ABSTRACT
In this chapter we examine legal responses to battered women who have killed abusers with a special focus on indigenous women in Australia. For many battered women facing charges arising from killing a violent man, the capacity to successfully argue self-defence continues to be limited by the gender bias of the defence and by stereotyped understandings of women, intimate relations, and commonly also of indigeneity, that shape the reception of narratives concerning domestic violence. A well-established literature suggests that the introduction of expert testimony about battered woman syndrome (BWS) in support of defences to homicide has contributed to these stereotypes and to the medicalisation and pathologisation of battered women’s behaviour. While compassionate or merciful outcomes are sometimes evident, mercy too often substitutes for an acquittal and distorts women’s experiences rendering them as pathetic or irrational.
