The impact of battered woman syndrome evidence on jury decision processes

The impact of battered woman syndrome testimony on jury decision processes in trials of battered women who kill their abusers was investigated in two separate studies. It was hypothesized that the presence of the testimony would influence jurors' verdicts via its mediating effect on the jurors' interpretations of the battered woman's beliefs and actions and that its impact would vary as a function of the degree to which it was linked to the woman on trial. In Experiment I, subjects read a homicide trial involving a battered woman who had killed her husband. They received either no expert testimony (control), expert testimony presenting general research findings on the battered woman syndrome (general expert), or expert testimony in which the expert supplemented the general information with an opinion that the defendant fit the syndrome (specific expert). The presence of the specific expert, compared to the control, led to interpretations that were more consistent with the woman's account of what occurred; these interpretations, in turn, were related to more lenient verdicts. Experiment 2 investigated the effects of the testimony on small groups of deliberating jurors. Compared to the control condition, a moderate shift in verdicts from murder to manslaughter was found in both expert conditions. Content analyses of the deliberations, as well as postdeliberation judgments, indicated that the presence of the testimony led to interpretations that were more favorable to the battered woman's claim of self-defense.Preparation of this research, was supported in part by Fellowships from the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Law and Social Science Program of Northwestern University. I. wish to thank Neil Vidmar and James Olson for their invaluable advice throughout all stages of the research, as well as Shari Diamond, Tom Tyler, Richard Lalonde, and Doug McCann for their helpful comments, on earlier drafts of the article. For their diligence and patience in coding the data, I would like to thank Cindi Chandler and Audi Grant.