The authors demonstrate that battered women who are forced to kill their attackers often face unfair convictions and sentences due to unequal treatment by the law and gendered modes of punishment. They argue that in different studies startling levels of discrimination in the courts against women who were victims of domestic violence were revealed.
This article examines the dichotomous construction of endangerment and dangerousness as applied to the socio-legal construction of Karla Homolka, a Canadian woman who was convicted in 1993 of two counts of manslaughter.