You\u2019d think that when a woman uses deadly force against a violently attacking man, society would be sympathetic. Not necessarily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I recently finished the eminently readable 2023 book\u00a0The Furies: Women, Vengeance, and Justice<\/a><\/em>\u00a0by Elizabeth Flock.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n She writes, \u201cIn her seminal 1989 book, Justifiable Homicide, <\/em>women\u2019s rights advocate Cynthia Gillespie argued that, as a result of its origins, self-defense law evolved based on masculine assumptions \u2013 that the fight is between people of \u2018roughly equal size, strength and fighting ability\u2019 and that it\u2019s \u2018never acceptable to kill an unarmed adversary.\u2019 Both assumptions have made it difficult for women to win self-defense cases because women and men are often different sizes and strengths, and women are more likely to defend themselves with guns or knives, while men more often use hands and fists\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She adds, \u201cGillespie also wrote that, of the two hundred cases she reviewed of women who killed men in self-defense, the outcomes were \u2018depressingly similar\u2019: the women were arrested, charged with murder, pled guilty to murder or manslaughter, and went to prison. (She did not review men\u2019s cases.)\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the biggest elements in play here is something that has bothered me for years: I\u2019ve met practicing attorneys who got through three years of law school and passed a bar exam without learning that the concept of \u201cdisparity of force\u201d has long existed in our law. It means that if the ostensibly unarmed opponent has such a great physical advantage over you that if his violent attack on you is allowed to continue you are likely to be killed or severely injured, that advantage is equivalent to a deadly weapon and authorizes the innocent defender to resort to a lethal weapon to stop the assault.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And a defense attorney who has not yet been educated on disparity of force themselves cannot possibly educate a jury on the same topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read my book\u00a0Deadly Force<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>or listen to the audio version<\/a>. Or, go to a well-stocked legal library and read the classic authoritative text\u00a0Warren on Homicide.\u00a0<\/em>They will explain the legal principle of disparity of force the way it needs to be explained to the triers of the facts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You\u2019d think that when a woman uses deadly force against a violently attacking man, society would be sympathetic. Not necessarily. I recently finished the eminently readable 2023 book\u00a0The Furies: Women, Vengeance, and Justice\u00a0by Elizabeth Flock.\u00a0 She writes, \u201cIn her seminal 1989 book, Justifiable Homicide, women\u2019s rights advocate Cynthia Gillespie argued that, as a result of its origins, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8934,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8932","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8932"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8935,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8932\/revisions\/8935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}