Battered Woman Syndrome is a post-traumatic stress disorder characteristic which makes a women more prone to loss of self-control.
In 1994 battered women's syndrome was included for the first time in the British classification of mental diseases. An appeal out of time was allowed in R v Hobson [1998] CA and a retrial ordered to consider the new medical evidence. Battered woman syndrome was confirmed as a characteristic in R v Smith (Morgan) [2001] HL However, in Jersey v Holley [2005] PC the position was returned to situation before Morgan Smith.
In R v Thornton (No 2) [1996] Following the introduction of fresh evidence, a retrial was ordered by the Court of Appeal to consider the effect of Battered Woman Syndrome and the defendant was convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
The infamous case of R v Ahluwalia [1992]
"We have considered that fresh evidence. We have also taken into account the evidence given at trial as to the appellant’s strange behaviour after lighting the fire as witnessed by neighbours. We appreciate that the Crown has not had a proper opportunity to consider the fresh evidence and obtain its own advice and evidence on this issue. We make no comment about the cogency of the fresh evidence. Nevertheless, we have been driven to the conclusion that without, it would seem, any fault on the part of the appellant there may well have been an arguable defence which, for reasons unexplained, was not put forward at the trial. In these circumstances, we consider that the verdict must be regarded as unsafe and unsatisfactory. We emphasise that the circumstances we have described and which have led us to this conclusion are wholly exceptional. We consider the proper course here is for us to order a retrial."
"LORD TAYLOR OF GOSFORTH CJ:
This is a tragic case which has aroused much public attention.
On 9 May 1989 the appellant, after enduring many years of violence and humiliation from her husband, threw petrol in his bedroom and set it alight. Her husband sustained terrible burns from which, after lingering painfully for six days, he died on 15 May.
The appellant was indicted for murder. Her trial started on 29 November 1989 in the Crown Court at Lewes and on 7 December she was convicted of murder by a majority of ten to two. The learned judge then imposed upon her the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment.
She now appeals against that conviction by leave of the single judge granted only on 12 September 1991, well out of time.
The appellant is now 36. She was born in India into a middle class family. She completed an arts degree and then began a law course, but came under pressure from her family to marry. The deceased came from a family of Kenyan Asians who had emigrated in 1971. The appellant went to Canada to stay with her brother and sister-in-law. A marriage was arranged between her and the deceased. They had not previously met. The marriage took place in Canada. They then came to England and settled in Crawley. Both had jobs. Two boys were born to them, one in July 1984 and one in January 1986.
The appellant had suffered violence and abuse from the deceased from the outset of the marriage. He was a big man; she is slight. Her complaints of violence were supported by entries in her doctor’s notes. Thus, in October 1981, there is a record of her being hit three or four times on the head with a telephone and thrown to the ground. In September 1983, a note states she was ‘pushed’ by her husband whilst pregnant and sustained a bruised hand. The next month she had a broken finger due to another argument. She made attempts at suicide in 1983 and again in 1986. The Croydon County Court granted her an injunction to restrain the deceased from hitting her in 1983. In 1986 the deceased abused the appellant and tried to run her down at a family wedding. She obtained her second injunction from the court after the deceased had held her throat and threatened her with a knife. He threatened to kill her and threw a mug of hot tea over her. Despite the court order, the deceased continued his violence, which intensified after January 1989.
The appellant’s doctor made a statement which was read at the trial. He confirmed that he found bruising to her face and wrist on 18 April and fresh bruising on the left cheek, temple and arm on 24 April. At Easter 1989 the deceased knocked the appellant unconscious. She suffered a broken tooth, swollen lips and was off work for five days. Her work supervisor gave evidence that she lost weight and showed signs of nervousness and distress. Other evidence to like effect was given by a workmate, by her Canadian sister-in-law who came to stay and even by the deceased’s brother, who spoke to the deceased about it on 7 May. On the evidence at the trial there was, therefore, no doubt that the appellant had been treated very badly over a long period. In addition, she discovered in March 1989 that the deceased was having an affair with a woman who worked with him at the Post Office. He taunted the appellant with this relationship. Despite all of this, the appellant wished to hold the marriage together, partly because of her sense of duty as a wife and partly for the sake of the children.
The state of humiliation and loss of self-esteem to which the deceased’s behaviour over the ten years of the marriage had reduced her is evidenced by a letter she wrote him after he left her for three days about April 1989. It is a letter on which Mr Robertson QC strongly relies. In the course of begging him to come back to her and to grant her ten minutes to talk it over, she made a number of self-denying promises of the most abject kind:
‘Deepak, if you come back I promise you-I won’t touch black coffee again, I won’t go town every week, I won’t eat green chilli, I ready to leave Chandikah and all my friends, I won’t go near Der Goodie Mohan’s house again, Even I am not going to attend Bully’s wedding, I eat too much or all the time so I can get fat, I won’t laugh if you don’t like, I won’t dye my hair even, I don’t go to my neighbour’s house, I won’t ask you for any help.’
Events of 8-9 May
The appellant visited her mother-in-law on the afternoon of 8 May. She then returned home with her younger son, who was unwell. The deceased spoke to his girlfriend from his work place telling her that the appellant was going to pack and leave that evening. He arrived home about 10.15 pm. What happened thereafter was described by the appellant in police interviews, although she has not been wholly consistent. It seems she put her son to bed and gave the deceased his dinner. He then tried to mend a television set. The appellant tried to talk to him about their relationship, but he refused indicating that it was over. He demanded money from her to pay a telephone bill and, according to her, threatened to beat her if she did not give him £200 the next morning. He then began to iron some clothes and threatened to burn the appellant’s face with the hot iron if she did not leave him alone.
The appellant went to bed about midnight. She was unable to sleep and brooded upon the deceased’s refusal to speak to her and his threat to beat her the next morning. She had bought some caustic soda a few days earlier with a view to using it upon the deceased. She had also bought a can of petrol and put it in the lean-to outside the house. Her mind turned to these substances and some time after 2.30 am she got up, went downstairs, poured about two pints of the petrol into a bucket (to make it easier to throw), lit a candle on the gas cooker and carried these things upstairs. She also took an oven glove for self-protection and a stick. She went to the deceased’s bedroom, threw in some petrol, lit the stick from the candle and threw it into the room. She then went to dress her son.
The deceased, on fire, ran to immerse himself in the bath and then ran outside screaming, ’I’ll kill you,’ and shouting for help. He was assisted by neighbours.
Other neighbours rushed to the house. They found the door locked and saw the appellant standing at a ground-floor window clutching her son, just staring and looking calm. They shouted to her to get out of the house. She opened a window and said,’I am waiting for my husband,’ and closed the window again. She was prevailed upon to hand the child out and later emerged herself. She stood staring at the blazing window with a glazed expression.
Fire officers came and extinguished the flames. They found a bucket still smelling of petrol on the landing outside the bedroom, also a saucepan in the bathroom basin with caustic soda in the bottom. Later, the effects of caustic soda were found on the bathroom floor.
The deceased suffered severe burns. He responded to treatment for a while but deteriorated and died on 15 May.
On 12 May he made a declaration before a magistrate. In fairness to him he was in no condition to give his account of the whole course of the marriage and the factual background given in this judgment is necessarily based on the evidence given at trial. In his declaration he denied having a girlfriend, asserted the appellant had thrown caustic soda over him in the bedroom rather than petrol, and had thrown something else over him in the bath. He admitted telling her he did not wish to spend his life with her. He had gone to bed after telling her to leave.
The appellant was arrested. She wrote to her mother-in-law from prison saying, amongst other things, that the deceased had committed so many sins, ‘so I gave him a fire bath to wash away his sins’. However, in the course of interview she repeated a number of times that she did not intend to kill the deceased, but only to give him pain.
The appellant’s case at trial
The appellant did not give evidence. No medical evidence was adduced on her behalf. Her case was that she had no intention either of killing her husband or of doing him really serious harm, only to inflict some pain on him. Provocation was a secondary line of defence. To support it, reliance was placed upon the whole history of ill-treatment throughout the marriage, culminating on the night in the deceased’s refusal to speak to her, his threat to use the hot iron upon her, his threat to beat her the next morning if she did not provide him with money and his clear indication that he wished the marriage to end. The defence therefore sought a verdict of manslaughter, but the jury convicted of murder.
Three grounds of appeal were raised. The first two relate to the learned judge’s directions to the jury on provocation."
A retrial was ordered to consider the defence of diminished responsibility including the effect of "battered woman syndrome" and Ahluwalia was convicted of manslaughter
