Provocation and Self-defence in Intimate Partner and Homophobic Homicides

• NCJ Number: 226273
• Author(s): Lenny Roth
• Date Published: 2007
• Length: 47 pages
• Corporate Author: New South Wales Parliamentary Library
• Sale Source: New South Wales Parliamentary Library
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: Australia
• Note: NSW Parliamentary Library Research Service Briefing Paper No. 3/07; downloaded March 13, 2009.

Annotation

This paper updates a 1996 briefing paper that examined the legal defenses of provocation and self-defense in the context of homicides that involved intimate partners and homicides in response to homosexual advances in New South Wales (Australia).

Abstract

A report published by the Judicial Commission of New South Wales contains data on the use of provocation as a legal defense for the years 1990 to 2004. During this period, 11 male offenders successfully used defenses of provocation in the context of partner infidelity or the breakdown of an intimate relationship. In 10 cases, women who had killed their husbands after a history of physical abuse successfully used the defense of provocation. Eleven offenders successfully used provocation as a defense in the context of an alleged homosexual advance; in at least 2 of the cases, the advance was not violent. Rebecca Bradfield’s study of homicide cases in New South Wales (NSW) from 1985 to 2000 identified 16 cases in which females who had killed their spouses successfully used the partial defense of a lack of intent. Another Bradfield study examined 65 cases of women who killed their violent spouses across Australia from 1980 to 2000; it found that self-defense was raised in 21 cases, and in 9 of these cases, the defense was successful. This paper also reports on a controversial case in Victoria in 2004 (“Ramage”), in which a man successfully used provocation as a defense against murder after killing his estranged wife, who had told him that sex with him repulsed her. He was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 11 years. In 1997, the NSW Law Reform Commission published its report on provocation, which recommended retaining the defense but modifying it in a way that would leave it up to the jury to decide whether the offender should be partially excused for having lost self-control and killing the victim. Law reform in the areas of provocation and self-defense is also reported for other Australian jurisdictions and overseas jurisdictions (New Zealand and the United Kingdom). 191 notes and a listing of recent publications of the NSW Parliamentary Library Research Service