[News] Battered Women's Law signed!!

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September 18, 2004
Battered Women's Law OKd
By Jordan Rau, Times Staff Writer
The LA Times

Schwarzenegger signs bill giving more inmates the
ability to challenge their sentences using proof that
they were coerced by their abusers.

SACRAMENTO — Battered women who can prove their
abusers coerced them into committing violent crimes
will have a chance to win release under legislation
signed Friday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The law, which advocates said is unique in the
country, is the latest expansion of California's 1992
law allowing battered women's syndrome to be
introduced as a defense in trials. That law did not
apply retroactively, and activists for domestic
violence victims spent the next decade fighting for
the option of new trials for women incarcerated before
battered women's syndrome was a legal defense.

In 2002, the Legislature gave that opportunity to
women convicted of killing their abusers. But it did
not apply to women who tried to kill their abusers but
failed. The new law, which takes effect Jan. 1, will
allow similar opportunities to women convicted before
Aug. 29, 1996, for attempted murder or for engaging in
a felony crime as a partner of their abuser — so long
as they can show the domestic violence victim was
coerced into committing a crime.

"This issue of battered women serving time is a
nationwide phenomenon, but each state has different
ways of dealing" with it, said Olivia Wang, an
attorney with Legal Services for Prisoners With
Children, a nonprofit group based in San Francisco.
"In some states you have a chance theoretically of
getting clemency from the governor, but nothing as
wide in scope as SB 1385, because the issue elsewhere
is defined narrowly as just women who killed their
abusive husbands."

It is not known how many prisoners the law will
affect. Kimberly Wong, the legislative and criminal
justice policy advisor for the Los Angeles County
public defender's office, said advocates planned to
canvass the prisons to determine which inmates might
merit having their cases reviewed. At a minimum, those
affected by the law have already served eight years in
prison.

Cheryl Sellers of Pasadena, who killed her abusive
husband in 1983 and was released from prison last
year, said she met dozens of women during her time
behind bars who might be able to seek release through
SB 1385, which was sponsored by Senate President Pro
Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco).

"This opens the door wider," Sellers said. "It's not
just for women who killed their husband. It's for 'you
shot your boyfriend' or you were involved in a crime
because of the abuse. Some were just there when their
significant other committed a crime. This helps them."

Under the new law, the inmates still must show with
"reasonable probability" how their legal defense would
have been bolstered by evidence of battering. That
will allow them to get a new trial where an expert on
domestic violence could testify, although defense
lawyers said it would be likely that prosecutors would
cut a deal to lower the sentence to time served. In
addition, the judge would have wide discretion and
could simply dismiss the new charges.

The law also applies to men, although experts believe
that most prisoners affected are women. It also allows
those who killed their spouses between 1992, when
California passed its battered defense law, and Aug.
29, 1996, when the state Supreme Court ratified it, to
seek new trials.

And the bill replaces language in the state's penal
code about "battered women's syndrome" with "intimate
partner battering and its effects." The notion of a
syndrome has fallen into disfavor among abuse victims
activists, who say it wrongly suggests a common set of
responses that all women develop when they are
battered.

During the legislative session, the idea of expanding
those who could seek new trials initially had been
opposed by the state's district attorneys association,
but sponsors of the measure say they worked together
to fashion an acceptable compromise.

Releases are unlikely to occur immediately. As of last
month, only seven people have been let out of jail as
a result of the 2002 law change, according to the
California Habeas Project, a coalition of pro bono
attorneys, domestic violence experts and other
advocates created that year to try to free battered
women. The group has represented 40 inmates so far.





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