Self-Defense, Responsibility, and Punishment: Rethinking the Criminalization of Women Who Kill Their Abusive Intimate Partners

This Article’s argument proceeds as follows. Part I examines the capacity of existing criminal law landscape to accommodate survivor-defendants by applying available defenses and mechanisms these cases. concludes that none current legal doctrines adequately respond unique pressures circumstances victims/survivors experience. In II, Article questions moral legitimacy state criminalize punish survivors for killing their abusive partners. After exploring numerous ways in which they are entrapped relationships concurrently partners state, II suggests battered women cannot be held responsible entrapping resulting actions. then further justifies decriminalization invoking prevailing theories punishment establishing do not provide a reasonable rationale incarcerating survivors. III, considers weighs effectiveness several possible alternatives framework, search model would recognize systemic conditions lead commit such crimes.