Responses
Legal scholar Alan Dershowitz has argued that, while a prior history of victimization may be a contributing factor to a violent crime, victimization alone cannot fully explain an act of violence. The vast majority of those who have suffered abuse do not go on to kill their abuser, and there is no known correlation between severity of abuse and the "deadliness of the response". Dershowitz views the effectiveness of the abuse defense as a "lawless invitation to vigilantism" which will serve only to extend the cycle of violence.
Although political scientist James Q. Wilson has also denounced the abuse excuse, he points out that it is only effective if a jury finds it to be compelling evidence of innocence or a substantial mitigating factor. When this occurs, there is no reason to exclude claims of abuse from the trial proceedings. Wilson has argued that the problem lies not in the employment of excuses as legal defenses, but in the intermingling of social science, which seeks to explain human behavior, with criminal law, which seeks to judge behavior. Although many citizens advocate severe penalties as a means of reducing crime, a number of studies have shown that the juror's desire to realize that goal is often overridden by the inherent desire to understand the behavior that leads to crime.
Read more about this topic: Abuse Defense
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