the last word
Sandi Tomlin-Sutker, Associate Editor

I don’t know about the rest of you out there…but I feel so much change and stress in this past month, more than usual! Maybe it’s this local trial that has me thinking about how there are no easy answers in life. A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from Our Voice (formerly the Rape Crisis Center) about a woman who’s on trial for killing her husband when he tried to rape her for the second time that day. In that email, they included a legal brief about another woman who killed her abusive husband while he slept. At issue is the definition of self-defense. The legal definition seems to revolve around the imminence or immediacy of the threat; our legal system recognizes the natural law of defending oneself when one’s life is threatened, but only if it can be shown that death was the likely outcome. One of the women had suffered pretty unbelievable abuse: beatings, forced prostitution, threats to her very life. She reached her breaking point and when her husband passed out from heavy drinking, she fired three shots, killing him on the second or third. She initially received a verdict of voluntary manslaughter with a sentence of 6 years in prison. But there will be a new trial seeking a verdict of murder because she waited until he was asleep to kill him—thus it was ‘premeditated’. The other woman killed her husband as he tried to rape and beat her, yet she is being tried for murder.

There’s the obvious inconsistency between how these two women’s actions are viewed. But more, I’m thinking about how difficult it is for a woman, faced with physical abuse, to find a way out. Discussing this situation last week, my friend Lexie said of the woman who shot her sleeping mate, who had threatened her before he passed our, “What was she supposed to do, wait for him to wake up and take the gun away and kill her?” Yet, in several instances she had refused to take out a warrant for him, had asked family members to bail him out of jail. What options did she have? What personal responsibility to just walk away? Another friend told me: “If a man says he’s going to kill you if you leave, believe him!”—this said after an acquaintance was shot and killed by her husband after she walked away from their marriage.

There are no easy answers, but some places to start the process of change might be: strengthen the laws that protect women who have been abused; mandatory jail time for men (or women) who abuse their mates—let the state prosecute even if the abused isn’t willing (or able) to proceed. How about mandatory counseling for the abused and the abuser? And let’s have education—let’s spend some real money on this, not just a token—for boys and girls, about appropriate ways to deal with anger, fear, and jealousy. And let’s especially find ways to help girls and women feel empowered to walk away from abuse, to know there are options and protected places for them and their children…so no woman ever has to say “I just couldn’t take it any longer; I didn’t feel like I had any other choice. I’d rather go to prison than keep living like this.”