However, domestic violence has been more appropriately described as domestic terrorism, and the heightened fear and heightened awareness experienced by victims has an undeniable impact on their reasoning skills. As a result, it is important that battered women who use deadly force against their batterers when they are not in an immediately life-threatening situation be able to demonstrate that their behavior was reasonable without resorting to a quasi-insanity plea, like battered women's syndrome. Instead, if someone who has consistently battered and abused someone threatens to hunt a victim down and kill them, that victim can reasonably believe that nothing short of the batterer's death will save the victim's life. This changes how the victim views other legal terms, and can make them feel like the threat of death is imminent and unavoidable, even if there is no overt threat of violence. This is an important consideration, because it allows a victim to escape criminal liability for a non-criminal action without affirmatively pleading a condition like battered women's syndrome, which could be used against them in civil proceedings regarding custody and estate distribution.
Fifth, a subjective test of mens rea allows one to consider a victim's religious considerations when determining state-of-mind. Many people would have issues with allowing religious considerations to impact whether or not a defendant would be found guilty. However, those concerns are based upon assumptions that all religious share the same basic behavioral norms, which simply is not the case. Therefore, some behavior that would seem absolutely unreasonable to members of one religious group may seem appropriate to members of another religious group. This standard is especially important when viewed in conjunction with affirmative insanity defenses. For example, some women who suffer from post-partum psychosis actually suffer from delusions that direct...
Looking at a defendant's religious background can help one understand whether, in light of that background, a defendant acted in a reasonable manner. Many religions explicitly state that their deity would not direct a person to behave in such a manner, so that such delusions should be sufficient to inform the person that they are not acting in a reasonable manner. However, other religions build on a history of parental sacrifice by children and suggest that every follower has the ability to speak directly with God. Therefore, a person engaging in that belief could honestly state that they followed their compulsions because they were directed to do so by God. This would not entitle the person to an absolute guilty verdict, but would allow her to successfully utilize an insanity defense.
Finally, a subjective test of mens rea allows the fact finders to consider the entire range of circumstances to determine if any reasonable person could have engaged in the same behavior as the defendant. Human beings come in a huge range of characteristics, and individual characteristics do impact whether or not a person is behaving in a reasonable manner. Not being able to consider what makes an individual unique means that one really cannot understand whether or not that person is behaving reasonably. For example, a fifteen-year-old whose parents are drug addicts and who is engaged in stealing behavior to support his own addiction is acting in a more reasonable manner than a fifteen-year-old from a good family who is stealing to support his addiction. The criminal law should be allowed to consider individual differences when determining culpability, because the reasonable man does not commit crimes. Instead, the question must be whether a reasonable person, in a defendant's specific individual position, could have committed that crime.
Conclusion Statutory rape is one of the more difficult subjects in criminal justice. Every actor in the law enforcement community wants to strike a balance between ensuring that a victim is adequately protected and imposing realistic punishments that are proportionate to the level of the crime. To help ensure this, many states have lowered punishments when offenders are under the age of 21 with victims over a certain age limit. That
Wife of Bath's Tale -- Revised Circa 2014 What are the deepest, darkest, sensual secrets of young women? In this play, 18-year-old Jim, his older sister Erica and his mother, Ellen, share a home just a few miles from the Pacific Ocean in Santa Barbara, California. Jim lives in a cozy guest house in back of the main house. It has skylights, a full kitchen and bath, a private deck in back
These statistics deny that a great number of older men are taking advantage of young girls and making them pregnant. Eight per cent is hardly an epidemic. If the problem is occurring only 8% of the time, then statutory rape laws should be enforced in about 8% of the cases. The problem is how to sift through all the cases and find the right ones to prosecute, leaving the remaining
Consequences of Rape In recent decades, rape has come out of the closet and is now openly discussed and recognized as a serious social problem. However, there is still a stigma of shame and blame attached to a victim of rape causing many children and women to remain silent and suffer the consequences of emotional trauma alone. A generation ago there were no such things as rape hot lines, rape awareness
In “Crimes Which Startle and Horrify: Gender, Age, and the Racialization of Sexual Violence in White American Newspapers, 1870-1900,” Estelle Fredman situates rape as a series of interconnected power relations, focusing on the intersection between race and gender in particular. Fredman analyzes the historical context of rape, showing how rape is socially constructed in ways that reinforce patriarchal and racist norms. Besides the cogent thesis driving Fredman’s work, the author
Although prisoner rape is violative of international, U.S., and state laws, the historic response to prisoner rape has been inadequate and indifferent. According to Jenness and Smythe, it was the specific intent of the PREA to address these issues. As Jenness and Smyth point out, "Current institutional policies regarding sexual violence are in need of reform and greater enforcement. The Prison Rape Elimination Act creates important incentives and standards,