWS as a suitable part of their legal
defense. A recent variant of feminist discourse addresses this limitation, arguing that
the actions of women who kill their abuser are normative and even altruistic at times
[27, 64].
To date, public debates, including those within the legal system, deem the
feminist discourse of justification less convincing than the BWS discourse of
excuse. Feminist discourse frames women in ways that are inconsistent with
traditional female gender roles portraying women as passive, nonviolent, and
irrational [23, 35, 37, 55, 64]. In cases where the battered woman kills, traditional
feminine explanations include the woman being temporarily insane, such as having
hysteria or dementia, or being materialistic [3]. Moreover, the kinds of narrative
frameworks promoted by the mass media shape many of our beliefs and
assumptions. For example, the media arguably reproduces toxic romance
narratives [66, p. 259], which may convince women that victimization at the
hands of their intimate partners is a personal problem that they are responsible for
solving on their own [7]. Bakken and Farringtons analysis of the battered woman
who kills in California, 18002000s, found that news media played a key role in the
constructed notions of the battered woman who kills; that is, why she kills and who
she is. They also found that the medias role was significant in constructing
dominant notions due to its model of commercial and sensational news. A woman
who kills provides extant sensationalism. Such that although the rates of intimate
partner homicide by males have remained much higher than violent acts committed
by female partners [17], news media appears to paint a contradicting picture.
In this study, we examined U.S. and Canadian newspaper portrayals of the
battered woman who kills to explore how these news sources presented their stories,
and whether they made use of excuse, justification or alternative explanations.
Covering a 24-year period (19782002), we analyzed the explanations and
interpretations provided in newspaper stories about battered women who kill. We
Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110130 111
123
entered this investigation with one broad research question: How do the media
represent women who kill abusive husbands or boyfriends? More specifically, we
wanted to know whether news media promote or restrict particular discourses, such
as medicalized or feminist accounts.
Literature Review
The Social Construction of Media Typifications
According to the social constructionist perspective, the central issue in understanding
deviance is the process of how those in power create and define deviants and
deviant behavior, and how such definitions change (or remain the same) over time
[3, 16, 43, 59, 63]. According to this view, deviance is not a quality inherent in certain
individuals or acts, but rather a label applied by those who take ownership of the
definitional process [5, 29]. For example, the medical profession is a powerful group
that has promoted the perspective that deviant acts are rooted in mental or
psychological illness [16]. For the battered woman who kills, some members of the
medical profession have argued that Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) explains
her behavior as resulting from a sustained pattern of abuse that impairs judgment.
It is important to note that offering explanatory narratives is most commonly part
of a transforming process that simplifies individuals into a type of person and
creates homogeneity rather than heterogeneity [34, p. 5]. In this case, an overriding
dominant narrative simplifies the diverse lived experiences of abused women. A
processing stereotype increasingly subjects women who fit this image to a
specific kind of treatment by social service agencies and the criminal justice system
[35, p. 307]. Administrative processing, tied to cultural beliefs about the nature of
battered women, helps create expectations about battered womens behaviors [54].
The failure of battered women to meet these expectations has led to the denial of
services at battered womens shelters as well as the failure of PTSD-based legal
defense strategies [19, 34].
Best [8] found that secondary claims makers (e.g., experts and public officials)
are more likely to influence public understanding of social problems than primary
sources such as, in this case, the battered woman herself. Effective secondary
sources of claims making, which include newspaper reports, play an important role
in the extent to which the public will accept the claims as truth [9, 36]. News reports
commonly sensationalize stories and present the claims of groups and individuals in
positions of power. Reporters rely on quotes from experts to bolster the plotlines
of their stories: we found that battered women advocates, psychologists, lawyers
and politicians were common key informants. Because those with economic
resources, political power and the right timing are better able to promote their
claims, it is important to pay special attention to the groups of claims makers
newspaper reports most frequently cited, and the extent to which these groups
represented the interests of battered women.
Media stories can emphasize individual responsibility and motivation, focus on
systemic factors or offer a narrative based on some combination of both [3, 7, 13].
112 Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110130
123
For example, experts have portrayed the behavior of battered women as either a
function of external constraints (patriarchy and gender inequality) or of internal
constraints (PTSD and BWS), both of which can highlight structural constraints on
the lives of women [35]. Alternatively, in cases of the battered woman who kills,
media reports may have featured the claims of prosecutors, which contest efforts to
mitigate personal responsibility. Media narratives of the 1990s may ultimately have
formed collective representations of the battered woman that label her either as a
victim in dire need of social assistance [34, p. 46] or as personally responsible for
solving her private problem [7].
According to Loseke [34], the identity of the battered woman is socially
constructed and relies on the presence of violent male offenders and victimized
women who do not create their own victimization (p. 16). Through images of
helplessness, claims makers in the media have promoted a collective understanding
of the battered woman as a person whose identity is predominantly that of a victim,
a process known as victimism [35, p. 304]. Accordingly, the victim is non-
violent, but when violent such as when she has killed her abusive partner, it is
irrational, therefore, excusing and not justifying her action [19].
However, media typifications are multiple. The image of helplessness is not the
only typification present, despite its prevalence over the years. Berns [7] found that
womens magazines, such as Glamour and Good Housekeeping, typically producestories that at first glance portray empowered women, but actually define women as
responsible for their private troublesand their successful escape. These accounts
ignore the behavior of abusive men, while highlighting the actions, mistakes and
decisions made by the women.
Given the multiple typifications of the battered woman, it is no surprise that the
social, political and psychological implications of an excused versus a justified
action also vary. In order to explain and capture various accounts of the battered
woman who kills presented by the news media, we used four primary typification
models. These models represent the dominant explanations of the battered woman
who kills used by those in positions of power such as medical professionals,
lawyers, judges and legal scholars [3, 7, 16, 22, 38]. These claims utilized or
challenged pre-established common understandings of both reasons for murder and
appropriate gendered behavior for women.
Four Typification Models of Abused Women Who Kill
Previous social science research indicates two general lenses through which to
view domestic violence: the violence against women perspective and the familyviolence perspective [38, p. 8]. These are ideal types in the Weberian sense, and, inpractice, they may not be mutually exclusive for researchers who work to bridge
the divide [38, p. 8]. However, different constituents use these two lenses and
promote different core beliefs. On the one hand, feminists tend to use the violence
against women lens. In this view, domestic violence springs from fundamental
patriarchal relations between men and women, and nothing short of a complete or
radical transformation of our entire social, moral and institutional order will be
able to stop the epidemic levels of violence perpetrated by men against women (9).
Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110130 113
123
On the other hand, Mann [38] frames the family violence perspective as one
characterized by mutual dependency between men and women who have learned to
use violence to solve problems and express frustration. Therapists and some social
scientists are prominent supporters of this perspective, which acknowledges that
women also use violence against men, even though women are much more likely to
suffer the effects of serious violence. Therapy, rather than social transformation, is
the preferred social policy for helping both men and women break their cycle of
violence before passing it on to their children, or seriously harming each other.
Typifications, according to McKinney [41], are necessarily used to perceive the
world around us and are based on typologies and ideal types. In turn, typifications
are used in structuring self-concept, institutions and social structures. In this case,
typifications of the battered woman who kills are socially constructed by owners of
the definitional process, or claims makers, such as medical and legal experts, to
explicate social systems with a particular set of values, norms and roles. Our review
of existing scholarship suggests that there are four dominant typifications of the
battered woman who kills, some of which relate to either the violence against
women perspective or the family violence perspective (see Table 1). First, women
who kill suffer from a psychological illness and thus are excused from legalresponsibility for their crime. Second, women who kill are criminals engaged in
callous premeditated murder and are guilty for their crime. Third, women who killengage in justifiable and reasonable self-defending behavior and are acquitted ofcriminal charges. Fourth, women who kill suffer from a psychological illness and
are acquitted based on the reasonableness of their mental instability.
Table 1 Typifications of the battered woman who kills and the battered woman syndrome
Characteristics Typification model
Medical Conventional
rationality
Legal feminism
Feminist
jurisprudence
Early legal
feminism
Claims-makers/
proponents
Psychologists,
defense
attorneys
Prosecutors, victims
family, judges,
jurors
Politicians, women advocates, legal
scholars, defense attorneys
View of guilty
battered women
Not applicable Premeditated murder Not applicable
View of not-guilty
battered women
Suffering from
BWS
Not applicable No options to remove long-term threat
acting in self-defense
BWS detrimental
to battered
women
BWS part of a
larger defense
strategy
Type of not-guilty
account
Excuse Not applicable Justification
Rationality Irrational Rational Rational
Level of
explanationIndividual Individual Structural
Rhetoric Mad Bad Reasonable
114 Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110130
123
These models are larger social systems constructions, and not strictly legal
theory models with certain courtroom strategies and outcomes. However, their
typified defenses and outcomes are assumed to align with how the battered woman
who kills is explained. For example, BWS defense strategies may use expert
testimony to provide a justifiable legal defense, although numerous feminist legal
theorists argue that BWS defense only provides an excuse for killing in an
ideological sense. One may inquire why these are the dominant typifications, and
why there are not more or fewer in numbers [27]. As it will be discussed in the
conclusion section, news media typifications are formed with three factors under
the theory of narrative or typificationsimplicity, sensationalism, and conven-
tionalism, in addition to ownership of definition construction. To our knowledge,
there are four models typifying the battered woman who kills determined by one
or a combination of the three factors. The following section describes these four
typifications in more detail.
Medical Model
The medical model is associated with the family violence lens, a highlyconventional and thus simple to grasp model, which proposes that due to battered
womens psychological instability at the time of murder their actions are
unreasonable with mental incapability [16, 17, 19]. Psychologists originally
developed this model to support the battered woman who kills as killing in a
mental state akin to that of PTSD, as described by Walkers [62] early definition of
BWS. In this view, BWS is a psychological condition where events, which outsiders
would not perceive as life threatening, trigger ones perceptions of dangerous
situations [2, 62]. Long-term and continual psychological or physical abuse can alter
the perceptions of triggers and may result in a learned helplessness that prevents a
woman from leaving a dangerous situation.
We believe the medical model provides a legal excuse rather than ajustification because although the syndrome typifies the act as still being wrong,
the battered woman is blameless because of a mental illness similar to that of
PTSD. This typification offers a not guilty account as a form of the abuse
excuse and does not support a guilty verdict for the battered woman defendant
[45]. Expert witnesses, usually psychologists testifying on behalf of women who
kill, tend to promote this type of account. The medical model fits best with the
family violence perspective because of its therapeutic focus on the cause of the
abuse of women and its failure to address broad structural conditions identified by
the violence against women model. Stemming from the family violence
perspective, the medical model promotes the view that BWS arises out of
ongoing violence in the family, maintaining an individualistic explanation,
neglecting social structural and contextual factors in intimate partner homicide
where the battered woman kills [17]. It is also worthy to note that many U.S.
courtrooms no longer apply this model as BWS defense has become part of a
legal defense strategy to successfully attain verdicts of justifiable self-defense on
grounds of reasonable action [17].
Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110130 115
123
Conventional Rationality Model
The conventional rationality model explicates the battered woman who kills basedon the traditional legal claim of self-defense, from an imminent mortal danger. The
model does not relate to either the violence against women or the family violence
perspectives. In using this model, a claims maker either ignores or discounts
arguments based on BWS. For example, BWS is discounted in this view by
explaining the syndrome label as a tool for getting away with murder. This model
typifies individuals who kill, and that were not in imminent mortal danger (in the
traditional-conventional sense), as criminal and thus rational [16]. For example,
under this model, battered women who kill are typified as cold-blooded murderers,
and as money hungry opportunists [3] out for life insurance money or just tired of
being married. The BWS defense is simply not relevant [17]. According to the
conventional rationality model for this particular study, women who kill outside the
narrow parameters of traditional self-defense doctrine are bad, responsible for and
guilty of, their crime.
Feminist Jurisprudence Model
The third model, the feminist jurisprudence model, focuses on social structuralexplanations for battered women who kill. Legal feminists, such as Cynthia
Gillespie [26], Elizabeth Schneider et al. [54], Leigh Goodmark [27], Cara
Cookson [17] and social scientists such as Donald A. Downs and Evan Gertsmann
[20] have argued that BWS narrowly characterizes the battered woman who kills.
This often results in medicalizing the woman such that she is mentally incapable
of rational reasonableness. Given prevailing structural- and individual-level
conditions, the feminist jurisprudence model uses the structural factors that
prevent women from safely or successfully leaving a violent relationship to
explain the battered woman who kills. With structural factors present, such as the
loss of social networks, the lack of financial resources, and at times the inability to
leave dependents, along with real agency-level concerns of greater retribution
from abusive partners, the battered woman who kills is often unable to escape
domestic violence with reasonable safety. Articles that make significant reference
to the structural factors that inhibit the termination of violent relationships,
without making positive reference to the usefulness of BWS, narrate a feminist
jurisprudence explanation.
The feminist jurisprudence model fits squarely within the violence against
women perspective. Therefore, the model rejects the use of BWS as a viable legal
defense due to the stigmatizing effect and the inapplicability of BWS to women who
do not manifest symptoms of PTSD. Rather, the feminist jurisprudence model
explains the battered woman who kills as legally justified because she is a rational
individual who defended herself under reasonable life-threatening circumstances. In
addition, the battered woman who kills is not a static singular type person. Feminist
jurisprudent writers often emphasize simultaneously the individualized, contextu-
alized and subjective aspects to killing in self-defense [27, 47].
116 Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110130
123
Early Legal Feminism Model
The fourth typification model, we call early legal feminism, articulated a complexstance that draws on aspects of both the medical and the feminist jurisprudence
models. This model (formally recognized as BWS defense) is readily accepted
throughout U.S. courtrooms [17]. While the model supports the use of BWS in
legally defending the battered woman who kills, it argues that the act of killing an
abusive spouse is both rational and justified, and therefore, not excusable on thegrounds of reasonable insanity [47]. Early legal feminists such as Walker [17, 53]
and advocate defense attorneys argue that any rational person in the same situation
as the battered woman who kills would reasonably experience BWS and ultimately
find the seemingly irrational and unreasonable act of killing necessary to defend
themselves and/or their children. Under this narrative, battered women exhibiting
mental instability are, in fact, reasonable and therefore justified. The batteredwoman who kills is a reasonable abused woman, and should be legally judged and
tried on abused woman standards, and more specifically, BWS standards. Articles
utilizing an early legal feminist explanation will initiate positive uses of BWS.
Claims makers of this model are aligned with the medical model proponents in
that they explain BWS as viable partial supporting evidence of self-defense [11, 18,
21, 30, 4749]. However, we found early legal feminists to disagree with the view
that the battered woman who kills is irrational or unreasonable, which also aligns
these claims makers with the feminist jurisprudence model. This model seems to be
a hybrid of the family violence and violence against women perspectives. It explains
the battered woman who kills as reasonable and acting in justifiable self-defense.
Each of these four typifications promote distinct ideological positions on the
causes of domestic violence, the nature of womens position in society, and the role
of rational choice in battered womens decisions. They also offer different grounds
for the acquittal of female defendants in criminal trials. In order to establish the
relative use of these four different media frames in constructing the social problem
of the battered woman who kills, we employed a social constructionist approach to
track media discourse over time [1, 8, 9, 36, 63].
Methods
In this study, we tracked the discourse on the battered women who kill in major U.S.
and Canadian newspapers using a mixed methods approach. Our qualitative analysis
of typifications presented in media narratives involved the search for underlying
meanings, patterns, and processes [1, p. 290], which requires the researcher to
make evaluative judgments based on a holistic appraisal of an entire newspaper
article. This precludes the full delegation of coding to computerized content analysis
programs that only count words and phrases. The researcher must make qualitative
judgments about the overall meaning of the article, rather than simply counting the
number of times a particular word or phrase appears and using that as a basis for
determining meaning. We relied on the four pre-identified typifications discussed
above in our coding of media explanations for why the battered woman kills. One
Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110130 117
123
typification promotes excuse-based defenses (medical model), two offer justifica-
tions (feminist jurisprudence and early legal feminism), and one argues that battered
women are criminally responsible for their actions unless clear evidence supporting
the traditional self-defense doctrine exists (conventional rational). Our quantitative
analysis included univariate statistical analyses of study variables. All qualitative
analysis was conducted using the computer software CI-SAID and all quantitative
analysis was conducted with SPSS10.
Data on the typification of the battered woman who kills in newspaper articles
were obtained through two sources: the popular internet-based newspaper index
file of LexisNexis, as well as The New York Times and The Washington Post paperindexes. We used the LexisNexis Academic online database (Nexis) allowing us to
gather articles from popular major newspapers in a single search. Utilizing a single
search engine facilitated the tracking of discourse [1, 33]. We decided to search
articles through Nexis as it contains most North American popular newspapers. In
September 2002, we first conducted key word searches in Nexis for articles that
included the terms battered woman syndrome and/or battered woman
anywhere in the article (headlines, text, and photo captions). The articles retrieved
were those covering trials and appellate court cases (including clemency cases) on
murdered abusive husbands and spouses, and excluded fictional stories and
coverage of political changes related to domestic violence. We identified over 600
articles using these two search terms. After the exclusion of articles written in
foreign (non-US and non-Canadian) newspapers, articles that covered victims other
than the defendants abusive male spouse or boyfriend, and duplicate stories (wire
services), our dataset consisted of 212 articles published between 1981 and 2002.
In June 2004, we ran the same searches in Nexis for only The New York Timesand The Washington Post, the two most popular major newspapers that year. We rana second search in Nexis in an attempt to draw out more articles that may have been
missed in the first phase of data collection, using the additional subject words,
domestic violence, battered woman, and battered spouse. This did not
provide any new articles. We then collected 38 additional articles (8 from TheWashington Post and 33 from The New York Times) through paper index searches.These additional articles bolstered our understanding of the discourse around
women who killed their abusers by providing articles that do not include the
keywords battered woman and battered woman syndrome in our sample. The
complete dataset consisted of 250 articles published from 1978 to 2002.
Newspaper articles provide an important insight into the portrayal of groups of
people and into the publics definitions and understandings of acts of deviance that
are not necessarily reflective of the criminal justice systems theories of defendants
[8, 36, 52, 61]. Each article was analyzed and information on discourse was
extracted by qualitatively coding supportive and unsupportive statements within an
article for each typification (see Table 2). Used was an assessment of supportive and
unsupportive statements to code the entire article as representing one of the four
typifications based on the overall theme. The article frequently closed with a
restatement of the dominant theme, but even without this summary statement, the
emphasis of the article with respect to our four typifications was clear. For this
study, there was a principle coder. The principle coder and another researcher on the
118 Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110130
123
project utilized the same coding scheme on the same randomly selected articles and
coded independently. The two then compared and discussed coding decisions to
revise and finalize the coding scheme, which was then used to analyze the entire
sample by the principle coder.
Table 2 provides an illustration of how we coded each article and presents the
coding necessary for an article to represent a typification.1 In addition to typification
variables, we coded for quotes by, and references to, claims makers. As Lowney and
Best [36] found, the most prevalent typifications depended on the dominant claims
makers at a particular time. For example, if a reporter did not interview feminist
legal scholars for a particular article because the reporter deemed the views of such
scholars as unconventional at the time of trial, the likelihood of a feminist
perspective being represented in the final article diminishes. Therefore, we recorded
who was being quoted and to what extent.
In a small number of cases, it was not immediately apparent how to code an
article. For example, we drew an inference about the typification when an article
only reported the conviction of a woman for killing her batterer and did not report
opinions, interviews or professional sources. We coded these articles as taking a
conventional rationality view since the reports did not provide statements of either
justification or excuse. More importantly, such articles gave the impression that a
conviction was appropriate by omitting alternative views and by not referring to any
claims makers. There were also articles that attempted to achieve balance by
presenting more than one stance. We categorized these articles as uncodable,
which we operationalized as the achievement of objectivity, not typifying women
who kill in any specific manner, not heavily quoting a particular group of claims
makers, and not presenting a single view at greater length.2
Table 2 Typification model coding scheme
Typification
model
Variable
Battered woman
medicalized
Battered woman
criminalized
Battered
woman
excused
Battered
woman
justified
BWS as legal
evidence
Medical Supportive Unsupportive Supportive Unsupportive Supportive
Conventional
rationality
Unsupportive Supportive Unsupportive Unsupportive Unsupportive
Feminist
jurisprudence
Unsupportive Unsupportive Unsupportive Supportive Unsupportive
Early legal
feminism
Unsupportive Unsupportive Unsupportive Supportive Supportive
1 Please contact the first author for statistical results on support variables.2 Un-coded articles account for about 10% of the relevant articles. These 21 articles, while an interesting
counterpoint to the themed articles, were not included in the results and reported here. They were deemed
irrelevant to the discussion of typified views.
Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110130 119
123
Results
Media Patterns I: A Shift in Dominant Accounts
Figures 1 and 2 present one set of results of newspapers usage of typifications to
frame the issue of the battered woman who kills. Figure 1 illustrates the publication
trend in articles covering women who kill their abuser. Due to the low frequency,
thus lack of dominance, of both feminist jurisprudent and early legal feminist
articles in our sample, we grouped their frequencies together in Fig. 1. Most of the
articles (n = 86) were published between 1993 and 1997, and then the popularity ofthe story appears to drop into the 2000s. According to our analysis, the dominance
of the medical model in major newspaper articles occurred during the early half of
the 1990s. Figure 2 illustrates the shift from the medical model to the conventional
rationality model after 1994.3
Our analysis indicates that a medicalized understanding of abused women who kill
was the most frequently used, with 98 articles coded as portraying a medical model (see
also Table 3). In other words, 38.7% of all articles in our sample portray the battered
woman who kills as irrational or insane and frame her behavior as the product of BWS,
PTSD or a related psychological pathology. For example, Ohio Governor Celeste was
quoted in a New York Times article as saying, These women were entrappedemotionally and physically they loved these men even though they beat and fearedthem. They were so emotionally entangled they were incapable of walking away [65].
The second most frequent typification is the conventional rationality model, with
74 articles or 30.4% of our sample of articles. The model supports the notion of
BWS as a license for retribution [10], allowing women to be getting away with
murder [44], and that the battered woman kills for vengeance [15], not self-
defense. As mentioned, this typification portrays battered women who kill as
rational manipulative cold-blooded killers. This account rejects the medical model
and claims that such women are bad, not mad. Together, the medical and
conventional rationality typifications account for almost 70% of all articles in our
sample. Typifications based on the feminist jurisprudence (N = 55; 21.7%) and theearly legal feminism (N = 23; 9.1%) models appear less frequently. Articles givingweight to statements such as although she was sane at the time of the killing andknew exactly what she was doing, she is free of any wrongdoing [39] or Many
women now in prison might not be there if they had been able to claim battered
womans syndrome [51] accounted for less than one-third of the accounts.
Media Patterns II: Claims Makers Contribute to Article Accounts
Importantly, quotes by psychologists represent 56% of the total 185 quotes in our
sample. This is not surprising, as psychologists were well known claims makers of
3 We chose a 19901994 categorization based on some high profile media stories that took place those
years, such as Ohio Governor Richard Celestes highly publicized move to grant 25 battered women
clemency in 1990 and O. J. Simpsons murder trial in 1994. These stories represent focusing events,which Kingdon [32] refers to as a crisis or disaster that calls attention to a previously unperceived
problem.
120 Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110130
123
the medical model. One psychologist was quoted describing a defendant during
testimony as [having] received a dreadful upbringing and had not the opportunities
to develop a normal personality [4]. Our findings also demonstrate that quotes
from psychologists account for much less space in the non-medical model articles.
For example, a psychologist was quoted only once among the 55 articles that
promoted the feminist jurisprudence model (see Table 3).
Table 3 also displays the frequency of claims maker quotes within each
typification model. Based on the balance norm [25, p. 8], the responsibility of
reporters to provide a balance in points of view when the topic at hand is
controversial and complex [24], quotes from various claims makers (e.g.,
prosecutors and defense attorneys) should appear at roughly the same frequency.
Instead, as Table 3 illustrates, we found important imbalances by typification
model. Of the 54 claims makers quoted in medicalized accounts, most frequently
quoted are defense attorneys (N = 16), accounting for 30% of the quotes. Forexample, a lawyer was quoted as saying, But the person doing the perceiving in all
this [a reasonable belief that a danger was imminent] had long been thought to be a
healthy adult man, like the gunfighter walking over to the O. K. Corral (emphasisadded) [58]. These were followed closely by psychologists (N = 14; 26%). Thenquoted to a lesser extent are defendants (N = 10; 19%) and womens advocates
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
1990-1994 1995-1999
YearMedical Conventional Rational
Fig. 2 Shift in dominant articlefrequencies by typificationmodel (19901999)
Fig. 1 Article frequencies by typification model (19782002)
Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110130 121
123
Tab
le3
Fre
quen
cyof
clai
ms
mak
ers
quote
dby
arti
cle
Typifi
cati
on
n(a
rtic
les)
Cla
ims
mak
er
Psy
cho
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ist
Att
orn
eyD
efen
dan
tA
dv
oca
teP
rose
cuto
rP
oli
tici
anO
ther
sA
ll
Med
ical
98
14
16
10
81
14
54
(26
%)
(30
)(1
9)
(15
)(2
)(.
02
)(7
)
(56
%)
(36
)(3
0)
(28
)(7
)(.
08
)(1
7)
Co
nv
enti
on
alra
tio
nal
74
41
51
33
91
11
56
(7)
(27
)(2
3)
(5)
(16
)(2
)(2
0)
(16
)(3
4)
(39
)(1
0)
(60
)(8
)(4
6)
Fem
inis
tju
risp
ruden
ce5
51
97
73
48
39
(3)
(23
)(1
8)
(18
)(8
)(1
0)
(21
)
(4)
(20
)(2
1)
(24
)(2
0)
(31
)(3
3)
Ear
lyle
gal
fem
inis
m2
36
43
11
27
13
4
(18
)(1
2)
(9)
(32
)(6
)(2
1)
(3)
(24
)(9
)(9
)(3
8)
(13
)(5
4)
(40
)
To
tal
25
02
54
43
32
91
51
32
41
85
122 Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110130
123
(N = 8; 15%). One advocate was quoted in Newsday [60] as having said, I find it[a maximum sentence for manslaughter] entirely consistent with a legal system that
is firmly based on the concept that men should have, and do have, the right to
control women. Rarely quoted are politicians, prosecutors, and others (third
parties to the case, judges, police, jurors, and witnesses), who are much less likely to
make reliable and supporting claims of the medical model. Presuming that claims
makers of each group are available to offer statements for each story/article, the
selection of some types of claims makers, but not others, suggests that members ofthe media may rely on a particular angle or frame to construct their accounts
[61], rather than attempting to provide an objective or balanced report of
incidents when a battered woman kills.
Contrary to our expectations that articles use claims makers to support a
particular angle, prosecutors were not the most frequently quoted within the
conventional rationality model articles. In fact, prosecutors represented only 15
quotes in all 250 articles. Of these 15 citations, however, 60% appear in articles
advancing the conventional rationality typification, which however, we expected
Whatever the past, it is no reason to kill someone There is no justification forany of us to take another life because fate dealt us an unhappy existence [4].
Quotes made by defense attorneys (n = 16; 26%) and defendants (n = 14; 23%)appeared most frequently in the articles promoting conventional rationality. After
reviewing the content of the 74 articles, we found that prosecutors statements were
not important to constructing conventional rationality models. For example, nearly
two-thirds of the articles (48 articles) reported that the woman had already been
convicted, which appeared to reduce the need to interview the prosecutor. In 13
articles, the women were charged, not convicted, and in the remaining 35 articles,
the women were found not guilty, engaged in an appellate case after having been
found guilty, or were receiving clemency. Of the 56 quotes in conventional
rationality articles, 11 were made by third parties to the case. That is judges, police,
jurors and witnesses (Other). We found that these quotes often contradicted the
defendants claims within the same articles and bolstered the portrayal of the
defendant as lying, devious, and manipulative by, for example, drawing on previous
criminal activities or violent acts on the victim by the defendantin short, that she
is bad and deserving of punishment, rather than a victim of a mental illness, or a
rational actor who has engaged in justifiable self-defense.
Recall that medicalized accounts offer the excuse that battered women who kill
deserve reduced or no punishment, because of a PTSD-like syndrome such as
learned helplessness [50], while conventional rationality accounts portray such
women as scheming, manipulative killers deserving of a guilty verdict. Feminist
jurisprudence disagrees with both images. There were only 39 quotes in these 55
articles. None of the claims maker groups comprises a clear majority, although
defense attorneys (N = 9; 23%), others (N = 8; 21%), defendants (N = 7; 18%),and womens advocates (N = 7; 18%) account for roughly the same proportion ofquotes. Although uncommon, a defendant quotation in an article narrating the
feminist jurisprudence model went as follows, I just want to tell them that I went to
all the right people and they turned me away. My intent was not to kill my husband.
Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110130 123
123
My intent was to get help [51].Quotes by politicians, psychologists and prosecutors
were less frequent.
Early legal feminist articles contained the fewest quotes. Unlike feminist
jurisprudence, early legal feminism makes use of BWS, but views the battered
woman who kills as justified in her actions based on reasonable self-defense rather
than using an excuse of irrational behavior based on insanity. Womens advocates
(N = 11; 32%) and politicians (N = 7; 21%) comprise the two most frequentlyquoted groups. In fact, 54% of all politicians quoted appear in articles promoting an
early legal feminist model. Rarely quoted were legal actors, such as judges, defense
attorneys and prosecutors. These articles appeared to rely on the viewpoints of
individuals uninvolved in the incident or case at hand. It was more common to find
feminist jurisprudent and early legal feminist articles discussing the ethical issues
behind trying cases in general, rather than a specific case.
Discussion: The Medical and the Conventional Rationality Models Prevail
Although we are unable to determine whether shifts in media patterns were a cause
or consequence of social changes, the timing of such shifts seemed to parallel a
number of important events [3]. For example, the Ohio Clemency in 1990 and the
O.J. Simpson trial in 1994 are possible focusing events ([32], see footnote 3) that
coincide with the increase in medical model articles and then the dominance of
conventional rationality model articles. According to Gagne [23], Ohio Governor
Richard Celestes acceptance and implementation of expert testimony on BWS into
Ohios criminal justice system in August 1990 ignited a political reaction including
legislative changes in thirteen states (spanning over 8 years) and the Ohio Clemency
in December 1990. This action occurred in the aftermath of high profile cases, such
as the Hedda Nussbaum/Joel Steinberg trial of 1989, which drew widespread
attention to BWS and kindled an intense public debate [31]. Many legislative
changes at this time were based on the medical model, representing the value in
objective science and using qualified professional observation to assess the mental
state of the battered woman, and were reflected in the media cycle that promoted the
medical model typification.
In 1994, Lenore Walkerthe psychologist who coined the term Battered Woman
Syndromeagreed to testify on behalf of O. J. Simpson. Walker testified that
Nicole Brown did not fit the battered woman profile, and thus, was not a battered
woman. Shortly after this focusing event in the news media, the legitimacy of BWS
was publicly discredited by prosecutors, defendant advocates and legal feminists,
marking the diminished focus on policy change in response to the criminal justice
problem ([19], see also the effects of the Simpson trial on attitudes towards BWS
and expert testimony in [42]).
Focusing events are one part of media patterns that often coincide with swift
shifts in dominant typifications. Claims makers, however, are used in media
accounts to establish a frame or typified account. Through the medicalization of
deviance, claims makers have been found to make moral judgments in both the
technical language of the profession and [in] popular moral meanings
[35, p. 220]. BWS experts, for example, typify battered women as lacking control
124 Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110130
123
over their lives and in need of counseling. Our findings support this research. While
the medicalized typification maintains a visible presence, there is also a competing
frame, expressed in the conventional rationality articles, that women are getting
away with murder, and sometimes by using BWS. These articles promote a
criminalization of battered women who kill their abusers.
The constructionist perspective has demonstrated that well-established typifica-
tions provide a foundation for building the credibility of an emerging perspective on
a social problem [32, 36]. Lowney and Best [36] refer to these typifications as
cultural resources. As a case in point, the medical model developed from thealready-established battered womans movement, although the movement itself did
not support the medicalization of the battered woman who kills [27]. The medical
model explanation, rather than the battered womans movement explanation, moved
forward and dominated public understanding due to it being a cultural resource. The
notion of the battered woman as a victim was familiar and generally accepted in
both legal and public forums. Arguably, the classification of BWS as a subcategory
of a medical diagnosis, PTSD, also helped to bolster the credibility of the syndrome.
Nicolson [46] found that the legal system tends to portray battered women
defendants as either mad or bad (as we also found in newspapers). These traditional
discourses are imparted across various media types [14, 28]. To cite one example,
the idea that a woman would kill her husband for his life insurance is a common
sense explanation. In this context, bad women marry for money, and not for love.
Both the medical and the conventional rationality models reinforce traditional
perceptions of women, excluding the idea that women may kill in rational and
reasonable self-defense.
The favoring of certain typifications over others is evident in the greater
proportion of citations from claims makers who support the two dominant views
(see Table 3). For the most part, the popular press focuses on constructing the
battered woman discourse under the medical and conventional rationality models.
Ultimately, then, the popular press reinforces pre-established notions of women by
both medicalizing and criminalizing battered women who kill their abusers.
Medicalizing and criminalizing dominant typifications reflect individual-levelexplanations for women who kill their abusers. Ferraro [22], for example, discusses
the medical model as an individual pathology model. In this model, the battered
woman is culpable (even if legally excused); the social system, which neglects to
educate the public about terrorism in the family, is not at fault. The public
generally accepts individual-level models, because the traditional patriarchal
ideology of the social system has not been challenged [22], and because it
conforms to the accepted common sense causality [40] of murder.
The conventional rationality model also holds the woman responsible for her
actions. The public can easily grasp the long-standing tradition to focus on the
individual and to use something that is typified innately feminine to explain
something difficult to understand due to its typically unfeminine nature [57]. In
contrast, views held by legal feminists often challenge the status quo of gender
inequality. Moreover, their explanations tend to conflict with hegemonic ideals and
promote solutions that are difficult to implement in the existing social system.
Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110130 125
123
Conclusion
The news portrayal of battered women who kill established this event as a serious
social problem, worthy of public attention and legal reform. We found that the
predominant social construction of battered women who kill was one of female
deviants; they were either mad or bad. Both the medical and conventional rationality
models held the battered woman culpable for her actions, while acquitting the social
system of any responsibility. The medical model sought to excuse the battered
woman who kills, thus mitigating her accountability, by focusing on her mental state
(rather than the history of abuse) to explain the nature of her actions leaving her
vulnerable to stigma and social control through the mental health system. The
conventional rationality model relied on traditional explanations of why one would
kill by reinforcing typified notions of women who kill as cold-blooded murderers.
Before discussing the possible implications of our findings, we must mention the
limitations to our results. First, our analysis focused on the majority of newspaper
articles that clearly expressed a dominant theme rather than the small group (10% of
articles) that evinced no clear theme. This presents a somewhat oversimplified
image of the articles and it is important to remember that at least some articles did
not fit neatly into our typologies. For this analysis, we focused on typified discourses
of the battered woman who kills and BWS as a typifying agent, which could
artificially homogenize our sample of newspaper articles. In addition, our research
question and thus our analysis did not investigate for the accuracy of news reporting
to actual rates of acquittals based on excused and justified imminent and non-
imminent self-defenses. This, however, would be an important contribution to the
understanding of the social constructions of the battered woman who kills within
news media. Finally, it may be that newspaper accounts of the battered woman who
kills may be constrained by the capacity and direction of case outcomes and the
theories used in the cases, which would mean that we are over-assuming the role of
the news media in socially constructing dominant typifications. Although we did not
gather a statistically representative sample of all newspaper articles covering
battered women who have killed from all major U.S. and Canadian newspapers, our
findings provide an example of how typified models of a particular gendered
phenomenon were used in popular newspapers. With these limitations in mind, we
highlight important findings regarding the dominant portrayals of battered women in
newspaper articles.
Our investigation reaffirms the constructionist view that claims of sensationalized
commonsense explanations shape depictions of crimes and criminals. These
depictions may have little to do with scientific knowledge, and more to do with
media concern over generating new angles on old stories in order to generate public
interest. This study also illustrates the co-ownership of definitions of social
problems and deviance by claims makers and newspapers. Although the claims of
all typification models were presented throughout the time period studied, the long
standing conventional rationality model was lastly the most prominent viewpoint in
newspaper reports. That finding, combined with the fact that the largest proportion
of articles promoted the medical model, suggests that successful claims makers are
those who present more sensationalized definitions without challenging traditional
126 Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110130
123
notions of gender norms and roles. The dominant typifications of the battered
woman who kills as either a cold-blooded murderer or mentally ill not only make
for sensational news, they reinforce belittling ideal types and social attitudes
towards women and victims of domestic violence.
The two dominant typifications present more sensational stories than articles with
feminist jurisprudence and early legal feminism and they tend to avoid the complex
debate common in feminist circles over the reasonableness of self-defense. Similar
to previous investigations of the portrayal of domestic violence issues, such as by
Berns [7], the newspaper portrayals in this study focus on the actions of women and
narrowly construct a debate around how to define the actions of the battered woman
who kills. Focusing the readers attention on the question of why she did itmarginalizes the structural and macro social issues surrounding gender inequality
and oppression. The medical and the conventional rationality models utilize societal
metanarratives, which provides easy understandings. To quote Berns, as long as
these magazines continue to locate the victims experiences within a discourse that
silences the role of the abuser and of society, individuals will continue to not ask,
Why does he hit her? or Why does he get away with hitting her? [6, p. 106].Ultimately, a focus on claims promoted by the Feminist Jurisprudence Model
might be more beneficial to battered women and more appropriate given existing
social conditions, but this is not the current trend in media reports. This and previous
studies find that portrayals of battered women who kill continue to re-enforce
traditional views of women as either cold-blooded or irrational. Our findings suggest
that the feminist explanations require repackaging in ways that enact the three
factors influencing dominance in the mediasimplicity, sensationalism and
conventionalityor thus, the typical portrayal of an abused woman who kills will
likely remain not one of reasonable self-defense, but rather the story of a woman
who is either mad or bad.
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Author Biographies
Marianne S. Noh received her doctorate in Sociology from the University of Akron in 2008. Since then,she has conducted research in HIV/AIDS and immigrant health at the Ontario HIV Treatment Network
and has taught as a Senior Lecturer in the department of sociology at the University of Victoria. She is
co-editor of Korean Immigrants in Canada, expected to be released in October 2011. Currently, she is
researching the intersection of race and gender in the social construction of domestic violence.
Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110130 129
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Matthew T. Lee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and a Conflict ManagementFellow at the University of Akron. He is the co-author of A Sociological Study of the Great
Commandment in Pentecostalism: The Practice of Godly Love as Benevolent Service (2009, Edwin
Mellen Press) and the author of Crime on the Border: Immigration and Homicide in Urban Communities
(2003, LFB Scholarly). His work has appeared in journals such as Criminology, Social Problems, Social
Psychology Quarterly, and Sociological Quarterly. He is Vice-President of the Institute for Research on
Unlimited Love and his current research interests include altruism/love, immigration and crime, and
organizational deviance.
Kathryn M. Feltey is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and a Conflict ManagementFellow at the University of Akron. She is the gender section editor of the journal, Sociology Compass and
co-editor of a special issue of NWSA Journal, New Orleans: A Special Issue on Gender, the Meaning of
Place, and the Politics of Displacement (Fall 2008). Her current research interests include family poverty,
community responses to food insecurity, and 19th century pioneer families.
130 Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110130
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