Marcia Norman Is Not Guilty Of The Murder Of Her Husband (Essay Sample)

Family Violence and Abuse
Name
Institution
Family Violence and Abuse
Introduction
Family violence and abuse can be defined as the abusive behavior of controlling an individual or causing harm to someone with whom they are closely related. Forms of family violence and abuse vary from bodily harm and emotional abuse to neglect carried out by an intimate partner or close relatives. This can have grave consequences for victims of family violence and abuse and those who experience it like children. Physical abuse entails intentionally using force against a person without their consent. It results in physical pain that lasts long (Wallace, & Roberson, 2016). Emotional abuse, on the other hand, occurs when an individual makes use of confrontations or activities to terrify or segregate an individual or take away their dignity. It includes threats, abuses, making fun of their partners before friends and relatives and criticism. Even though various types of emotional mistreatment are not crimes, they can be indicators that the violence might become worse. It is clear that Marcia experienced both physical and emotional violence. Emotional abuse can be seen where Mitchell forces Marcia to make money by prostitution and then making fun of that before family and friends. Besides, making her eat out of pets bowls and insisting her to bark like a dog adds to neglect because Mitchelle did not provide her proper food. The continuous beatings that Marcia received is a clear indicator of physical abuse.
Marcia Norman is not guilty of the murder of her husband
It is evident that Marcia was forced to murder her husband while defending herself. This is a clear indication that she had no intentions of killing her husband proving her innocence. Using force to stop grave bodily harm or death largely explains the concept of self-defense. No one wants to be hurt, beaten or looked down upon. It may be that Marcia decided to stay in that abusive relationship because she wanted to create a stable home for her children. She was afraid of the consequences after leaving the relationship (Tyson, Kirkwood, & McKenzie, 2017). To justify self-defense, the jury must be convinced that the culprit actually believed that she was in a life-threatening situation.
The first few unpromising lines to a song “Happy accident by Punk rock legend in Los Angeles Alice Bag tumble out harmoniously. This song is about a woman who associates with an offensive partner. Bag had some knowledge and experience about family violence and abuse. She had experienced her own mother being assaulted by her father. She imagined what it would have been like if she decided to hit back. The closing line of the song concludes with the death of a man who had hurt her so much. The singer uses the word accident because the incident of an assaulted woman killing her abusive husband is always unintended. This is the last option by the woman to protect herself according to experts. However, a lot of assaulted women who kill are attributed with homicide or if they are fortunate, manslaughter. Retrieved from http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=08H4x_Yj004
From Caroline Scott’s case, it is clear that assaulted women fight back for self-defense. Her drunk husband Arthur Lee, came home angry and wanted to handcuff and beat her severely which was a routine. Because she did not want to leave her children behind, she did not figure out how to escape with her children. She heard her husband telling his friend that she would be dead in forty-five minutes. Since She was terrified of the outcomes, she grabbed her husband’s gun and shot him to death. Gillespie clearly outlines in admissible murder (Follingstad, Rodgers, Welling, &Pries Meyer, 2015). She pulled a trigger because her husband was not beating her at the moment.
Bag’s song was written in the eighteenth century but when it comes to women who kill their husbands for self-defense, not much has transformed since then. It’s like a horrifying bloody diorama. The entire sphere moves forward but the underlying forces of this set of criminal conditions do not transform. According to the director of Psychological Services at the University of Johannesburg, this occurrence never changes as time goes by (Follingstad et al.,2015).
The Journal of Social History analysis also gives a story of Jane Churn who was hit severally by her husband James Scofield after ignoring his question. Churn having no choice grabbed a knife and stabbed his husband. Due to the overwhelming anger, she went after him and hit him with a poker. When in the hands of their abusers, Women try fighting back using any defense mechanism available. Because gun ownership in the UK is illegal, women use other armaments. All the above-mentioned stories have one thing in common. It is evident that assaulted females kill their partner in response to dangerous conditions. Domestic violence and protection of children against abuses are the most common issues that people in families’ experience. According to Walker, the assaulted women kill their spouses who harm them physically and emotionally (Sheehy, 2016). One cannot be surprised that abused women are most likely to seriously hurt their abusers. Those who are financially unstable, the hopeless, those protecting children and those who are vulnerable to family violence and abuse are at highest risk. Since the law does not take issues affecting women including assaults, these women are likely to kill their spouse.
The law does not provide protection for assaulted women who try to leave their partners. The courts take legal action to those who kill while defending themselves. Women decide to stay in their relationship due to lack of finances, their kids and threats by their assaults when they leave. Because women do not have any option, some of them end up committing suicide. In some situations, women have been found guilty of neglecting their duty to defend their children from family violence. Assaulted women see an incredible emotional toll (Tyson et al., 2017) Even though women kill their abusive partners, men often murder the women they have been assaulting. Apart from lost lives, family violence, and abuse also leads to a huge fiscal cost. According to studies by James Fear on of Stanford university Ananke Hoeffel of Oxford University, abuse of women and children is high. This affects approximately nine percent of Gross Domestic Product.
The requirement of assaulted woman’s actions triggered by the public and professionals should point to the disappointments of the government and society in offering rational choices assaulted women. This goes to the core of the concept of self-defense as one of the requirement. It illustrates that the assaulted woman’s action should not be exempted because of any illness or weakness. It should be recognized as acceptable because of the situation in which she was placed. Up until then the last lines of Alice Bag’s song proposes that more women will continue seeing the true worth of defending themselves. In her song, she does not regret killing. She explains that given a chance to do it again, it would not have been any different (Sheehy, 2016). She is rather pleased with the accident. From the above arguments, explanations and analysis, it is clear that Marcia was innocent. She had no choice but to kill. This was for her own good because her husband would have physically harmed her.
Marcia Norman is not guilty of the murder of her husband
Self-defense is essential in justifying murder that may be as a result of domestic violence. However, for this to happen, the suspect must have honestly and rationally assumed the use of lethal force as being necessary to defend herself from an inevitable looming danger of demise or grave injuries. Battered women syndrome describes the impacts of continuous violence in relationships. It clarifies why predictable conventions about rationality and proximity do not give explanations for the real-life issues experienced by the assaulted females (Sheehy, Stubbs, &Tolmie, 2014).
There are various problems that assaulted females face when issues of traditional self-protection come up. The most challenging element of self-protection is the impartial rational element. Initially, the idea of self-protection was established to address a situation where a man tries to defend himself from harm that might be caused by another man in a one-time fight. Of course, these conventional situation does not perfectly reflect authenticities of a battered woman’s situation. The current law of self-protection indicates that a female should protect herself against a male who assaults her and who can possibly cause her bodily injuries. This only happens when the two have been in an intimate relationship. Nevertheless, under traditional law of self-protection, a female who has been assaulted should not attack her sleeping partner because there is no noticeable instantaneous danger. (Sheehy, et al 2017) Consequently, various judges in courts have discovered as a matter of law, that an assaulted female should not make use of lethal force against her sleeping partner unless they are mentally unstable.
Besides, the law of self-protection states that unless there is a susceptible detriment that is instantly going to happen, the respondent should not attempt to attack the abuser. This can lead to the cancellation of the self-protection privilege. In the end, judges are not given self-defense orders. Those assaulted women who kill their spouses when there are no corporal attacks do not meet the prerequisite of self-protection. This is because the sleeping spouse does not pose any danger to the woman at that particular moment. (Fitz-Gibbon, 2014). It is clear that during the application of self-protection acts, in the event of non-confrontational circumstances, a panel...