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"The average prison sentence for men who kill their intimate partners is 2 to 6 years. Women who kill their partners are sentenced, on average, to 15 years."

—

The Michigan Women’s Justice & Clemency Project

We’ve seen this particular claim made a number of times now.  It’s the worst kind of claim because it’s technically true, yet utterly misleading.  In short, it’s bad statistics (much like what happens with the wage gap) where it’s presumed that the actions being taken by each party are equal and that there aren’t gender differentials.

As far as we can tell, the difference is that while both men and women do kill their partners, when they do it’s for notably different reasons and in notably different ways.  When men kill their wives it’s normally what’s termed a “crime of passion” motivated by anger or rage.  This normally leads to a charge of second-degree murder, because the crime lacks the premeditation element that characterizes first-degree murder.  Women who kill their husbands, on the other hand, are more likely to exercise premeditation, which leads to the much more severe charge of first-degree murder.  Even in cases where the charges don’t differ the circumstances often still do in a similar way, just to a lesser degree.

Basically, we as a society acknowledge that there’s a difference between someone who comes home, finds their partner in bed with someone else and clocks them with a lamp and someone who decides to kill their partner, goes out, buys a gun, walks up to them while they’re sleeping and empties a magazine into their head.  Men’s actions are more likely to look like the former, women’s the latter, and we as a society consider the latter to be far more severe.

Ironically, the two cases cited are utterly perfect examples.  Kenneth Peacock was sentenced to 18 months in jail after he came home unexpectedly, found his wife in bed with another man and shot her.  Patricia Ann Hawkins, on the other hand, was sentenced to 36 24 (see below) months in jail, for….soaking her sleeping husband with lighter fluid and then setting him on fire.  Anyone with a brain can see a considerable difference.  

It’s actually worse than that, though.  Peacock was actually sentenced to 36 months himself, 18 of which were suspended.  Of course, the page neglects to mention that part.  Secondly, Hawkins was not sentenced to 36 months, but rather to 24 months, only six months longer than Peacock.  It appears that “The Michigan Women’s Justice & Clemency Project” is not competent enough to do a basic Google search, with which they would have realized that the 36 month figure originated as an editorial error in the Baltimore Sun.  They posted a retraction the next day.

Hawkins was originally charged with (surprise, surprise) first-degree murder (to which she responded with the a plea of “not guilty by reason of insanity”), but the case was resolved with a plea bargain in which she plead guilty to both manslaughter and arson.  In review: Hawkins was charged with a more severe crime as a result of premeditation, and committed two crimes (murder/manslaughter and arson) instead of one.

When we divide things back down into the categories of murder (first-degree, second-degree, sometimes third degree, and manslaughter even though it’s not technically murder), that “gap” disappears.

(via permutationofninjas)

Jan 29.2013 | 582notes -
posted by:mineapple - via & src

sexism     courtroom     murder