O R I G I N A L A R T I C L EMad, Bad, or Reasonable News.docx

O R I G I N A L A R T I C L E
Mad, Bad, or Reasonable? Newspaper Portrayals
of the Battered Woman Who Kills
Marianne S. Noh • Matthew T. Lee •
Kathryn M. Feltey
Published online: 1 December 2010
� Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
Abstract A heated debate about battered women who kill
abusive male partners
started in the 1970s. In this study, we tracked the public
discourse on battered
women who kill by coding 250 newspaper articles published
between 1978 and
2002. Using four typifying models, we found that leading
explanations for why
battered women kill medicalized then criminalized their actions;
they were mad
then bad. We also found that reporters used quotes from claims
makers supporting
conventional or medical typifications of battered women to a
much greater degree

than statements from alternative, feminist sources. In
conclusion, simplified, sen-
sational and conventional understandings of crime causation
drove the social con-
struction of ‘‘the battered woman who kills’’. She may be mad
or bad, but rarely has
she been portrayed as reasonable. Suggestions for promoting
feminist narrative in
the media are also provided.
Keywords Battered woman syndrome � Battered woman �
Domestic violence �
Media analysis � Gender and crime
M. S. Noh (&)
Department of Sociology, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC,
Canada
e-mail: [email protected]
M. T. Lee � K. M. Feltey
Department of Sociology, University of Akron, Akron, OH,
USA
K. M. Feltey
123
Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110–130

DOI 10.1007/s12147-010-9093-9
A woman killing her husband is like killing the king, but a man
killing his wife
is like killing any other person. (Sir William Blackstone 1786,
as cited in [12])
Introduction
When extenuating factors are diffuse or difficult to understand,
courts routinely hold
defendants legally responsible for acts of violence against
another person.
Conversely, when such factors are straightforward and
understandable, they are
more likely to absolve individuals of personal responsibility
[19]. In cases involving
the battered woman who kills her abusive husband or boyfriend,
defense attorneys
have presented the Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS) clearly
and convincingly
enough in some criminal trials that jurors have accepted BWS as
supporting
evidence in the defense of temporary insanity and in some cases
lawful self-defense

[17]. However, BWS as part of a legal defense strategy has been
said to ultimately
excuse, rather than justify the offense [17, 19, 27, 56]. This is
problematic for two
reasons. First, excusing the offense stigmatizes women who use
the temporary
insanity defense. Second, it excludes women who are
determined to have been
rational at the time of the act from using the BWS as a suitable
part of their legal
defense. A recent variant of feminist discourse addresses this
limitation, arguing that
the actions of women who kill their abuser are normative and
even altruistic at times
[27, 64].
To date, public debates, including those within the legal system,
deem the
feminist discourse of justification less convincing than the BWS
discourse of
excuse. Feminist discourse frames women in ways that are
inconsistent with
traditional female gender roles portraying women as passive,
nonviolent, and
irrational [23, 35, 37, 55, 64]. In cases where the battered

woman kills, traditional
feminine explanations include the woman being temporarily
insane, such as having
hysteria or dementia, or being materialistic [3]. Moreover, the
kinds of narrative
frameworks promoted by the mass media shape many of our
beliefs and
assumptions. For example, the media arguably reproduces
‘‘toxic romance
narratives’’ [66, p. 259], which may convince women that
victimization at the
hands of their intimate partners is a personal problem that they
are responsible for
solving on their own [7]. Bakken and Farrington’s analysis of
the battered woman
who kills in California, 1800–2000s, found that news media
played a key role in the
constructed notions of the battered woman who kills; that is,
why she kills and who
she is. They also found that the media’s role was significant in
constructing
dominant notions due to its model of ‘‘commercial and
sensational’’ news. A woman
who kills provides extant sensationalism. Such that although the

rates of intimate
partner homicide by males have remained much higher than
violent acts committed
by female partners [17], news media appears to paint a
contradicting picture.
In this study, we examined U.S. and Canadian newspaper
portrayals of the
battered woman who kills to explore how these news sources
presented their stories,
and whether they made use of excuse, justification or
alternative explanations.
Covering a 24-year period (1978–2002), we analyzed the
explanations and
interpretations provided in newspaper stories about battered
women who kill. We
Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110–130 111
123
entered this investigation with one broad research question:
How do the media
represent women who kill abusive husbands or boyfriends?
More specifically, we
wanted to know whether news media promote or restrict

particular discourses, such
as medicalized or feminist accounts.
Literature Review
The Social Construction of Media Typifications
According to the social constructionist perspective, the central
issue in understanding
deviance is the process of how those in power create and define
‘‘deviants’’ and
‘‘deviant behavior’’, and how such definitions change (or
remain the same) over time
[3, 16, 43, 59, 63]. According to this view, deviance is not a
quality inherent in certain
individuals or acts, but rather a label applied by those who take
ownership of the
definitional process [5, 29]. For example, the medical
profession is a powerful group
that has promoted the perspective that deviant acts are rooted in
mental or
psychological illness [16]. For the battered woman who kills,
some members of the
medical profession have argued that Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder (PTSD) explains
her behavior as resulting from a sustained pattern of abuse that

impairs judgment.
It is important to note that offering explanatory narratives is
most commonly part
of a transforming process that simplifies individuals into a
‘‘type’’ of person and
creates homogeneity rather than heterogeneity [34, p. 5]. In this
case, an overriding
dominant narrative simplifies the diverse lived experiences of
abused women. A
‘‘processing stereotype’’ increasingly subjects women who fit
this image to a
specific kind of treatment by social service agencies and the
criminal justice system
[35, p. 307]. Administrative processing, tied to cultural beliefs
about the nature of
battered women, helps create expectations about battered
women’s behaviors [54].
The failure of battered women to meet these expectations has
led to the denial of
services at battered women’s shelters as well as the failure of
PTSD-based legal
defense strategies [19, 34].
Best [8] found that secondary claims makers (e.g., experts and
public officials)

are more likely to influence public understanding of social
problems than primary
sources such as, in this case, the battered woman herself.
Effective secondary
sources of claims making, which include newspaper reports,
play an important role
in the extent to which the public will accept the claims as truth
[9, 36]. News reports
commonly sensationalize stories and present the claims of
groups and individuals in
positions of power. Reporters rely on quotes from ‘‘experts’’ to
bolster the plotlines
of their stories: we found that battered women advocates,
psychologists, lawyers
and politicians were common key informants. Because those
with economic
resources, political power and the right timing are better able to
promote their
claims, it is important to pay special attention to the groups of
claims makers
newspaper reports most frequently cited, and the extent to
which these groups
represented the interests of battered women.

Media stories can emphasize individual responsibility and
motivation, focus on
systemic factors or offer a narrative based on some combination
of both [3, 7, 13].
112 Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110–130
123
For example, experts have portrayed the behavior of battered
women as either a
function of external constraints (patriarchy and gender
inequality) or of internal
constraints (PTSD and BWS), both of which can highlight
structural constraints on
the lives of women [35]. Alternatively, in cases of the battered
woman who kills,
media reports may have featured the claims of prosecutors,
which contest efforts to
mitigate personal responsibility. Media narratives of the 1990s
may ultimately have
formed collective representations of the battered woman that
label her either as a
victim in dire need of social assistance [34, p. 46] or as
personally responsible for

solving her private problem [7].
According to Loseke [34], the identity of the ‘‘battered
woman’’ is socially
constructed and relies on the presence of violent male offenders
and victimized
women ‘‘who do not create their own victimization’’ (p. 16).
Through images of
helplessness, claims makers in the media have promoted a
collective understanding
of the battered woman as a person whose identity is
predominantly that of a victim,
a process known as ‘‘victimism’’ [35, p. 304]. Accordingly, the
victim is non-
violent, but when violent such as when she has killed her
abusive partner, it is
irrational, therefore, excusing and not justifying her action [19].
However, media typifications are multiple. The image of
helplessness is not the
only typification present, despite its prevalence over the years.
Berns [7] found that
women’s magazines, such as Glamour and Good Housekeeping,
typically produce
stories that at first glance portray empowered women, but
actually define women as

responsible for their private troubles—and their successful
escape. These accounts
ignore the behavior of abusive men, while highlighting the
actions, mistakes and
decisions made by the women.
Given the multiple typifications of the battered woman, it is no
surprise that the
social, political and psychological implications of an excused
versus a justified
action also vary. In order to explain and capture various
accounts of the battered
woman who kills presented by the news media, we used four
primary typification
models. These models represent the dominant explanations of
the battered woman
who kills used by those in positions of power such as medical
professionals,
lawyers, judges and legal scholars [3, 7, 16, 22, 38]. These
claims utilized or
challenged pre-established common understandings of both
reasons for murder and
appropriate gendered behavior for women.
Four Typification Models of Abused Women Who Kill

Previous social science research indicates two general ‘‘lenses’’
through which to
view domestic violence: the violence against women perspective
and the family
violence perspective [38, p. 8]. These are ideal types in the
Weberian sense, and, in
practice, they may not be mutually exclusive for researchers
who work to ‘‘bridge
the divide’’ [38, p. 8]. However, different constituents use these
two lenses and
promote different core beliefs. On the one hand, feminists tend
to use the violence
against women lens. In this view, domestic violence springs
from fundamental
patriarchal relations between men and women, and nothing
‘‘short of a complete or
radical transformation of our entire social, moral and
institutional order’’ will be
able to stop the epidemic levels of violence perpetrated by men
against women (9).
Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110–130 113
123
On the other hand, Mann [38] frames the family violence
perspective as one

characterized by mutual dependency between men and women
who have learned to
use violence to solve problems and express frustration.
Therapists and some social
scientists are prominent supporters of this perspective, which
acknowledges that
women also use violence against men, even though women are
much more likely to
suffer the effects of serious violence. Therapy, rather than
social transformation, is
the preferred social policy for helping both men and women
break their cycle of
violence before passing it on to their children, or seriously
harming each other.
Typifications, according to McKinney [41], are necessarily used
to perceive the
world around us and are based on typologies and ideal types. In
turn, typifications
are used in structuring self-concept, institutions and social
structures. In this case,
typifications of the battered woman who kills are socially
constructed by owners of
the definitional process, or claims makers, such as medical and
legal experts, to

explicate social systems with a particular set of values, norms
and roles. Our review
of existing scholarship suggests that there are four dominant
typifications of the
battered woman who kills, some of which relate to either the
violence against
women perspective or the family violence perspective (see
Table 1). First, women
who kill suffer from a psychological illness and thus are
excused from legal
responsibility for their crime. Second, women who kill are
criminals engaged in
callous premeditated murder and are guilty for their crime.
Third, women who kill
engage in justifiable and reasonable self-defending behavior and
are acquitted of
criminal charges. Fourth, women who kill suffer from a
psychological illness and
are acquitted based on the reasonableness of their mental
instability.
Table 1 Typifications of the battered woman who kills and the
battered woman syndrome
Characteristics Typification model
Medical Conventional
rationality

Legal feminism
Feminist
jurisprudence
Early legal
feminism
Claims-makers/
proponents
Psychologists,
defense
attorneys
Prosecutors, victim’s
family, judges,
jurors
Politicians, women advocates, legal
scholars, defense attorneys
View of guilty
battered women
Not applicable Premeditated murder Not applicable

View of not-guilty
battered women
Suffering from
BWS
Not applicable No options to remove long-term threat—
acting in self-defense
BWS detrimental
to battered
women
BWS part of a
larger defense
strategy
Type of not-guilty
account
Excuse Not applicable Justification
Rationality Irrational Rational Rational
Level of
explanation

Individual Individual Structural
Rhetoric Mad Bad Reasonable
114 Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110–130
123
These models are larger social systems constructions, and not
strictly legal
theory models with certain courtroom strategies and outcomes.
However, their
typified defenses and outcomes are assumed to align with how
the battered woman
who kills is explained. For example, BWS defense strategies
may use expert
testimony to provide a justifiable legal defense, although
numerous feminist legal
theorists argue that BWS defense only provides an excuse for
killing in an
ideological sense. One may inquire why these are the dominant
typifications, and
why there are not more or fewer in numbers [27]. As it will be
discussed in the
conclusion section, news media typifications are formed with
three factors under

the theory of narrative or typification—simplicity,
sensationalism, and conven-
tionalism, in addition to ownership of definition construction.
To our knowledge,
there are four models typifying the battered woman who kills
determined by one
or a combination of the three factors. The following section
describes these four
typifications in more detail.
Medical Model
The medical model is associated with the family violence lens, a
highly
conventional and thus simple to grasp model, which proposes
that due to battered
women’s psychological instability at the time of murder their
actions are
unreasonable with mental incapability [16, 17, 19].
Psychologists originally
developed this model to support the battered woman who kills
as killing in a
mental state akin to that of PTSD, as described by Walker’s
[62] early definition of
BWS. In this view, BWS is a psychological condition where
events, which outsiders

would not perceive as life threatening, trigger one’s perceptions
of dangerous
situations [2, 62]. Long-term and continual psychological or
physical abuse can alter
the perceptions of triggers and may result in a ‘‘learned
helplessness’’ that prevents a
woman from leaving a dangerous situation.
We believe the medical model provides a legal excuse rather
than a
justification because although the syndrome typifies the act as
still being wrong,
the battered woman is blameless because of a mental illness
similar to that of
PTSD. This typification offers a not guilty account as a form of
the ‘‘abuse
excuse’’ and does not support a guilty verdict for the battered
woman defendant
[45]. Expert witnesses, usually psychologists testifying on
behalf of women who
kill, tend to promote this type of account. The medical model
fits best with the
family violence perspective because of its therapeutic focus on
the cause of the
abuse of women and its failure to address broad structural

conditions identified by
the violence against women model. Stemming from the family
violence
perspective, the medical model promotes the view that BWS
arises out of
ongoing violence in the family, maintaining an individualistic
explanation,
neglecting social structural and contextual factors in intimate
partner homicide
where the battered woman kills [17]. It is also worthy to note
that many U.S.
courtrooms no longer apply this model as BWS defense has
become part of a
legal defense strategy to successfully attain verdicts of
justifiable self-defense on
grounds of reasonable action [17].
Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110–130 115
123
Conventional Rationality Model
The conventional rationality model explicates the battered
woman who kills based
on the traditional legal claim of self-defense, from an imminent

mortal danger. The
model does not relate to either the violence against women or
the family violence
perspectives. In using this model, a claims maker either ignores
or discounts
arguments based on BWS. For example, BWS is discounted in
this view by
explaining the syndrome label as a tool for ‘getting away with
murder’. This model
typifies individuals who kill, and that were not in imminent
mortal danger (in the
traditional-conventional sense), as criminal and thus rational
[16]. For example,
under this model, battered women who kill are typified as cold-
blooded murderers,
and as ‘‘money hungry opportunists’’ [3] out for life insurance
money or just tired of
being married. The BWS defense is simply not relevant [17].
According to the
conventional rationality model for this particular study, women
who kill outside the
narrow parameters of traditional self-defense doctrine are bad,
responsible for and
guilty of, their crime.

Feminist Jurisprudence Model
The third model, the feminist jurisprudence model, focuses on
social structural
explanations for battered women who kill. Legal feminists, such
as Cynthia
Gillespie [26], Elizabeth Schneider et al. [54], Leigh Goodmark
[27], Cara
Cookson [17] and social scientists such as Donald A. Downs
and Evan Gertsmann
[20] have argued that BWS narrowly characterizes the battered
woman who kills.
This often results in medicalizing the woman such that she is
mentally incapable
of rational reasonableness. Given prevailing structural- and
individual-level
conditions, the feminist jurisprudence model uses the structural
factors that
prevent women from safely or successfully leaving a violent
relationship to
explain the battered woman who kills. With structural factors
present, such as the
loss of social networks, the lack of financial resources, and at
times the inability to
leave dependents, along with real agency-level concerns of

greater retribution
from abusive partners, the battered woman who kills is often
unable to ‘‘escape’’
domestic violence with reasonable safety. Articles that make
significant reference
to the structural factors that inhibit the termination of violent
relationships,
without making positive reference to the usefulness of BWS,
narrate a feminist
jurisprudence explanation.
The feminist jurisprudence model fits squarely within the
violence against
women perspective. Therefore, the model rejects the use of
BWS as a viable legal
defense due to the stigmatizing effect and the inapplicability of
BWS to women who
do not manifest symptoms of PTSD. Rather, the feminist
jurisprudence model
explains the battered woman who kills as legally justified
because she is a rational
individual who defended herself under reasonable life-
threatening circumstances. In
addition, the battered woman who kills is not a static singular
type person. Feminist

jurisprudent writers often emphasize simultaneously the
individualized, contextu-
alized and subjective aspects to killing in self-defense [27, 47].
116 Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110–130
123
Early Legal Feminism Model
The fourth typification model, we call early legal feminism,
articulated a complex
stance that draws on aspects of both the medical and the
feminist jurisprudence
models. This model (formally recognized as BWS defense) is
readily accepted
throughout U.S. courtrooms [17]. While the model supports the
use of BWS in
legally defending the battered woman who kills, it argues that
the act of killing an
abusive spouse is both rational and justified, and therefore, not
excusable on the
grounds of reasonable insanity [47]. Early legal feminists such
as Walker [17, 53]
and advocate defense attorneys argue that any rational person in
the same situation

as the battered woman who kills would reasonably experience
BWS and ultimately
find the seemingly irrational and unreasonable act of killing
necessary to defend
themselves and/or their children. Under this narrative, battered
women exhibiting
mental instability are, in fact, reasonable and therefore
justified. The battered
woman who kills is a reasonable abused woman, and should be
legally judged and
tried on abused woman standards, and more specifically, BWS
standards. Articles
utilizing an early legal feminist explanation will initiate
positive uses of BWS.
Claims makers of this model are aligned with the medical model
proponents in
that they explain BWS as viable partial supporting evidence of
self-defense [11, 18,
21, 30, 47–49]. However, we found early legal feminists to
disagree with the view
that the battered woman who kills is irrational or unreasonable,
which also aligns
these claims makers with the feminist jurisprudence model. This
model seems to be
a hybrid of the family violence and violence against women

perspectives. It explains
the battered woman who kills as reasonable and acting in
justifiable self-defense.
Each of these four typifications promote distinct ideological
positions on the
causes of domestic violence, the nature of women’s position in
society, and the role
of rational choice in battered women’s decisions. They also
offer different grounds
for the acquittal of female defendants in criminal trials. In order
to establish the
relative use of these four different media frames in constructing
the social problem
of the battered woman who kills, we employed a social
constructionist approach to
track media discourse over time [1, 8, 9, 36, 63].
Methods
In this study, we tracked the discourse on the battered women
who kill in major U.S.
and Canadian newspapers using a mixed methods approach. Our
qualitative analysis
of typifications presented in media narratives involved the
‘‘search for underlying

meanings, patterns, and processes’’ [1, p. 290], which requires
the researcher to
make evaluative judgments based on a holistic appraisal of an
entire newspaper
article. This precludes the full delegation of coding to
computerized content analysis
programs that only count words and phrases. The researcher
must make qualitative
judgments about the overall meaning of the article, rather than
simply counting the
number of times a particular word or phrase appears and using
that as a basis for
determining meaning. We relied on the four pre-identified
typifications discussed
above in our coding of media explanations for why the battered
woman kills. One
Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110–130 117
123
typification promotes excuse-based defenses (medical model),
two offer justifica-
tions (feminist jurisprudence and early legal feminism), and one
argues that battered

women are criminally responsible for their actions unless clear
evidence supporting
the traditional self-defense doctrine exists (conventional
rational). Our quantitative
analysis included univariate statistical analyses of study
variables. All qualitative
analysis was conducted using the computer software CI-SAID
and all quantitative
analysis was conducted with SPSS10.
Data on the typification of the battered woman who kills in
newspaper articles
were obtained through two sources: the ‘‘popular’’ internet-
based newspaper index
file of LexisNexis, as well as The New York Times and The
Washington Post paper
indexes. We used the LexisNexis Academic online database
(Nexis) allowing us to
gather articles from popular major newspapers in a single
search. Utilizing a single
search engine facilitated the tracking of discourse [1, 33]. We
decided to search
articles through Nexis as it contains most North American
popular newspapers. In
September 2002, we first conducted key word searches in Nexis
for articles that

included the terms ‘‘battered woman syndrome’’ and/or
‘‘battered woman’’
anywhere in the article (headlines, text, and photo captions).
The articles retrieved
were those covering trials and appellate court cases (including
clemency cases) on
murdered abusive husbands and spouses, and excluded fictional
stories and
coverage of political changes related to domestic violence. We
identified over 600
articles using these two search terms. After the exclusion of
articles written in
foreign (non-US and non-Canadian) newspapers, articles that
covered victims other
than the defendants’ abusive male spouse or boyfriend, and
duplicate stories (wire
services), our dataset consisted of 212 articles published
between 1981 and 2002.
In June 2004, we ran the same searches in Nexis for only The
New York Times
and The Washington Post, the two most popular major
newspapers that year. We ran
a second search in Nexis in an attempt to draw out more articles
that may have been
missed in the first phase of data collection, using the additional

subject words,
‘‘domestic violence,’’ ‘‘battered woman,’’ and ‘‘battered
spouse.’’ This did not
provide any new articles. We then collected 38 additional
articles (8 from The
Washington Post and 33 from The New York Times) through
paper index searches.
These additional articles bolstered our understanding of the
discourse around
women who killed their abusers by providing articles that do
not include the
keywords ‘‘battered woman’’ and ‘‘battered woman syndrome’’
in our sample. The
complete dataset consisted of 250 articles published from 1978
to 2002.
Newspaper articles provide an important insight into the
portrayal of groups of
people and into the public’s definitions and understandings of
acts of deviance that
are not necessarily reflective of the criminal justice system’s
theories of defendants
[8, 36, 52, 61]. Each article was analyzed and information on
discourse was
extracted by qualitatively coding supportive and unsupportive
statements within an

article for each typification (see Table 2). Used was an
assessment of supportive and
unsupportive statements to code the entire article as
representing one of the four
typifications based on the overall theme. The article frequently
closed with a
restatement of the dominant theme, but even without this
summary statement, the
emphasis of the article with respect to our four typifications
was clear. For this
study, there was a principle coder. The principle coder and
another researcher on the
118 Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110–130
123
project utilized the same coding scheme on the same randomly
selected articles and
coded independently. The two then compared and discussed
coding decisions to
revise and finalize the coding scheme, which was then used to
analyze the entire
sample by the principle coder.
Table 2 provides an illustration of how we coded each article

and presents the
coding necessary for an article to represent a typification.
1
In addition to typification
variables, we coded for quotes by, and references to, claims
makers. As Lowney and
Best [36] found, the most prevalent typifications depended on
the dominant claims
makers at a particular time. For example, if a reporter did not
interview feminist
legal scholars for a particular article because the reporter
deemed the views of such
scholars as unconventional at the time of trial, the likelihood of
a feminist
perspective being represented in the final article diminishes.
Therefore, we recorded
who was being quoted and to what extent.
In a small number of cases, it was not immediately apparent
how to code an
article. For example, we drew an inference about the
typification when an article
only reported the conviction of a woman for killing her batterer
and did not report

opinions, interviews or professional sources. We coded these
articles as taking a
conventional rationality view since the reports did not provide
statements of either
justification or excuse. More importantly, such articles gave the
impression that a
conviction was appropriate by omitting alternative views and by
not referring to any
claims makers. There were also articles that attempted to
achieve balance by
presenting more than one stance. We categorized these articles
as ‘‘uncodable’’,
which we operationalized as the achievement of objectivity, not
typifying women
who kill in any specific manner, not heavily quoting a particular
group of claims
makers, and not presenting a single view at greater length.
2
Table 2 Typification model coding scheme
Typification
model
Variable
Battered woman

medicalized
Battered woman
criminalized
Battered
woman
excused
Battered
woman
justified
BWS as legal
evidence
Medical Supportive Unsupportive Supportive Unsupportive
Supportive
Conventional
rationality
Unsupportive Supportive Unsupportive Unsupportive
Unsupportive
Feminist
jurisprudence

Unsupportive Unsupportive Unsupportive Supportive
Unsupportive
Early legal
feminism
Unsupportive Unsupportive Unsupportive Supportive
Supportive
1
Please contact the first author for statistical results on support
variables.
2
Un-coded articles account for about 10% of the relevant
articles. These 21 articles, while an interesting
counterpoint to the themed articles, were not included in the
results and reported here. They were deemed
irrelevant to the discussion of typified views.
Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110–130 119
123
Results
Media Patterns I: A Shift in Dominant Accounts
Figures 1 and 2 present one set of results of newspapers’ usage
of typifications to

frame the issue of the battered woman who kills. Figure 1
illustrates the publication
trend in articles covering women who kill their abuser. Due to
the low frequency,
thus lack of dominance, of both feminist jurisprudent and early
legal feminist
articles in our sample, we grouped their frequencies together in
Fig. 1. Most of the
articles (n = 86) were published between 1993 and 1997, and
then the popularity of
the story appears to drop into the 2000s. According to our
analysis, the dominance
of the medical model in major newspaper articles occurred
during the early half of
the 1990s. Figure 2 illustrates the shift from the medical model
to the conventional
rationality model after 1994.
3
Our analysis indicates that a medicalized understanding of
abused women who kill
was the most frequently used, with 98 articles coded as
portraying a medical model (see
also Table 3). In other words, 38.7% of all articles in our
sample portray the battered

woman who kills as irrational or insane and frame her behavior
as the product of BWS,
PTSD or a related psychological pathology. For example, Ohio
Governor Celeste was
quoted in a New York Times article as saying, ‘‘These women
were entrapped
emotionally and physically… they loved these men even though
they beat and feared
them. They were so emotionally entangled they were incapable
of walking away’’ [65].
The second most frequent typification is the conventional
rationality model, with
74 articles or 30.4% of our sample of articles. The model
supports the notion of
BWS as ‘‘a license for retribution’’ [10], allowing women to be
‘‘getting away with
murder’’ [44], and that the battered woman ‘‘kills for
vengeance’’ [15], not self-
defense. As mentioned, this typification portrays battered
women who kill as
rational manipulative cold-blooded killers. This account rejects
the medical model
and claims that such women are bad, not mad. Together, the
medical and
conventional rationality typifications account for almost 70% of
all articles in our

sample. Typifications based on the feminist jurisprudence (N =
55; 21.7%) and the
early legal feminism (N = 23; 9.1%) models appear less
frequently. Articles giving
weight to statements such as ‘‘… although she was sane at the
time of the killing and
knew exactly what she was doing, she is free of any
wrongdoing’’ [39] or ‘‘Many
women now in prison might not be there if they had been able to
claim battered
woman’s syndrome’’ [51] accounted for less than one-third of
the accounts.
Media Patterns II: Claims Makers Contribute to Article
Accounts
Importantly, quotes by psychologists represent 56% of the total
185 quotes in our
sample. This is not surprising, as psychologists were well
known claims makers of
3
We chose a 1990–1994 categorization based on some high
profile media stories that took place those
years, such as Ohio Governor Richard Celeste’s highly
publicized move to grant 25 battered women
clemency in 1990 and O. J. Simpson’s murder trial in 1994.
These stories represent focusing events,
which Kingdon [32] refers to as a crisis or disaster that calls
attention to a previously unperceived

problem.
120 Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110–130
123
the medical model. One psychologist was quoted describing a
defendant during
testimony as ‘‘[having] received a dreadful upbringing and had
not the opportunities
to develop a normal personality’’ [4]. Our findings also
demonstrate that quotes
from psychologists account for much less space in the non-
medical model articles.
For example, a psychologist was quoted only once among the 55
articles that
promoted the feminist jurisprudence model (see Table 3).
Table 3 also displays the frequency of claims maker quotes
within each
typification model. Based on the ‘‘balance norm’’ [25, p. 8], the
responsibility of
reporters to provide a balance in points of view when the topic
at hand is
controversial and complex [24], quotes from various claims

makers (e.g.,
prosecutors and defense attorneys) should appear at roughly the
same frequency.
Instead, as Table 3 illustrates, we found important imbalances
by typification
model. Of the 54 claims makers quoted in medicalized accounts,
most frequently
quoted are defense attorneys (N = 16), accounting for 30% of
the quotes. For
example, a lawyer was quoted as saying, ‘‘But the person doing
the perceiving in all
this [a reasonable belief that a danger was imminent] had long
been thought to be a
healthy adult man, like the gunfighter walking over to the O. K.
Corral’’ (emphasis
added) [58]. These were followed closely by psychologists (N =
14; 26%). Then
quoted to a lesser extent are defendants (N = 10; 19%) and
women’s advocates
0
10
20
30
40

50
60
1990-1994 1995-1999
Year
Medical Conventional Rational
Fig. 2 Shift in dominant article
frequencies by typification
model (1990–1999)
Fig. 1 Article frequencies by typification model (1978–2002)
Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110–130 121
123
T
a
b
le
3
F
re
q
u
e
n

c
y
o
f
c
la
im
s
m
a
k
e
rs
q
u
o
te
d
b
y
a
rt
ic
le
T
y
p

ifi
c
a
ti
o
n
n
(a
rt
ic
le
s)
C
la
im
s
m
a
k
e
r
P
sy
c
h

o
lo
g
is
t
A
tt
o
rn
e
y
D
e
fe
n
d
a
n
t
A
d
v
o
c
a

te
P
ro
se
c
u
to
r
P
o
li
ti
c
ia
n
O
th
e
rs
A
ll
M
e
d
ic
a

l
9
8
1
4
1
6
1
0
8
1
1
4
5
4
(2
6
%
)
(3
0
)
(1
9

)
(1
5
)
(2
)
(.
0
2
)
(7
)
(5
6
%
)
(3
6
)
(3
0
)
(2
8

)
(7
)
(.
0
8
)
(1
7
)
C
o
n
v
e
n
ti
o
n
a
l
ra
ti
o

n
a
l
7
4
4
1
5
1
3
3
9
1
1
1
5
6
(7
)
(2
7
)
(2
3

)
(5
)
(1
6
)
(2
)
(2
0
)
(1
6
)
(3
4
)
(3
9
)
(1
0
)
(6

0
)
(8
)
(4
6
)
F
e
m
in
is
t
ju
ri
sp
ru
d
e
n
c
e
5
5
1

9
7
7
3
4
8
3
9
(3
)
(2
3
)
(1
8
)
(1
8
)
(8
)
(1
0
)

(2
1
)
(4
)
(2
0
)
(2
1
)
(2
4
)
(2
0
)
(3
1
)
(3
3
)

E
a
rl
y
le
g
a
l
fe
m
in
is
m
2
3
6
4
3
1
1
2
7
1
3
4

(1
8
)
(1
2
)
(9
)
(3
2
)
(6
)
(2
1
)
(3
)
(2
4
)
(9
)
(9

)
(3
8
)
(1
3
)
(5
4
)
(4
0
)
T
o
ta
l
2
5
0
2
5
4

4
3
3
2
9
1
5
1
3
2
4
1
8
5
122 Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110–130
123
(N = 8; 15%). One advocate was quoted in Newsday [60] as
having said, ‘‘I find it
[a maximum sentence for manslaughter] entirely consistent with
a legal system that
is firmly based on the concept that men should have, and do
have, the right to
control women.’’ Rarely quoted are politicians, prosecutors, and

‘‘others’’ (third
parties to the case, judges, police, jurors, and witnesses), who
are much less likely to
make reliable and supporting claims of the medical model.
Presuming that claims
makers of each group are available to offer statements for each
story/article, the
selection of some types of claims makers, but not others,
suggests that members of
the media may rely on a particular ‘‘angle’’ or ‘‘frame’’ to
construct their accounts
[61], rather than attempting to provide an objective or
‘‘balanced’’ report of
incidents when a battered woman kills.
Contrary to our expectations that articles use claims makers to
support a
particular angle, prosecutors were not the most frequently
quoted within the
conventional rationality model articles. In fact, prosecutors
represented only 15
quotes in all 250 articles. Of these 15 citations, however, 60%
appear in articles
advancing the conventional rationality typification, which
however, we expected—

‘‘Whatever the past, it is no reason to kill someone… There is
no justification for
any of us to take another life because fate dealt us an unhappy
existence’’ [4].
Quotes made by defense attorneys (n = 16; 26%) and defendants
(n = 14; 23%)
appeared most frequently in the articles promoting conventional
rationality. After
reviewing the content of the 74 articles, we found that
prosecutors’ statements were
not important to constructing conventional rationality models.
For example, nearly
two-thirds of the articles (48 articles) reported that the woman
had already been
convicted, which appeared to reduce the need to interview the
prosecutor. In 13
articles, the women were charged, not convicted, and in the
remaining 35 articles,
the women were found not guilty, engaged in an appellate case
after having been
found guilty, or were receiving clemency. Of the 56 quotes in
conventional
rationality articles, 11 were made by third parties to the case.
That is judges, police,
jurors and witnesses (Other). We found that these quotes often
contradicted the

defendant’s claims within the same articles and bolstered the
portrayal of the
defendant as lying, devious, and manipulative by, for example,
drawing on previous
criminal activities or violent acts on the victim by the
defendant—in short, that she
is ‘‘bad’’ and deserving of punishment, rather than a victim of a
mental illness, or a
rational actor who has engaged in justifiable self-defense.
Recall that medicalized accounts offer the ‘excuse’ that battered
women who kill
deserve reduced or no punishment, because of a PTSD-like
syndrome such as
‘‘learned helplessness’’ [50], while conventional rationality
accounts portray such
women as scheming, manipulative killers deserving of a guilty
verdict. Feminist
jurisprudence disagrees with both images. There were only 39
quotes in these 55
articles. None of the claims maker groups comprises a clear
majority, although
defense attorneys (N = 9; 23%), ‘‘others’’ (N = 8; 21%),
defendants (N = 7; 18%),
and women’s advocates (N = 7; 18%) account for roughly the

same proportion of
quotes. Although uncommon, a defendant quotation in an article
narrating the
feminist jurisprudence model went as follows, ‘‘I just want to
tell them that I went to
all the right people and they turned me away. My intent was not
to kill my husband.
Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110–130 123
123
My intent was to get help’’ [51].Quotes by politicians,
psychologists and prosecutors
were less frequent.
Early legal feminist articles contained the fewest quotes. Unlike
feminist
jurisprudence, early legal feminism makes use of BWS, but
views the battered
woman who kills as justified in her actions based on reasonable
self-defense rather
than using an excuse of irrational behavior based on insanity.
Women’s advocates
(N = 11; 32%) and politicians (N = 7; 21%) comprise the two
most frequently
quoted groups. In fact, 54% of all politicians quoted appear in

articles promoting an
early legal feminist model. Rarely quoted were legal actors,
such as judges, defense
attorneys and prosecutors. These articles appeared to rely on the
viewpoints of
individuals uninvolved in the incident or case at hand. It was
more common to find
feminist jurisprudent and early legal feminist articles discussing
the ethical issues
behind trying cases in general, rather than a specific case.
Discussion: The Medical and the Conventional Rationality
Models Prevail
Although we are unable to determine whether shifts in media
patterns were a cause
or consequence of social changes, the timing of such shifts
seemed to parallel a
number of important events [3]. For example, the Ohio
Clemency in 1990 and the
O.J. Simpson trial in 1994 are possible focusing events ([32],
see footnote 3) that
coincide with the increase in medical model articles and then
the dominance of
conventional rationality model articles. According to Gagne
[23], Ohio Governor

Richard Celeste’s acceptance and implementation of expert
testimony on BWS into
Ohio’s criminal justice system in August 1990 ignited a
political reaction including
legislative changes in thirteen states (spanning over 8 years)
and the Ohio Clemency
in December 1990. This action occurred in the aftermath of high
profile cases, such
as the Hedda Nussbaum/Joel Steinberg trial of 1989, which
drew widespread
attention to BWS and kindled an intense public debate [31].
Many legislative
changes at this time were based on the medical model,
representing the value in
objective science and using qualified professional observation
to assess the mental
state of the battered woman, and were reflected in the media
cycle that promoted the
medical model typification.
In 1994, Lenore Walker—the psychologist who coined the term
Battered Woman
Syndrome—agreed to testify on behalf of O. J. Simpson. Walker
testified that

Nicole Brown did not fit the battered woman profile, and thus,
was not a battered
woman. Shortly after this focusing event in the news media, the
legitimacy of BWS
was publicly discredited by prosecutors, defendant advocates
and legal feminists,
marking the diminished focus on policy change in response to
the criminal justice
problem ([19], see also the effects of the Simpson trial on
attitudes towards BWS
and expert testimony in [42]).
Focusing events are one part of media patterns that often
coincide with swift
shifts in dominant typifications. Claims makers, however, are
used in media
accounts to establish a frame or typified account. Through the
medicalization of
deviance, claims makers have been found to make moral
judgments in both the
‘‘technical language of the profession and [in] popular moral
meanings’’
[35, p. 220]. BWS experts, for example, typify battered women
as lacking control
124 Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110–130

123
over their lives and in need of counseling. Our findings support
this research. While
the medicalized typification maintains a visible presence, there
is also a competing
frame, expressed in the conventional rationality articles, that
women are ‘getting
away with murder’, and sometimes by ‘using BWS’. These
articles promote a
criminalization of battered women who kill their abusers.
The constructionist perspective has demonstrated that well-
established typifica-
tions provide a foundation for building the credibility of an
emerging perspective on
a social problem [32, 36]. Lowney and Best [36] refer to these
typifications as
cultural resources. As a case in point, the medical model
developed from the
already-established battered woman’s movement, although the
movement itself did
not support the medicalization of the battered woman who kills
[27]. The medical

model explanation, rather than the battered woman’s movement
explanation, moved
forward and dominated public understanding due to it being a
cultural resource. The
notion of the battered woman as a victim was familiar and
generally accepted in
both legal and public forums. Arguably, the classification of
BWS as a subcategory
of a medical diagnosis, PTSD, also helped to bolster the
credibility of the syndrome.
Nicolson [46] found that the legal system tends to portray
battered women
defendants as either mad or bad (as we also found in
newspapers). These traditional
discourses are imparted across various media types [14, 28]. To
cite one example,
the idea that a woman would kill her husband for his life
insurance is a common
sense explanation. In this context, ‘‘bad’’ women marry for
money, and not for love.
Both the medical and the conventional rationality models
reinforce traditional
perceptions of women, excluding the idea that women may kill
in rational and

reasonable self-defense.
The favoring of certain typifications over others is evident in
the greater
proportion of citations from claims makers who support the two
dominant views
(see Table 3). For the most part, the popular press focuses on
constructing the
battered woman discourse under the medical and conventional
rationality models.
Ultimately, then, the popular press reinforces pre-established
notions of women by
both medicalizing and criminalizing battered women who kill
their abusers.
Medicalizing and criminalizing dominant typifications reflect
individual-level
explanations for women who kill their abusers. Ferraro [22], for
example, discusses
the medical model as an ‘‘individual pathology model’’. In this
model, the battered
woman is culpable (even if legally excused); the social system,
which neglects to
educate the public about ‘‘terrorism in the family’’, is not at
fault. The public
generally accepts individual-level models, because the
traditional patriarchal

ideology of the social system has not been challenged [22], and
because it
conforms to the accepted ‘‘common sense causality’’ [40] of
murder.
The conventional rationality model also holds the woman
responsible for her
actions. The public can easily grasp the long-standing tradition
to focus on the
individual and to use something that is typified innately
feminine to explain
something difficult to understand due to its typically
unfeminine nature [57]. In
contrast, views held by legal feminists often challenge the
status quo of gender
inequality. Moreover, their explanations tend to conflict with
hegemonic ideals and
promote solutions that are difficult to implement in the existing
social system.
Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110–130 125
123
Conclusion

The news portrayal of battered women who kill established this
event as a serious
social problem, worthy of public attention and legal reform. We
found that the
predominant social construction of battered women who kill was
one of female
deviants; they were either mad or bad. Both the medical and
conventional rationality
models held the battered woman culpable for her actions, while
acquitting the social
system of any responsibility. The medical model sought to
excuse the battered
woman who kills, thus mitigating her accountability, by
focusing on her mental state
(rather than the history of abuse) to explain the nature of her
actions leaving her
vulnerable to stigma and social control through the mental
health system. The
conventional rationality model relied on traditional explanations
of why one would
kill by reinforcing typified notions of women who kill as cold-
blooded murderers.
Before discussing the possible implications of our findings, we
must mention the

limitations to our results. First, our analysis focused on the
majority of newspaper
articles that clearly expressed a dominant theme rather than the
small group (10% of
articles) that evinced no clear theme. This presents a somewhat
oversimplified
image of the articles and it is important to remember that at
least some articles did
not fit neatly into our typologies. For this analysis, we focused
on typified discourses
of the battered woman who kills and BWS as a typifying agent,
which could
artificially homogenize our sample of newspaper articles. In
addition, our research
question and thus our analysis did not investigate for the
accuracy of news reporting
to actual rates of acquittals based on excused and justified
imminent and non-
imminent self-defenses. This, however, would be an important
contribution to the
understanding of the social constructions of the battered woman
who kills within
news media. Finally, it may be that newspaper accounts of the
battered woman who

kills may be constrained by the capacity and direction of case
outcomes and the
theories used in the cases, which would mean that we are over-
assuming the role of
the news media in socially constructing dominant typifications.
Although we did not
gather a statistically representative sample of all newspaper
articles covering
battered women who have killed from all major U.S. and
Canadian newspapers, our
findings provide an example of how typified models of a
particular gendered
phenomenon were used in popular newspapers. With these
limitations in mind, we
highlight important findings regarding the dominant portrayals
of battered women in
newspaper articles.
Our investigation reaffirms the constructionist view that claims
of sensationalized
commonsense explanations shape depictions of crimes and
criminals. These
depictions may have little to do with scientific knowledge, and
more to do with
media concern over generating new angles on old stories in

order to generate public
interest. This study also illustrates the co-ownership of
definitions of social
problems and deviance by claims makers and newspapers.
Although the claims of
all typification models were presented throughout the time
period studied, the long
standing conventional rationality model was lastly the most
prominent viewpoint in
newspaper reports. That finding, combined with the fact that the
largest proportion
of articles promoted the medical model, suggests that successful
claims makers are
those who present more sensationalized definitions without
challenging traditional
126 Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110–130
123
notions of gender norms and roles. The dominant typifications
of the battered
woman who kills as either a cold-blooded murderer or mentally
ill not only make
for sensational news, they reinforce belittling ideal types and

social attitudes
towards women and victims of domestic violence.
The two dominant typifications present more sensational stories
than articles with
feminist jurisprudence and early legal feminism and they tend to
avoid the complex
debate common in feminist circles over the reasonableness of
self-defense. Similar
to previous investigations of the portrayal of domestic violence
issues, such as by
Berns [7], the newspaper portrayals in this study focus on the
actions of women and
narrowly construct a debate around how to define the actions of
the battered woman
who kills. Focusing the reader’s attention on the question of
why she did it
marginalizes the structural and macro social issues surrounding
gender inequality
and oppression. The medical and the conventional rationality
models utilize societal
metanarratives, which provides easy understandings. To quote
Berns, ‘‘as long as
these magazines continue to locate the victims’ experiences
within a discourse that

silences the role of the abuser and of society, individuals will
continue to not ask,
‘‘Why does he hit her?’’ or ‘‘Why does he get away with hitting
her?’’ [6, p. 106].
Ultimately, a focus on claims promoted by the Feminist
Jurisprudence Model
might be more beneficial to battered women and more
appropriate given existing
social conditions, but this is not the current trend in media
reports. This and previous
studies find that portrayals of battered women who kill continue
to re-enforce
traditional views of women as either cold-blooded or irrational.
Our findings suggest
that the feminist explanations require repackaging in ways that
enact the three
factors influencing dominance in the media—simplicity,
sensationalism and
conventionality—or thus, the typical portrayal of an abused
woman who kills will
likely remain not one of reasonable self-defense, but rather the
story of a woman
who is either mad or bad.
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Author Biographies
Marianne S. Noh received her doctorate in Sociology from the

University of Akron in 2008. Since then,
she has conducted research in HIV/AIDS and immigrant health
at the Ontario HIV Treatment Network
and has taught as a Senior Lecturer in the department of
sociology at the University of Victoria. She is
co-editor of Korean Immigrants in Canada, expected to be
released in October 2011. Currently, she is
researching the intersection of race and gender in the social
construction of domestic violence.
Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110–130 129
123
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/22/us/clemency-granted-to-
25-women-convicted-for-assault-or-murder.html?pagewanted=2
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/22/us/clemency-granted-to-
25-women-convicted-for-assault-or-murder.html?pagewanted=2
Matthew T. Lee is an Associate Professor in the Department of
Sociology and a Conflict Management
Fellow at the University of Akron. He is the co-author of A
Sociological Study of the Great
Commandment in Pentecostalism: The Practice of Godly Love
as Benevolent Service (2009, Edwin
Mellen Press) and the author of Crime on the Border:
Immigration and Homicide in Urban Communities
(2003, LFB Scholarly). His work has appeared in journals such
as Criminology, Social Problems, Social

Psychology Quarterly, and Sociological Quarterly. He is Vice-
President of the Institute for Research on
Unlimited Love and his current research interests include
altruism/love, immigration and crime, and
organizational deviance.
Kathryn M. Feltey is an Associate Professor in the Department
of Sociology and a Conflict Management
Fellow at the University of Akron. She is the gender section
editor of the journal, Sociology Compass and
co-editor of a special issue of NWSA Journal, New Orleans: A
Special Issue on Gender, the Meaning of
Place, and the Politics of Displacement (Fall 2008). Her current
research interests include family poverty,
community responses to food insecurity, and 19th century
pioneer families.
130 Gend. Issues (2010) 27:110–130
123
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further
reproduction prohibited without permission.
c.12147_2010_Article_9093.pdfMad, Bad, or Reasonable?
Newspaper Portrayals of the Battered Woman Who
KillsAbstractIntroductionLiterature ReviewThe Social
Construction of Media TypificationsFour Typification Models
of Abused Women Who KillMedical ModelConventional

Rationality ModelFeminist Jurisprudence ModelEarly Legal
Feminism ModelMethodsResultsMedia Patterns I: A Shift in
Dominant AccountsMedia Patterns II: Claims Makers
Contribute to Article AccountsDiscussion: The Medical and the
Conventional Rationality Models PrevailConclusionReferences

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