Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110130 DOI 10.

1007/s12147-010-9093-9 ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Mad, Bad, or Reasonable? Newspaper Portrayals of the Battered Woman Who Kills
Marianne S. Noh Matthew T. Lee Kathryn M. Feltey

Published online: 1 December 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

Abstract A heated debate about battered women who kill abusive male partners started in the 1970s. In this study, we tracked the public discourse on battered women who kill by coding 250 newspaper articles published between 1978 and 2002. Using four typifying models, we found that leading explanations for why battered women kill medicalized then criminalized their actions; they were mad then bad. We also found that reporters used quotes from claims makers supporting conventional or medical typications of battered women to a much greater degree than statements from alternative, feminist sources. In conclusion, simplied, sensational and conventional understandings of crime causation drove the social construction of the battered woman who kills. She may be mad or bad, but rarely has she been portrayed as reasonable. Suggestions for promoting feminist narrative in the media are also provided. Keywords Battered woman syndrome Battered woman Domestic violence Media analysis Gender and crime

M. S. Noh (&) Department of Sociology, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada e-mail: mnoh@uvic.ca M. T. Lee K. M. Feltey Department of Sociology, University of Akron, Akron, OH, USA e-mail: mlee2@uakron.edu K. M. Feltey e-mail: felteyk@uakron.edu

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A woman killing her husband is like killing the king, but a man killing his wife is like killing any other person. (Sir William Blackstone 1786, as cited in [12])

Introduction When extenuating factors are diffuse or difcult to understand, courts routinely hold defendants legally responsible for acts of violence against another person. Conversely, when such factors are straightforward and understandable, they are more likely to absolve individuals of personal responsibility [19]. In cases involving the battered woman who kills her abusive husband or boyfriend, defense attorneys have presented the Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS) clearly and convincingly enough in some criminal trials that jurors have accepted BWS as supporting evidence in the defense of temporary insanity and in some cases lawful self-defense [17]. However, BWS as part of a legal defense strategy has been said to ultimately excuse, rather than justify the offense [17, 19, 27, 56]. This is problematic for two reasons. First, excusing the offense stigmatizes women who use the temporary insanity defense. Second, it excludes women who are determined to have been rational at the time of the act from using the BWS as a suitable part of their legal defense. A recent variant of feminist discourse addresses this limitation, arguing that the actions of women who kill their abuser are normative and even altruistic at times [27, 64]. To date, public debates, including those within the legal system, deem the feminist discourse of justication less convincing than the BWS discourse of excuse. Feminist discourse frames women in ways that are inconsistent with traditional female gender roles portraying women as passive, nonviolent, and irrational [23, 35, 37, 55, 64]. In cases where the battered woman kills, traditional feminine explanations include the woman being temporarily insane, such as having hysteria or dementia, or being materialistic [3]. Moreover, the kinds of narrative frameworks promoted by the mass media shape many of our beliefs and assumptions. For example, the media arguably reproduces toxic romance narratives [66, p. 259], which may convince women that victimization at the hands of their intimate partners is a personal problem that they are responsible for solving on their own [7]. Bakken and Farringtons analysis of the battered woman who kills in California, 18002000s, found that news media played a key role in the constructed notions of the battered woman who kills; that is, why she kills and who she is. They also found that the medias role was signicant in constructing dominant notions due to its model of commercial and sensational news. A woman who kills provides extant sensationalism. Such that although the rates of intimate partner homicide by males have remained much higher than violent acts committed by female partners [17], news media appears to paint a contradicting picture. In this study, we examined U.S. and Canadian newspaper portrayals of the battered woman who kills to explore how these news sources presented their stories, and whether they made use of excuse, justication or alternative explanations. Covering a 24-year period (19782002), we analyzed the explanations and interpretations provided in newspaper stories about battered women who kill. We

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entered this investigation with one broad research question: How do the media represent women who kill abusive husbands or boyfriends? More specically, we wanted to know whether news media promote or restrict particular discourses, such as medicalized or feminist accounts.

Literature Review The Social Construction of Media Typications According to the social constructionist perspective, the central issue in understanding deviance is the process of how those in power create and dene deviants and deviant behavior, and how such denitions change (or remain the same) over time [3, 16, 43, 59, 63]. According to this view, deviance is not a quality inherent in certain individuals or acts, but rather a label applied by those who take ownership of the denitional process [5, 29]. For example, the medical profession is a powerful group that has promoted the perspective that deviant acts are rooted in mental or psychological illness [16]. For the battered woman who kills, some members of the medical profession have argued that Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) explains her behavior as resulting from a sustained pattern of abuse that impairs judgment. It is important to note that offering explanatory narratives is most commonly part of a transforming process that simplies individuals into a type of person and creates homogeneity rather than heterogeneity [34, p. 5]. In this case, an overriding dominant narrative simplies the diverse lived experiences of abused women. A processing stereotype increasingly subjects women who t this image to a specic kind of treatment by social service agencies and the criminal justice system [35, p. 307]. Administrative processing, tied to cultural beliefs about the nature of battered women, helps create expectations about battered womens behaviors [54]. The failure of battered women to meet these expectations has led to the denial of services at battered womens shelters as well as the failure of PTSD-based legal defense strategies [19, 34]. Best [8] found that secondary claims makers (e.g., experts and public ofcials) are more likely to inuence public understanding of social problems than primary sources such as, in this case, the battered woman herself. Effective secondary sources of claims making, which include newspaper reports, play an important role in the extent to which the public will accept the claims as truth [9, 36]. News reports commonly sensationalize stories and present the claims of groups and individuals in positions of power. Reporters rely on quotes from experts to bolster the plotlines of their stories: we found that battered women advocates, psychologists, lawyers and politicians were common key informants. Because those with economic resources, political power and the right timing are better able to promote their claims, it is important to pay special attention to the groups of claims makers newspaper reports most frequently cited, and the extent to which these groups represented the interests of battered women. Media stories can emphasize individual responsibility and motivation, focus on systemic factors or offer a narrative based on some combination of both [3, 7, 13].

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For example, experts have portrayed the behavior of battered women as either a function of external constraints (patriarchy and gender inequality) or of internal constraints (PTSD and BWS), both of which can highlight structural constraints on the lives of women [35]. Alternatively, in cases of the battered woman who kills, media reports may have featured the claims of prosecutors, which contest efforts to mitigate personal responsibility. Media narratives of the 1990s may ultimately have formed collective representations of the battered woman that label her either as a victim in dire need of social assistance [34, p. 46] or as personally responsible for solving her private problem [7]. According to Loseke [34], the identity of the battered woman is socially constructed and relies on the presence of violent male offenders and victimized women who do not create their own victimization (p. 16). Through images of helplessness, claims makers in the media have promoted a collective understanding of the battered woman as a person whose identity is predominantly that of a victim, a process known as victimism [35, p. 304]. Accordingly, the victim is nonviolent, but when violent such as when she has killed her abusive partner, it is irrational, therefore, excusing and not justifying her action [19]. However, media typications are multiple. The image of helplessness is not the only typication present, despite its prevalence over the years. Berns [7] found that womens magazines, such as Glamour and Good Housekeeping, typically produce stories that at rst glance portray empowered women, but actually dene women as responsible for their private troublesand their successful escape. These accounts ignore the behavior of abusive men, while highlighting the actions, mistakes and decisions made by the women. Given the multiple typications of the battered woman, it is no surprise that the social, political and psychological implications of an excused versus a justied action also vary. In order to explain and capture various accounts of the battered woman who kills presented by the news media, we used four primary typication models. These models represent the dominant explanations of the battered woman who kills used by those in positions of power such as medical professionals, lawyers, judges and legal scholars [3, 7, 16, 22, 38]. These claims utilized or challenged pre-established common understandings of both reasons for murder and appropriate gendered behavior for women. Four Typication Models of Abused Women Who Kill Previous social science research indicates two general lenses through which to view domestic violence: the violence against women perspective and the family violence perspective [38, p. 8]. These are ideal types in the Weberian sense, and, in practice, they may not be mutually exclusive for researchers who work to bridge the divide [38, p. 8]. However, different constituents use these two lenses and promote different core beliefs. On the one hand, feminists tend to use the violence against women lens. In this view, domestic violence springs from fundamental patriarchal relations between men and women, and nothing short of a complete or radical transformation of our entire social, moral and institutional order will be able to stop the epidemic levels of violence perpetrated by men against women (9).

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On the other hand, Mann [38] frames the family violence perspective as one characterized by mutual dependency between men and women who have learned to use violence to solve problems and express frustration. Therapists and some social scientists are prominent supporters of this perspective, which acknowledges that women also use violence against men, even though women are much more likely to suffer the effects of serious violence. Therapy, rather than social transformation, is the preferred social policy for helping both men and women break their cycle of violence before passing it on to their children, or seriously harming each other. Typications, according to McKinney [41], are necessarily used to perceive the world around us and are based on typologies and ideal types. In turn, typications are used in structuring self-concept, institutions and social structures. In this case, typications of the battered woman who kills are socially constructed by owners of the denitional process, or claims makers, such as medical and legal experts, to explicate social systems with a particular set of values, norms and roles. Our review of existing scholarship suggests that there are four dominant typications of the battered woman who kills, some of which relate to either the violence against women perspective or the family violence perspective (see Table 1). First, women who kill suffer from a psychological illness and thus are excused from legal responsibility for their crime. Second, women who kill are criminals engaged in callous premeditated murder and are guilty for their crime. Third, women who kill engage in justiable and reasonable self-defending behavior and are acquitted of criminal charges. Fourth, women who kill suffer from a psychological illness and are acquitted based on the reasonableness of their mental instability.
Table 1 Typications of the battered woman who kills and the battered woman syndrome Characteristics Typication model Medical Conventional rationality Legal feminism Feminist jurisprudence Early legal feminism

Claims-makers/ proponents

Psychologists, defense attorneys

Prosecutors, victims family, judges, jurors Premeditated murder Not applicable

Politicians, women advocates, legal scholars, defense attorneys Not applicable No options to remove long-term threat acting in self-defense BWS detrimental to battered women BWS part of a larger defense strategy

View of guilty Not applicable battered women View of not-guilty Suffering from battered women BWS

Type of not-guilty Excuse account Rationality Level of explanation Rhetoric Irrational Individual Mad

Not applicable Rational Individual Bad

Justication Rational Structural Reasonable

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These models are larger social systems constructions, and not strictly legal theory models with certain courtroom strategies and outcomes. However, their typied defenses and outcomes are assumed to align with how the battered woman who kills is explained. For example, BWS defense strategies may use expert testimony to provide a justiable legal defense, although numerous feminist legal theorists argue that BWS defense only provides an excuse for killing in an ideological sense. One may inquire why these are the dominant typications, and why there are not more or fewer in numbers [27]. As it will be discussed in the conclusion section, news media typications are formed with three factors under the theory of narrative or typicationsimplicity, sensationalism, and conventionalism, in addition to ownership of denition construction. To our knowledge, there are four models typifying the battered woman who kills determined by one or a combination of the three factors. The following section describes these four typications in more detail.

Medical Model The medical model is associated with the family violence lens, a highly conventional and thus simple to grasp model, which proposes that due to battered womens psychological instability at the time of murder their actions are unreasonable with mental incapability [16, 17, 19]. Psychologists originally developed this model to support the battered woman who kills as killing in a mental state akin to that of PTSD, as described by Walkers [62] early denition of BWS. In this view, BWS is a psychological condition where events, which outsiders would not perceive as life threatening, trigger ones perceptions of dangerous situations [2, 62]. Long-term and continual psychological or physical abuse can alter the perceptions of triggers and may result in a learned helplessness that prevents a woman from leaving a dangerous situation. We believe the medical model provides a legal excuse rather than a justication because although the syndrome typies the act as still being wrong, the battered woman is blameless because of a mental illness similar to that of PTSD. This typication offers a not guilty account as a form of the abuse excuse and does not support a guilty verdict for the battered woman defendant [45]. Expert witnesses, usually psychologists testifying on behalf of women who kill, tend to promote this type of account. The medical model ts best with the family violence perspective because of its therapeutic focus on the cause of the abuse of women and its failure to address broad structural conditions identied by the violence against women model. Stemming from the family violence perspective, the medical model promotes the view that BWS arises out of ongoing violence in the family, maintaining an individualistic explanation, neglecting social structural and contextual factors in intimate partner homicide where the battered woman kills [17]. It is also worthy to note that many U.S. courtrooms no longer apply this model as BWS defense has become part of a legal defense strategy to successfully attain verdicts of justiable self-defense on grounds of reasonable action [17].

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Conventional Rationality Model The conventional rationality model explicates the battered woman who kills based on the traditional legal claim of self-defense, from an imminent mortal danger. The model does not relate to either the violence against women or the family violence perspectives. In using this model, a claims maker either ignores or discounts arguments based on BWS. For example, BWS is discounted in this view by explaining the syndrome label as a tool for getting away with murder. This model typies individuals who kill, and that were not in imminent mortal danger (in the traditional-conventional sense), as criminal and thus rational [16]. For example, under this model, battered women who kill are typied as cold-blooded murderers, and as money hungry opportunists [3] out for life insurance money or just tired of being married. The BWS defense is simply not relevant [17]. According to the conventional rationality model for this particular study, women who kill outside the narrow parameters of traditional self-defense doctrine are bad, responsible for and guilty of, their crime.

Feminist Jurisprudence Model The third model, the feminist jurisprudence model, focuses on social structural explanations for battered women who kill. Legal feminists, such as Cynthia Gillespie [26], Elizabeth Schneider et al. [54], Leigh Goodmark [27], Cara Cookson [17] and social scientists such as Donald A. Downs and Evan Gertsmann [20] have argued that BWS narrowly characterizes the battered woman who kills. This often results in medicalizing the woman such that she is mentally incapable of rational reasonableness. Given prevailing structural- and individual-level conditions, the feminist jurisprudence model uses the structural factors that prevent women from safely or successfully leaving a violent relationship to explain the battered woman who kills. With structural factors present, such as the loss of social networks, the lack of nancial resources, and at times the inability to leave dependents, along with real agency-level concerns of greater retribution from abusive partners, the battered woman who kills is often unable to escape domestic violence with reasonable safety. Articles that make signicant reference to the structural factors that inhibit the termination of violent relationships, without making positive reference to the usefulness of BWS, narrate a feminist jurisprudence explanation. The feminist jurisprudence model ts squarely within the violence against women perspective. Therefore, the model rejects the use of BWS as a viable legal defense due to the stigmatizing effect and the inapplicability of BWS to women who do not manifest symptoms of PTSD. Rather, the feminist jurisprudence model explains the battered woman who kills as legally justied because she is a rational individual who defended herself under reasonable life-threatening circumstances. In addition, the battered woman who kills is not a static singular type person. Feminist jurisprudent writers often emphasize simultaneously the individualized, contextualized and subjective aspects to killing in self-defense [27, 47].

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Early Legal Feminism Model The fourth typication model, we call early legal feminism, articulated a complex stance that draws on aspects of both the medical and the feminist jurisprudence models. This model (formally recognized as BWS defense) is readily accepted throughout U.S. courtrooms [17]. While the model supports the use of BWS in legally defending the battered woman who kills, it argues that the act of killing an abusive spouse is both rational and justied, and therefore, not excusable on the grounds of reasonable insanity [47]. Early legal feminists such as Walker [17, 53] and advocate defense attorneys argue that any rational person in the same situation as the battered woman who kills would reasonably experience BWS and ultimately nd the seemingly irrational and unreasonable act of killing necessary to defend themselves and/or their children. Under this narrative, battered women exhibiting mental instability are, in fact, reasonable and therefore justied. The battered woman who kills is a reasonable abused woman, and should be legally judged and tried on abused woman standards, and more specically, BWS standards. Articles utilizing an early legal feminist explanation will initiate positive uses of BWS. Claims makers of this model are aligned with the medical model proponents in that they explain BWS as viable partial supporting evidence of self-defense [11, 18, 21, 30, 4749]. However, we found early legal feminists to disagree with the view that the battered woman who kills is irrational or unreasonable, which also aligns these claims makers with the feminist jurisprudence model. This model seems to be a hybrid of the family violence and violence against women perspectives. It explains the battered woman who kills as reasonable and acting in justiable self-defense. Each of these four typications promote distinct ideological positions on the causes of domestic violence, the nature of womens position in society, and the role of rational choice in battered womens decisions. They also offer different grounds for the acquittal of female defendants in criminal trials. In order to establish the relative use of these four different media frames in constructing the social problem of the battered woman who kills, we employed a social constructionist approach to track media discourse over time [1, 8, 9, 36, 63].

Methods In this study, we tracked the discourse on the battered women who kill in major U.S. and Canadian newspapers using a mixed methods approach. Our qualitative analysis of typications presented in media narratives involved the search for underlying meanings, patterns, and processes [1, p. 290], which requires the researcher to make evaluative judgments based on a holistic appraisal of an entire newspaper article. This precludes the full delegation of coding to computerized content analysis programs that only count words and phrases. The researcher must make qualitative judgments about the overall meaning of the article, rather than simply counting the number of times a particular word or phrase appears and using that as a basis for determining meaning. We relied on the four pre-identied typications discussed above in our coding of media explanations for why the battered woman kills. One

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typication promotes excuse-based defenses (medical model), two offer justications (feminist jurisprudence and early legal feminism), and one argues that battered women are criminally responsible for their actions unless clear evidence supporting the traditional self-defense doctrine exists (conventional rational). Our quantitative analysis included univariate statistical analyses of study variables. All qualitative analysis was conducted using the computer software CI-SAID and all quantitative analysis was conducted with SPSS10. Data on the typication of the battered woman who kills in newspaper articles were obtained through two sources: the popular internet-based newspaper index le of LexisNexis, as well as The New York Times and The Washington Post paper indexes. We used the LexisNexis Academic online database (Nexis) allowing us to gather articles from popular major newspapers in a single search. Utilizing a single search engine facilitated the tracking of discourse [1, 33]. We decided to search articles through Nexis as it contains most North American popular newspapers. In September 2002, we rst conducted key word searches in Nexis for articles that included the terms battered woman syndrome and/or battered woman anywhere in the article (headlines, text, and photo captions). The articles retrieved were those covering trials and appellate court cases (including clemency cases) on murdered abusive husbands and spouses, and excluded ctional stories and coverage of political changes related to domestic violence. We identied over 600 articles using these two search terms. After the exclusion of articles written in foreign (non-US and non-Canadian) newspapers, articles that covered victims other than the defendants abusive male spouse or boyfriend, and duplicate stories (wire services), our dataset consisted of 212 articles published between 1981 and 2002. In June 2004, we ran the same searches in Nexis for only The New York Times and The Washington Post, the two most popular major newspapers that year. We ran a second search in Nexis in an attempt to draw out more articles that may have been missed in the rst phase of data collection, using the additional subject words, domestic violence, battered woman, and battered spouse. This did not provide any new articles. We then collected 38 additional articles (8 from The Washington Post and 33 from The New York Times) through paper index searches. These additional articles bolstered our understanding of the discourse around women who killed their abusers by providing articles that do not include the keywords battered woman and battered woman syndrome in our sample. The complete dataset consisted of 250 articles published from 1978 to 2002. Newspaper articles provide an important insight into the portrayal of groups of people and into the publics denitions and understandings of acts of deviance that are not necessarily reective of the criminal justice systems theories of defendants [8, 36, 52, 61]. Each article was analyzed and information on discourse was extracted by qualitatively coding supportive and unsupportive statements within an article for each typication (see Table 2). Used was an assessment of supportive and unsupportive statements to code the entire article as representing one of the four typications based on the overall theme. The article frequently closed with a restatement of the dominant theme, but even without this summary statement, the emphasis of the article with respect to our four typications was clear. For this study, there was a principle coder. The principle coder and another researcher on the

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Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110130 Table 2 Typication model coding scheme Typication model Variable Battered woman medicalized Battered woman criminalized Battered woman excused Supportive Unsupportive Unsupportive Unsupportive Battered woman justied Unsupportive Unsupportive Supportive Supportive

119

BWS as legal evidence

Medical Conventional rationality

Supportive Unsupportive

Unsupportive Supportive Unsupportive Unsupportive

Supportive Unsupportive Unsupportive Supportive

Feminist Unsupportive jurisprudence Early legal feminism Unsupportive

project utilized the same coding scheme on the same randomly selected articles and coded independently. The two then compared and discussed coding decisions to revise and nalize the coding scheme, which was then used to analyze the entire sample by the principle coder. Table 2 provides an illustration of how we coded each article and presents the coding necessary for an article to represent a typication.1 In addition to typication variables, we coded for quotes by, and references to, claims makers. As Lowney and Best [36] found, the most prevalent typications depended on the dominant claims makers at a particular time. For example, if a reporter did not interview feminist legal scholars for a particular article because the reporter deemed the views of such scholars as unconventional at the time of trial, the likelihood of a feminist perspective being represented in the nal article diminishes. Therefore, we recorded who was being quoted and to what extent. In a small number of cases, it was not immediately apparent how to code an article. For example, we drew an inference about the typication when an article only reported the conviction of a woman for killing her batterer and did not report opinions, interviews or professional sources. We coded these articles as taking a conventional rationality view since the reports did not provide statements of either justication or excuse. More importantly, such articles gave the impression that a conviction was appropriate by omitting alternative views and by not referring to any claims makers. There were also articles that attempted to achieve balance by presenting more than one stance. We categorized these articles as uncodable, which we operationalized as the achievement of objectivity, not typifying women who kill in any specic manner, not heavily quoting a particular group of claims makers, and not presenting a single view at greater length.2

1 2

Please contact the rst author for statistical results on support variables.

Un-coded articles account for about 10% of the relevant articles. These 21 articles, while an interesting counterpoint to the themed articles, were not included in the results and reported here. They were deemed irrelevant to the discussion of typied views.

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Results Media Patterns I: A Shift in Dominant Accounts Figures 1 and 2 present one set of results of newspapers usage of typications to frame the issue of the battered woman who kills. Figure 1 illustrates the publication trend in articles covering women who kill their abuser. Due to the low frequency, thus lack of dominance, of both feminist jurisprudent and early legal feminist articles in our sample, we grouped their frequencies together in Fig. 1. Most of the articles (n = 86) were published between 1993 and 1997, and then the popularity of the story appears to drop into the 2000s. According to our analysis, the dominance of the medical model in major newspaper articles occurred during the early half of the 1990s. Figure 2 illustrates the shift from the medical model to the conventional rationality model after 1994.3 Our analysis indicates that a medicalized understanding of abused women who kill was the most frequently used, with 98 articles coded as portraying a medical model (see also Table 3). In other words, 38.7% of all articles in our sample portray the battered woman who kills as irrational or insane and frame her behavior as the product of BWS, PTSD or a related psychological pathology. For example, Ohio Governor Celeste was quoted in a New York Times article as saying, These women were entrapped emotionally and physically they loved these men even though they beat and feared them. They were so emotionally entangled they were incapable of walking away [65]. The second most frequent typication is the conventional rationality model, with 74 articles or 30.4% of our sample of articles. The model supports the notion of BWS as a license for retribution [10], allowing women to be getting away with murder [44], and that the battered woman kills for vengeance [15], not selfdefense. As mentioned, this typication portrays battered women who kill as rational manipulative cold-blooded killers. This account rejects the medical model and claims that such women are bad, not mad. Together, the medical and conventional rationality typications account for almost 70% of all articles in our sample. Typications based on the feminist jurisprudence (N = 55; 21.7%) and the early legal feminism (N = 23; 9.1%) models appear less frequently. Articles giving weight to statements such as although she was sane at the time of the killing and knew exactly what she was doing, she is free of any wrongdoing [39] or Many women now in prison might not be there if they had been able to claim battered womans syndrome [51] accounted for less than one-third of the accounts. Media Patterns II: Claims Makers Contribute to Article Accounts Importantly, quotes by psychologists represent 56% of the total 185 quotes in our sample. This is not surprising, as psychologists were well known claims makers of
We chose a 19901994 categorization based on some high prole media stories that took place those years, such as Ohio Governor Richard Celestes highly publicized move to grant 25 battered women clemency in 1990 and O. J. Simpsons murder trial in 1994. These stories represent focusing events, which Kingdon [32] refers to as a crisis or disaster that calls attention to a previously unperceived problem.
3

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Fig. 1 Article frequencies by typication model (19782002)

Fig. 2 Shift in dominant article frequencies by typication model (19901999)

60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1990-1994 1995-1999

Year
Medical Conventional Rational

the medical model. One psychologist was quoted describing a defendant during testimony as [having] received a dreadful upbringing and had not the opportunities to develop a normal personality [4]. Our ndings also demonstrate that quotes from psychologists account for much less space in the non-medical model articles. For example, a psychologist was quoted only once among the 55 articles that promoted the feminist jurisprudence model (see Table 3). Table 3 also displays the frequency of claims maker quotes within each typication model. Based on the balance norm [25, p. 8], the responsibility of reporters to provide a balance in points of view when the topic at hand is controversial and complex [24], quotes from various claims makers (e.g., prosecutors and defense attorneys) should appear at roughly the same frequency. Instead, as Table 3 illustrates, we found important imbalances by typication model. Of the 54 claims makers quoted in medicalized accounts, most frequently quoted are defense attorneys (N = 16), accounting for 30% of the quotes. For example, a lawyer was quoted as saying, But the person doing the perceiving in all this [a reasonable belief that a danger was imminent] had long been thought to be a healthy adult man, like the gunghter walking over to the O. K. Corral (emphasis added) [58]. These were followed closely by psychologists (N = 14; 26%). Then quoted to a lesser extent are defendants (N = 10; 19%) and womens advocates

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Attorney 16 (30) (36) 15 (27) (34) 9 (23) (20) 4 (12) (9) 44 33 (9) (9) 3 11 (32) (38) 29 (21) (24) (18) (18) 7 7 (39) (10) (60) 3 (8) (20) 2 (6) (13) 15 (23) (5) (16) 13 3 9 (30) (28) (7) (19) (15) (2) 10 8 1 1 (.02) (.08) 1 (2) (8) 4 (10) (31) 7 (21) (54) 13 Defendant Advocate Prosecutor Politician Others 4 (7) (17) 11 (20) (46) 8 (21) (33) 1 (3) (40) 24 185 34 39 56 All 54

Table 3 Frequency of claims makers quoted by article

Typication

n (articles)

Claims maker

Psychologist

Medical

98

14

(26%)

(56%)

Conventional rational

74

(7)

(16)

Feminist jurisprudence

55

(3)

(4)

Early legal feminism

23

(18)

(24)

Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110130

Total

250

25

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123

(N = 8; 15%). One advocate was quoted in Newsday [60] as having said, I nd it [a maximum sentence for manslaughter] entirely consistent with a legal system that is rmly based on the concept that men should have, and do have, the right to control women. Rarely quoted are politicians, prosecutors, and others (third parties to the case, judges, police, jurors, and witnesses), who are much less likely to make reliable and supporting claims of the medical model. Presuming that claims makers of each group are available to offer statements for each story/article, the selection of some types of claims makers, but not others, suggests that members of the media may rely on a particular angle or frame to construct their accounts [61], rather than attempting to provide an objective or balanced report of incidents when a battered woman kills. Contrary to our expectations that articles use claims makers to support a particular angle, prosecutors were not the most frequently quoted within the conventional rationality model articles. In fact, prosecutors represented only 15 quotes in all 250 articles. Of these 15 citations, however, 60% appear in articles advancing the conventional rationality typication, which however, we expected Whatever the past, it is no reason to kill someone There is no justication for any of us to take another life because fate dealt us an unhappy existence [4]. Quotes made by defense attorneys (n = 16; 26%) and defendants (n = 14; 23%) appeared most frequently in the articles promoting conventional rationality. After reviewing the content of the 74 articles, we found that prosecutors statements were not important to constructing conventional rationality models. For example, nearly two-thirds of the articles (48 articles) reported that the woman had already been convicted, which appeared to reduce the need to interview the prosecutor. In 13 articles, the women were charged, not convicted, and in the remaining 35 articles, the women were found not guilty, engaged in an appellate case after having been found guilty, or were receiving clemency. Of the 56 quotes in conventional rationality articles, 11 were made by third parties to the case. That is judges, police, jurors and witnesses (Other). We found that these quotes often contradicted the defendants claims within the same articles and bolstered the portrayal of the defendant as lying, devious, and manipulative by, for example, drawing on previous criminal activities or violent acts on the victim by the defendantin short, that she is bad and deserving of punishment, rather than a victim of a mental illness, or a rational actor who has engaged in justiable self-defense. Recall that medicalized accounts offer the excuse that battered women who kill deserve reduced or no punishment, because of a PTSD-like syndrome such as learned helplessness [50], while conventional rationality accounts portray such women as scheming, manipulative killers deserving of a guilty verdict. Feminist jurisprudence disagrees with both images. There were only 39 quotes in these 55 articles. None of the claims maker groups comprises a clear majority, although defense attorneys (N = 9; 23%), others (N = 8; 21%), defendants (N = 7; 18%), and womens advocates (N = 7; 18%) account for roughly the same proportion of quotes. Although uncommon, a defendant quotation in an article narrating the feminist jurisprudence model went as follows, I just want to tell them that I went to all the right people and they turned me away. My intent was not to kill my husband.

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My intent was to get help [51].Quotes by politicians, psychologists and prosecutors were less frequent. Early legal feminist articles contained the fewest quotes. Unlike feminist jurisprudence, early legal feminism makes use of BWS, but views the battered woman who kills as justied in her actions based on reasonable self-defense rather than using an excuse of irrational behavior based on insanity. Womens advocates (N = 11; 32%) and politicians (N = 7; 21%) comprise the two most frequently quoted groups. In fact, 54% of all politicians quoted appear in articles promoting an early legal feminist model. Rarely quoted were legal actors, such as judges, defense attorneys and prosecutors. These articles appeared to rely on the viewpoints of individuals uninvolved in the incident or case at hand. It was more common to nd feminist jurisprudent and early legal feminist articles discussing the ethical issues behind trying cases in general, rather than a specic case. Discussion: The Medical and the Conventional Rationality Models Prevail Although we are unable to determine whether shifts in media patterns were a cause or consequence of social changes, the timing of such shifts seemed to parallel a number of important events [3]. For example, the Ohio Clemency in 1990 and the O.J. Simpson trial in 1994 are possible focusing events ([32], see footnote 3) that coincide with the increase in medical model articles and then the dominance of conventional rationality model articles. According to Gagne [23], Ohio Governor Richard Celestes acceptance and implementation of expert testimony on BWS into Ohios criminal justice system in August 1990 ignited a political reaction including legislative changes in thirteen states (spanning over 8 years) and the Ohio Clemency in December 1990. This action occurred in the aftermath of high prole cases, such as the Hedda Nussbaum/Joel Steinberg trial of 1989, which drew widespread attention to BWS and kindled an intense public debate [31]. Many legislative changes at this time were based on the medical model, representing the value in objective science and using qualied professional observation to assess the mental state of the battered woman, and were reected in the media cycle that promoted the medical model typication. In 1994, Lenore Walkerthe psychologist who coined the term Battered Woman Syndromeagreed to testify on behalf of O. J. Simpson. Walker testied that Nicole Brown did not t the battered woman prole, and thus, was not a battered woman. Shortly after this focusing event in the news media, the legitimacy of BWS was publicly discredited by prosecutors, defendant advocates and legal feminists, marking the diminished focus on policy change in response to the criminal justice problem ([19], see also the effects of the Simpson trial on attitudes towards BWS and expert testimony in [42]). Focusing events are one part of media patterns that often coincide with swift shifts in dominant typications. Claims makers, however, are used in media accounts to establish a frame or typied account. Through the medicalization of deviance, claims makers have been found to make moral judgments in both the technical language of the profession and [in] popular moral meanings [35, p. 220]. BWS experts, for example, typify battered women as lacking control

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over their lives and in need of counseling. Our ndings support this research. While the medicalized typication maintains a visible presence, there is also a competing frame, expressed in the conventional rationality articles, that women are getting away with murder, and sometimes by using BWS. These articles promote a criminalization of battered women who kill their abusers. The constructionist perspective has demonstrated that well-established typications provide a foundation for building the credibility of an emerging perspective on a social problem [32, 36]. Lowney and Best [36] refer to these typications as cultural resources. As a case in point, the medical model developed from the already-established battered womans movement, although the movement itself did not support the medicalization of the battered woman who kills [27]. The medical model explanation, rather than the battered womans movement explanation, moved forward and dominated public understanding due to it being a cultural resource. The notion of the battered woman as a victim was familiar and generally accepted in both legal and public forums. Arguably, the classication of BWS as a subcategory of a medical diagnosis, PTSD, also helped to bolster the credibility of the syndrome. Nicolson [46] found that the legal system tends to portray battered women defendants as either mad or bad (as we also found in newspapers). These traditional discourses are imparted across various media types [14, 28]. To cite one example, the idea that a woman would kill her husband for his life insurance is a common sense explanation. In this context, bad women marry for money, and not for love. Both the medical and the conventional rationality models reinforce traditional perceptions of women, excluding the idea that women may kill in rational and reasonable self-defense. The favoring of certain typications over others is evident in the greater proportion of citations from claims makers who support the two dominant views (see Table 3). For the most part, the popular press focuses on constructing the battered woman discourse under the medical and conventional rationality models. Ultimately, then, the popular press reinforces pre-established notions of women by both medicalizing and criminalizing battered women who kill their abusers. Medicalizing and criminalizing dominant typications reect individual-level explanations for women who kill their abusers. Ferraro [22], for example, discusses the medical model as an individual pathology model. In this model, the battered woman is culpable (even if legally excused); the social system, which neglects to educate the public about terrorism in the family, is not at fault. The public generally accepts individual-level models, because the traditional patriarchal ideology of the social system has not been challenged [22], and because it conforms to the accepted common sense causality [40] of murder. The conventional rationality model also holds the woman responsible for her actions. The public can easily grasp the long-standing tradition to focus on the individual and to use something that is typied innately feminine to explain something difcult to understand due to its typically unfeminine nature [57]. In contrast, views held by legal feminists often challenge the status quo of gender inequality. Moreover, their explanations tend to conict with hegemonic ideals and promote solutions that are difcult to implement in the existing social system.

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Conclusion The news portrayal of battered women who kill established this event as a serious social problem, worthy of public attention and legal reform. We found that the predominant social construction of battered women who kill was one of female deviants; they were either mad or bad. Both the medical and conventional rationality models held the battered woman culpable for her actions, while acquitting the social system of any responsibility. The medical model sought to excuse the battered woman who kills, thus mitigating her accountability, by focusing on her mental state (rather than the history of abuse) to explain the nature of her actions leaving her vulnerable to stigma and social control through the mental health system. The conventional rationality model relied on traditional explanations of why one would kill by reinforcing typied notions of women who kill as cold-blooded murderers. Before discussing the possible implications of our ndings, we must mention the limitations to our results. First, our analysis focused on the majority of newspaper articles that clearly expressed a dominant theme rather than the small group (10% of articles) that evinced no clear theme. This presents a somewhat oversimplied image of the articles and it is important to remember that at least some articles did not t neatly into our typologies. For this analysis, we focused on typied discourses of the battered woman who kills and BWS as a typifying agent, which could articially homogenize our sample of newspaper articles. In addition, our research question and thus our analysis did not investigate for the accuracy of news reporting to actual rates of acquittals based on excused and justied imminent and nonimminent self-defenses. This, however, would be an important contribution to the understanding of the social constructions of the battered woman who kills within news media. Finally, it may be that newspaper accounts of the battered woman who kills may be constrained by the capacity and direction of case outcomes and the theories used in the cases, which would mean that we are over-assuming the role of the news media in socially constructing dominant typications. Although we did not gather a statistically representative sample of all newspaper articles covering battered women who have killed from all major U.S. and Canadian newspapers, our ndings provide an example of how typied models of a particular gendered phenomenon were used in popular newspapers. With these limitations in mind, we highlight important ndings regarding the dominant portrayals of battered women in newspaper articles. Our investigation reafrms the constructionist view that claims of sensationalized commonsense explanations shape depictions of crimes and criminals. These depictions may have little to do with scientic knowledge, and more to do with media concern over generating new angles on old stories in order to generate public interest. This study also illustrates the co-ownership of denitions of social problems and deviance by claims makers and newspapers. Although the claims of all typication models were presented throughout the time period studied, the long standing conventional rationality model was lastly the most prominent viewpoint in newspaper reports. That nding, combined with the fact that the largest proportion of articles promoted the medical model, suggests that successful claims makers are those who present more sensationalized denitions without challenging traditional

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notions of gender norms and roles. The dominant typications of the battered woman who kills as either a cold-blooded murderer or mentally ill not only make for sensational news, they reinforce belittling ideal types and social attitudes towards women and victims of domestic violence. The two dominant typications present more sensational stories than articles with feminist jurisprudence and early legal feminism and they tend to avoid the complex debate common in feminist circles over the reasonableness of self-defense. Similar to previous investigations of the portrayal of domestic violence issues, such as by Berns [7], the newspaper portrayals in this study focus on the actions of women and narrowly construct a debate around how to dene the actions of the battered woman who kills. Focusing the readers attention on the question of why she did it marginalizes the structural and macro social issues surrounding gender inequality and oppression. The medical and the conventional rationality models utilize societal metanarratives, which provides easy understandings. To quote Berns, as long as these magazines continue to locate the victims experiences within a discourse that silences the role of the abuser and of society, individuals will continue to not ask, Why does he hit her? or Why does he get away with hitting her? [6, p. 106]. Ultimately, a focus on claims promoted by the Feminist Jurisprudence Model might be more benecial to battered women and more appropriate given existing social conditions, but this is not the current trend in media reports. This and previous studies nd that portrayals of battered women who kill continue to re-enforce traditional views of women as either cold-blooded or irrational. Our ndings suggest that the feminist explanations require repackaging in ways that enact the three factors inuencing dominance in the mediasimplicity, sensationalism and conventionalityor thus, the typical portrayal of an abused woman who kills will likely remain not one of reasonable self-defense, but rather the story of a woman who is either mad or bad.

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Author Biographies
Marianne S. Noh received her doctorate in Sociology from the University of Akron in 2008. Since then, she has conducted research in HIV/AIDS and immigrant health at the Ontario HIV Treatment Network and has taught as a Senior Lecturer in the department of sociology at the University of Victoria. She is co-editor of Korean Immigrants in Canada, expected to be released in October 2011. Currently, she is researching the intersection of race and gender in the social construction of domestic violence.

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Matthew T. Lee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and a Conict Management Fellow at the University of Akron. He is the co-author of A Sociological Study of the Great Commandment in Pentecostalism: The Practice of Godly Love as Benevolent Service (2009, Edwin Mellen Press) and the author of Crime on the Border: Immigration and Homicide in Urban Communities (2003, LFB Scholarly). His work has appeared in journals such as Criminology, Social Problems, Social Psychology Quarterly, and Sociological Quarterly. He is Vice-President of the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love and his current research interests include altruism/love, immigration and crime, and organizational deviance. Kathryn M. Feltey is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and a Conict Management Fellow at the University of Akron. She is the gender section editor of the journal, Sociology Compass and co-editor of a special issue of NWSA Journal, New Orleans: A Special Issue on Gender, the Meaning of Place, and the Politics of Displacement (Fall 2008). Her current research interests include family poverty, community responses to food insecurity, and 19th century pioneer families.

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