UCLA Journal of Gender and Law

This Article’s argument proceeds as follows. Part I examines the capacity of the existing criminal law landscape to accommodate survivor-defendants by applying available defenses and mechanisms to these cases. Part I concludes that none of the current legal doctrines adequately respond to the unique pressures and circumstances that victims/survivors experience. In Part II, the Article questions the moral legitimacy of the state to criminalize and punish survivors for killing their abusive partners. After exploring the numerous ways in which they are entrapped in abusive relationships concurrently by their abusive partners and the state, Part II suggests that battered women cannot be held responsible by the entrapping state for their resulting criminal actions. Part II then further justifies the decriminalization of survivors by invoking the prevailing theories of punishment and establishing that they do not provide a reasonable rationale for incarcerating survivors. In Part III, the Article considers and weighs the effectiveness of several possible alternatives to the existing criminal legal framework, in search for a model that would adequately recognize the systemic conditions that lead victims/survivors to commit such crimes.