Francine Hughes: Abused Women

Francine Hughes was one of these abused women, but she chose to fight back resulting in a landmark case within our legal arena. Ironically, Hughes based her defense on temporary insanity, although she was not insane, but rather an abused woman who suffered heinous acts of violence during the fourteen years of her marriage. Hughes admitted that she watched her husband sleeping on that fateful day reflecting on all the times he had hurt her and her children. She had tried to escape the trauma so many times before. She stood there filled with anxiety and confusion when the idea came to her. Hughes then poured gasoline on the bed and set it on fire, burning the house down with it. She then raced to the county jail and announced what she had done.

Many have said that these are the acts of a deranged lunatic.

However, aggressive, violent, and insane behavior acted out against women and children leave its mark, but does not depict anything, but a victim. The very fact that this point has to be made leaves a rational person reeling for it is as if these battered women terrorized and abused themselves. Therefore, it is bizarre that a battered woman defending her life has to develop an insanity plea? Sociological theories explain long held perspectives. It can be said that the abuser is swept up in the patriarchal makeup of society and the man is only exerting his manly rights. In other words, it is assumed that it is a ‘natural state for men to hold a superior position over women’ (Helgeson, 2012, p. 21). The view that women are inferior to men cannot be left out of any research study into domestic violence. This attitude permeates throughout civilization and the effects are harmful. Conclusively it is the patriarchal conceptualized superiority complex that erroneously applies the insanity defense to the victim instead of the

batterer.
Hughes 1977 landmark case also brought the battered woman’s plight to the public’s attention. Hughes case was also sensationalized by the media and became a televised movie called The Burning Bed. Hughes legacy also made it possible for other battered women’s efforts to fight back against their abusers as reasonable in their attempts to survive. Instead, thanks to Hughes, her attorney, and the feminist movement women were now allowed to apply self-defense when fighting to survive. Dowd reflects, “Although Ms. Hughes premised her defense on temporary insanity and was exonerated on these grounds; based on previous cases where women killed in self-defense, it is erroneously assumed that battered woman's defense is a type of self-defense which include psychiatric dimensions, placing it somewhere between insanity and the heat of passion” (Dowd, 1991, p. 576).
Historically our courts have traditionally treated domestic violence attacks far more leniently than assaults that are non-domestic. However there are numerous non-domestic assault cases where women killed in self-defense and still suffered this disparity from the legal system. One such case was Inez Garcia who killed a man who raped her. She was convicted in 1997 of murder and spent two years of her life in prison before her appeal in a higher court overturned the original sentence.
The Supreme Court of the State of New York upheld the view of reasonable self-defense by a battered woman within yet another case involving the death of an abusive husband. Barbara Sheehan shot her husband with his service revolver five (5) times and his Glock six (6) times due to years of being a battered woman living in fear for her life. The ‘not guilty’ verdict on the murder charge was a victory for battered women everywhere. Sheehan’s husband was a law enforcement officer who had abused his wife for decades causing not only psychological trauma for his wife, but two children as well. The children suffered from eating disorders, severe depression, and numerous other psychological issues. The son even attempted suicide at one point directly blaming his abusive father and his abusiveness.
The trial was very controversial and while the jury acquitted the murder charge finding evidence to support her defense of reasonable self-defense, they were disturbed with the seemingly ‘overkill’ of the murder. The jury could not understand why Sheehan shot her abusive husband eleven (11) times with two separate firearms. Sheehan's lawyer, Michael Dowd, a New York lawyer known for his defense of women who kill their spouses had won another victory, but plans to appeal the court decision and hopefully overturn the weapons possession conviction. Dowd said, “We are disappointed with the decision and think it is a real throwback to the days when domestic violence did not matter” (DNA Info, 2013).
The Justices upheld the earlier ruling regarding the (5) five- year sentence on a felony gun charge noting:
The defendant's contention that the Supreme Court erred by precluding her from presenting expert psychiatric testimony with respect to her mental condition is academic in light of her acquittal of the count of murder in the second degree (see People v. Pons, 68 N.Y.2d 264, 265, 508 N.Y.S.2d 403, 501 N.E.2d 11; People v. Almodovar, 62 N.Y.2d 126, 130, 476 N.Y.S.2d 95, 464 N.E.2d 463; People v. Marquez, 82 A.D.3d 1123, 1124, 919 N.Y.S.2d 355; People v. Thomas, 232 A.D.2d 667)…..The sentence imposed was not excessive (see People v. Suitte, 90 A.D.2d 80, 455 N.Y.S.2d 675). We acknowledge that the record demonstrates that the defendant, a first-time felony offender, had been the victim of domestic violence, and that such domestic violence was a factor in the defendant's commission of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, the crime for which she was convicted (People, 2013).
The jury’s confusion is a stereotypical response that defense attorneys face during the court trials involving battered women who have killed to obtain their freedom.

Why would someone abused need to use such excessive force? The answer is classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is a form of social learning and conditioning where stimulus responses are essential. Classical conditioning assumes an uncontrolled reaction to an appointed stimulus. In other words, this behavior is conditioned and previously irrelevant acts become connected with a learned response. Ivan Pavlov, a scientist introduced classical conditioning to explain behaviorism and involuntary reactions mediated by the autonomic nervous system. As a result, classical conditioning seems easiest to establish for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is an involuntary reaction mediated by the autonomic nervous system (McLeod,

2007).
DSM V defines PTSD as a disturbance, regardless of its trigger, causes clinically significant distress or impairment in the indi¬vidual’s social interactions, capacity to work or other important areas of functioning. It is not the physi¬ological result of another medical condition, medication, drugs or alcohol (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).
Hence the victim has been conditioned by the abuser. Conclusively it is also true that Domestic Abuse victims suffer PTSD. For this reason the reactions of a battered woman may be due to flashbacks or other intrusive experiences from previous traumatic events so that the woman believes that she is in danger, even if she is not (Walker, 2009, 43-45).
So when a woman stabs or shoots a sleeping man in his bed, it is not revenge or any mental defect, but rather the woman is escaping her violent abuser and choosing life and freedom. Repeated beatings, like electric shocks, seem inescapable to women in abusive relationships (Dowd, 1991, p. 573). She has learned helplessness, learned not to fight back, and this behavior is reinforced by the legal system when there is failure to treat the abuse seriously. These women suffer a “pervasive denial of human rights” by an individual man (Dowd, 1991, p. 567).
Indeed, many women live in homes with abusive men, and their situation is as dangerous and hopeless as any hostage. These women’s knowledge of their ‘captors’ makes them best able to assess the severity of the threat” And while they may learn to be helpless, their helplessness is produced by the realities of their daily existence and not some distorted by-product of violence (Dowd, 1991, p. 580).