ABSTRACT
The English defences will be compared with the approach taken in French criminal law. It argued that the government was misguided in clinging on to the concept of loss of control as the basis of a defence for battered women who kill. Instead, a three-pronged approach needs to be taken to make sure that justice is done in such cases. The law on self-defence should be developed so that it ceases to be a sexist defence that is more likely to succeed for male defendants than female defendants. Secondly, a new partial defence of self-preservation could be created which would be available where a court concluded that excessive force had been used in an attempt at self-preservation, reducing the defendant's liability from murder to manslaughter. Finally, the sentencing arrangements could be revisited to make sure that the sentence matches the gravity of the attack in the context of a fatal attack on a victim of domestic abuse.
