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Imminence and Self Defense

-- By JessicaHallett - 16 Apr 2010

A Battered Woman

Limitations on punishment and availability of excuse, which should provide key safeguards in the criminal system, can instead pose major obstacles to the administration of justice. The decision in _State v. Norman_ illustrates two problems: first, a logical problem with implications of principle and rationale, and second, a problem of unjustified punishment. In Norman, the defendant was a victim with battered woman syndrome, who had experienced years of physical abuse by her husband, the victim. The abuse culminated in a severe beating that led her to cause the police, who refused to arrest him unless she filed a complaint, which she was too scared to do. She tried to kill herself, and when paramedics came to her aid, her husband intervened, insisting that they let her die. The defendant tried to sign up for welfare (so she would no longer have to prostitute herself, which her husband forced her to do), and endured beating and cigarette burns at her husband’s hands. The defendant then shot her sleeping husband to death. On appeal, the court decided that she was not entitled to a jury charge of self defense.

A Logical Problem

In North Carolina, a defendant may have a jury consider acquittal on the grounds of perfect self defense when, at the time of the killing, it appeared to the defendant and she believed it to be necessary to kill the victim to save herself from “imminent death or great bodily harm.” The court, however, found that no such imminence was present, such that the defendant had no defense. The opinion also provided a definition of “imminent” as a term indicating “immediate danger, such as must be instantly met, such as cannot be guarded against by calling for the assistance of others or the protection of the law.” The decision, then, in endorsing this definition, espoused an interpretation that focused on the danger being instantly met. Strange, then, that the opinion then went on to focus on the nature of the danger being instant in fact. It would make more sense, if “imminent” is to be defined by how instantly a danger must be responded to, that a standard of granting the self defense excuse would then focus on the defendant, and her perception of the necessity of her own imminent action, rather than the temporal closeness of the dangerous attack. Rather than focus on what actions he would take at that particular moment, the inquiry should be into the immediate necessity of the defendant’s actions. The question should have at least gone to the jury, who could have found that the defendant believed her instantaneous action was needed to meet the danger her victim presented. While this standard would not extend the defense to any defendant who thought that death was inevitable at some indeterminate future point, it would extend it to those for whom the necessity to act in that moment was essential for survival.

A Problem of Underlying Principle

Subjective and Objective Standards

The majority argues that a rule permitting a self defense instruction without an immediate threat of violence by the victim would unjustly allow “purely subjective speculation” to determine cases. Even without going so far as asserting that a subjective belief of future threat is sufficient to entitle a defendant to the defense, an objective person standard in the defendant’s position could eliminate this concern. Could not a reasonable person in her situation have believed, given what the defendant had experienced over years of abuse, and on that very day ,that if she did not act, she would die? A reasonable person standpoint from the defendant’s point of view of the necessity of immediate action to save her own life at the expense of her abuser’s, then, should be the appropriate one. A battered woman who, even to an objective viewer, made a reasonable decision to kill her husband under a reasonable belief that she had no other alternative and that if she did not act he would kill her, based on factual findings, should have a perfect defense to a murder and manslaughter charge.

Dangerous Precedent

What if we wait until the threat of death is instantly and physically imminent – say, a man is holding a woman down, with a gun to her head. In a case when a man is stronger than a woman, holds psychological and emotional power over her, and may be more competent at executing the killing – isn’t the moment of imminence the moment when the woman no longer has any recourse whatsoever? Thus, the moment of imminence as explained to a jury could be potentially temporally further away from the act of impending violence, when the circumstances so indicate. This is why the imminence should modify the need to act by the defendant and not the impending act in fact by the victim.

An Insupportable Result

Since it fails in every common justification for punishment, incarcerating women like Ms. Norman is pointless and insupportable. If we are retributives in one sense, what kind of debt is Ms. Norman repaying, by serving time in prison, for taking the life of someone who essentially destroyed her own? If we are retributives in another sense, who among us would call her a moral monster for what she did? There will be no deterrent value to her punishment, as she acted in a unique situation which will either a) never be repeated or b) would likely result in similar behavior if she once again found herself without alternatives to save her own life. She is not a dangerous woman by nature, but was dangerous towards a specific individual who brought a specific syndrome upon her, and thus does not need to be incapacitated for the sake of upholding a public sense of safety, real or imagined. Punishing Ms. Norman is without purpose or justification, should not have stood then, and should not stand in similar cases now.

Hey, Jessica, I apologize for being so late with the re-editing. I am still slowing working through it and will try to update as soon as possible.

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