Nancy Seaman Case Study

On November 29, 2004 Nancy Seaman, an award winning elementary school teacher, was put on trial for the murder of her husband Robert “Bob” Seaman. On May 10th of that year, Nancy hit her husband sixteen times with a hatchet and then preceded to stab him twenty-one times with a kitchen knife. She then cleaned herself up and then went to work as usual. After she returned from her job, Nancy bleached, painted, and scrubbed to clean the garage where she had killed her husband. Then, she wrapped up Bob’s body in a tarp and put it in the trunk of her car. The interesting point of the case is not finding out who killed Robert Seaman, but what the circumstances were for committing the crime.

Nancy claimed that her husband was abusive from the beginning

of their relationship but that his abuse had escalated when Bob lost his job while Nancy became an outstanding teacher. Mrs. Seaman never called the police to report the abuse, but when she was arrested she allowed police to take photographs of her body which had bruises on her arms and legs. On the day of the crime, Nancy Seaman stated that she and her husband had gotten into a heated argument and Robert had grabbed a kitchen knife and chased her into the garage. She said while she was on the ground cowering she reached for the hatchet and swung it at him. She maintained that she was afraid, not enraged when she killed her husband.

Claiming that Nancy Seaman suffered “battered woman’s syndrome,” the defense brought in key witnesses, Nancy’s colleagues from the school, her son Greg, and Dr. Lenore Walker, the foremost expert on abused women in the United States (Dr. Lenore was only permitted to speak about abused women in general, not about Mrs. Seaman’s case specifically). The colleagues and Greg Seaman all indicated that Nancy had displayed signs of abuse: black eyes and injuries to her arms and legs. The prosecution fired back that Mrs. Seaman had bought the hatchet used to kill Robert only days before his murder and that she concealed the crime from police. Nancy’s oldest son, Jeff, claimed his mother was never abused by his father and that she was ling to save herself. In the end, the jury did not believe Nancy Seaman’s self-defense claim, took only five hours for the jury to find her guilty of murder in the first degree. She was sentenced to life in prison.