Wife Killers Getting Off Easy

Turning attention back to the United States, an article in the January 2006 Glamour (yes, a women's magazine that actually publishes something other than sex and makeup tips! For this I love Glamour), highlighted cases in which husbands kill their wives, claim "passion/provocation" and have their crimes reduced to manslaughter, which carries a lesser penalty than murder. An example of an actual case in 2005 demonstrates the consequences of such a plea:

Last January, a Texas man got 15 years for shooting and wounding his wife's lover--but received just four months for killing his wife. How is this possible? The crime-of-passion pleas stems from nineteenth-century laws that justified murder if a man found his wife in bed with another man. Today "judges and juries still accept the excuse that women provoke violent behavior in men," says Michael Brigner, a former family court judge in Dayton, Ohio.

While I have a great deal of respect for the U.S. legal system, it's clear that legal vestiges from a time when women were not even considered competent to serve on juries, let alone vote, have no place in our legal system today. Nancy Grace, quoted in the article, reminds us that "Women in other countries may be stoned to death for adultery, but women are being punished here, too. We need to stand up for them."

Source:
"When Wife Killers Get Off Easy." Glamour, January 2006, 80.