Battered Wife Syndrome as a defense to murder: the Barbara Sheehan trial

During the last two weeks or so, every day that I have gone to handle my complement of murder cases before Chief Homicide Judge Gregory L. Lasak, I am greeted by famous New York Post photographer Ellis Kaplan who is camped out on the third floor of the Queens Supreme Court to digitally capture forever the dramatis personae of the Barbara Sheehan murder trial presently pending before Justice Richard Buchter.

For those unfamiliar with the case, Ms. Sheehan admitted to shooting her husband Raymond eleven times after having allegedly suffered intimate partner violence at the hands of her deceased former N.Y.P.D. sergeant husband.  Unfortunately, I have been extremely busy recently so I have been unable to watch what must be better courtroom drama than Perry Mason in the match between defense lawyer Michael Dowd and prosecutor Debra Pomidor.  While neither lawyer is especially low key, they are both colorful and skilled advocates.  Justice Barry Kron, a legal scholar with a a dry and sometimes sardonic wit is the perfect judge to keep both lawyers in line in terms of his "take no nonsense" attitude.  Nevertheless, both sides can be confident in the knowledge that they will receive a fair trial.

The prosecution contends that Ms. Sheehan cold-bloodedly executed her husband.  The defense contends that after many years of being the recipient of violent spousal abuse, she believed that her husband was going to shot her and she acted first to defend herself by shooting him eleven times with two different handguns.

The interesting issue is whether or not the defense will fly based upon the eleven shoots she fired into his body from the two guns.  While I will not make any predictions, I note that psychologically, it is not necessarily inconsistent for a battered wife defense to be viable even when there were eleven shoots from two different guns.  In fact, it makes sense.  While I cannot justify the actions of Ms. Sheehan under any circumstances, I can understand them to a certain extent.  

Classically, the domestic violence battered wife syndrome defense involves a reaction to a long time pattern of abusive behavior over many years.  The abuse may be physical or psychological or both.  Having represented many spouses who were either accused of domestic violence as the primary instigator or as a recipient responding to long time abuse, I have seen that when a long suffering recipient of spousal or other domestic violence finally reacts and strikes back, the reaction is horrific in its intensity and ferocity.  Having suffered for many years, the injured party wants to inflict infinite eternal suffering on his or her former torturer and generally will do so in an exaggerated fashion.

While I cannot predict the outcome of this particular trial, the defense is real and manifests an inappropriate but psychologically reasonable reaction to an unreasonable situation.