Distorted Reflections of Battered Women Who Kill: A Response to Professor Dressler

In Battered Women and Sleeping Abusers: Some Reflections, Professor Joshua Dressler offers cogent criticism of the application of self-defense to battered women who kill their abusers under “nonconfrontational” circumstances, such as when the abuser is asleep. Dressler is critical of using evidence that the defendant suffered from “Battered Woman Syndrome” (“BWS”) to establish the requisite defense elements, which historically have applied only in confrontational contexts. According to Dressler’s critique, legislators, judges, and academics have far too easily accepted the proposition that the battered woman’s actions are morally justifiable, and have been far too willing to stretch the limits of the doctrine to accomplish this end. Dressler asserts that “[t]he proposition that a battered woman is justified in killing her sleeping abuser, although well-meaning, is wrong, and . . . any serious effort to expand self-defense law . . . to permit such killings [risks] . . . the coarsening of our moral values about human life and, perhaps, even the condonation of homicidal vengeance.” In place of self-defense, Dressler proposes an expanded use of the duress doctrine to excuse rather than justify the battered woman’s actions, permitting society to condemn the killing while simultaneously acknowledging that the defendant lacked a “fair opportunity to conform her conduct to the dictates of the law.” Although not explicitly stated, Dressler’s criticism appears to rest on three core assumptions: one moral, one factual, and one practical. For Dressler, the underlying moral basis of self-defense is “the basic common law message that the taking of life should be an act of last resort.” In accordance with this principle,