ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents the status of knowledge and the importance of that status when it comes to establishing truth' about female defendants convicted of murder, some of whom were executed. It challenges official discourse which historically has incorporated entrenched constructions of women who kill as mad, bad or tragic victims, and instead seeks to create new subject positions and alternative discourses within which female violence can be understood. The book provides a brief history of the development of feminist epistemology generated by second-wave feminism. It draws on National Archive documents, including the handwritten autobiography of one condemned woman Louie Calvert who was executed in 1926. The book examines the symbiotic relationship between modern law and expert knowledge and the role it played in causing what is arguably one of the most serious miscarriages of justices in contemporary times that of Sally Clark.
