Making Excuses

WHAT do you call it when a woman kills her spouse? If the husband had a history of abusing and intimidating her, the homicide may be considered an expression of “battered-woman syndrome.” Because of repeated abuse, the theory goes, the battered woman has low self-esteem. Depressed and unmotivated, she is unable to leave her husband. She comes to believe that the only way of extricating herself is to maim or kill him. Even though she is not in immediate danger at the time she strikes back (if she were, she could plead selfdefense), promoters of battered-woman syndrome argue that she should be treated leniently.

Now what do you call it when a man kills his spouse? For Kenneth Peacock, a trucker in Towson, Maryland, the answer was “manslaughter.” Mr. Peacock, who shot his wife in the head after he came home at night to find her in bed with another man, received an 18-month sentence on October 17. Judge Robert E. Cahill sympathized with the perpetrator. “I seriously wonder how many men married five, four years would have the strength to walk away without inflicting some corporal punishment,” he remarked. Judge Cahill couldn’t think of a situation that would provoke “an uncontrollable rage greater than this: for someone who is happily married to be betrayed in your personal life, when you’re out working to support the spouse.” The judge almost apologized for sentencing Mr. Peacock: “I am forced to impose a sentence . . . only because I think I must do it to make the system honest.”

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Stanton Peele

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WHAT do you call it when a woman kills her spouse? If the husband had a history of abusing and intimidating her, the homicide may be considered an expression of “battered-woman syndrome.” Because of repeated abuse, the theory goes, the battered woman has low self-esteem. Depressed and unmotivated, she is unable to leave her husband. She comes to believe that the only way of extricating herself is to maim or kill him. Even though she is not in immediate danger at the time she strikes back (if she were, she could plead selfdefense), promoters of battered-woman syndrome argue that she should be treated leniently.

Now what do you call it when a man kills his spouse? For Kenneth Peacock, a trucker in Towson, Maryland, the answer was “manslaughter.” Mr. Peacock, who shot his wife in the head after he came home at night to find her in bed with another man, received an 18-month sentence on October 17. Judge Robert E. Cahill sympathized with the perpetrator. “I seriously wonder how many men married five, four years would have the strength to walk away without inflicting some corporal punishment,” he remarked. Judge Cahill couldn’t think of a situation that would provoke “an uncontrollable rage greater than this: for someone who is happily married to be betrayed in your personal life, when you’re out working to support the spouse.” The judge almost apologized for sentencing Mr. Peacock: “I am forced to impose a sentence . . . only because I think I must do it to make the system honest.”