ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the American legal criminal doctrine commonly applied in cases of a particular sub-type of femicide: assaultive-femicide – women who are battered to death. The most relevant criminal doctrine applicable to these circumstances is the felony-murder rule. Generally speaking, according to this rule the felon’s intent in committing the felony is attached to the killing and transformed into the malice aforethought required for murder. The felony-murder rule thus aggravates an unintended killing to murder on the basis of committing or attempting to commit a felony. Under the general notion of the American felony-murder rule, the prosecution is relieved of the burden of proving that the defendant intentionally or knowingly caused the death of an individual. Rather, the culpable mental state for a homicide conviction is supplied by the state of mind accompanying the underlying felony. Given that most U.S. jurisdictions apply the felony-murder doctrine in some form, the doctrine’s origins, nature and modifications in the United States will be examined and analyzed with regard to its particular applicability to circumstances of assaultive-femicide.
