The Role of Defendant Gender and PTSD Diagnosis in a Battered Spouse Case

A quarter of women and 11% of men report being survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) during their lifetimes in the United States. Despite being victims themselves, people who kill their IPV abuser can still be subject to criminal proceedings. Given this complexity, the law has employed battered spouse syndrome (BSS) as a tool used in some jurisdictions to support a claim that an IPV survivor killed in self-defense. A defendant who is attempting to claim self-defense using BSS may introduce testimony of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, a diagnosis of PTSD can pose problems in admission during litigation as the occurrence of a traumatic event is often what is being decided. The present study examined how college students, living on the U.S.-México border, perceive survivors-turned-defendants in a BSS mock trial. Specifically, we had each participant read a written trial transcript of a mock trial where gender of the defendant and clinical diagnosis of PTSD were manipulated. The current study hypothesized that jurors would be more lenient toward female defendants than male defendants (Hypothesis 1), jurors would be influenced by a PTSD diagnosis of the defendant (Hypothesis 2a-b), and female jurors would be more lenient than male jurors (Hypothesis 3). We also wanted to examine the impact of victim blaming, sexism, stigma of PTSD, and prior exposure to IPV on decision-making (Hypothesis 4a-d). Findings showed jurors were more lenient with female defendants than male defendants, however there was no effect of clinical diagnosis except on difficulty of decision. Implications of the role defendant gender has in decision-making is discussed.