It's not murder if she cheated on you...

[Grumpla]

that old chestnut

Anyone else enraged by this?

I've taken antidepressants in the past, I didn't lure my ex into a barn and spontaneously decide to shoot him with the fully loaded gun I just happened to have lying about.

I think the message is pretty clear - if you're a man, your rage at being discarded / cheated on by "your" woman gives you the right to do what you want to her, even kill her.

Depressing stuff.

[FermezLaBouche]

Disgusting but I'm not surprised. He shot her FIVE TIMES? Why are things so fucking unfair?

[EclecticShock]

He was cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter... What does that mean in terms of sentencing?

[Hulababy]

Women have committed murder after being cheated on too - and again it is usually manslaughter. It is definitely NOT unknown for both genders.

[KRITIQ]

Hulababy, it's not because a someone killed their partner after discovering they'd had an affair that means such people are often sentenced for manslaughter. In the UK at least, discovering an affair is not a sufficient defence for murder.

It comes down to premeditation. If someone kills during a fight, or picks up a gun or knife and kills without evidence that they thought about doing it first, it could be considered manslaughter. However, if there is evidence of planning - buying a weapon, drawing up plans, getting someone else involved, etc., it's more likely to be considered murder.

There is also manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility - that even if there was prior planning, the person wasn't in full control of their faculties basically to genuinely "know" what they were doing. That's probably the case in this case, as his defence was that he was hearing voices and that the anti-depressants he was taking led him to kill. It seems even though the experts couldn't agree whether he was taking a sufficient dose for this to be the case, they gave benefit of the doubt, (despite the six day wait until he killed her and obtaining a prohibited firearm, and shooting 5 times.)

[messyisthenewtidy]

He took the gun into the barn. Surely this is premeditation. Premeditation tends to work against women who are DV victims trying to escape their hell.

[Grumpla]

KRITIQ - good explanation.

I read about this when the trial started and thought surely they can't let this one slide? But of course, they can. Because she had the temerity to transgress.

He'll probably be out in a few years.

That poor woman. And her family. I can't imagine how awful it must be for them.

[Hulababy]

Yes - I know the difference between murder and manslaughter - worked in a high security prison for a few years.

[KRITIQ]

Didn't mean to teach granny to suck eggs, so sorry Hula. It's just that it's not the infidelity excuse that will save you from a murder rap, but whether or not it was premeditated.

I think in this case, they were leaning heavily on the fact he was on anti-depressants. I don't know which drugs they were, but there has been some evidence of people taking anti-depressants who have experienced significant personality changes and even psychosis. That wasn't proven in this case, but I would guess the jury weighed that possibility more heavily than the steps he took to prepare before the killing.

I'm also not suggesting that there wasn't institutionalised sexism at play in the decision. Jurors are likely to hold the same kind of prejudices as the general public.

I wish I'd kept it as it was only a paper copy, but I think it was around 1996, Channel Four TV did a piece of research about the use of please of manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility in the case of people killing their partners. If anyone can find it, you will be my mate forever.

Their study found that when a woman killed her partner, courts generally only accepted a plea of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility where she had a previous diagnosis of a mental illness. In cases where men killed their partners, they more often accepted the same plea without prior evidence of mental ill health. They were willing to be swayed by a professional testifying that they believed the defendant to be suffering from "extreme stress" or "reactive depression" or similar if he was a man than if she was a woman.

I don't have any recent figures for convictions to know if this still holds true. Anybody got them?

[solidgoldbrass]

Same old shit. Men are entitled to own, control and punish women, up to the point of killing them. Anyone who breaches monogamy deserves to die.

This is horrible, but even more horrible are the cases where these scummy men kill the children to 'punish' the woman, and then the press coverage makes a big deal out of the fact that she breached monogamy and therefore has to 'share the blame'.