IN the previous entry, a female reader who says she has been hit by her husband many times explains why she has no sympathy for Barbara Sheehan, who shot her husband to death and was acquitted last week of murder charges:

As the wife of a “nasty man” who has a bad temper and has physically hurt me many times, I can say that this woman is in no way justfied in this murder. I don’t feel sorry for her at all. She had many options to take; this country is obnoxiously anxious to help the “battered wife.” The reason she is talking about it so much is obvious; she knows she was wrong, and she feels guilty for getting away with it. She’s desperate to feel better about it and having the approval of the masses is what she thinks will fill that void. It won’t. She will have to face God.

A woman that is “nasty” enough to shoot the father of her own children 11 times without mercy must have been horrible to live with. I will pray for his soul and beg God to have mercy on him. I should pray for her, too, I guess. But I am in no way moved to do it, save the obligation God has placed on us to pray for our enemies. Yes, I would consider her an enemy. Women are confused enough as it is by feminist pride. Now we get away with murder. Great.

                                            — Comments —

Jane writes:

This “battered wife syndrome” as an excuse for murder is just beyond the pale. I agree their probably is a syndrome but the syndrome might be better called “messed up control freak with a victim complex”. It is absolutely disgusting how society has been brainwashed into accepting this syndrome without question.With no public shame from a divorce why did she choose to stay? I find it hard to believe a woman who takes her vows so seriously that she could not leave, can pick up a gun and murder her husband. He pushed her head into a cement wall means he pushed her, he threw hot sauce on her means he threw his dinner at her. Wow! For this you can get away with murder? I think she flew into a jealous rage over his infidelity and killed him for it. It’s amazing how far people will go to get the last word!

I know someone that has been in an abusive marriage for thirty years and has probably left him and gone back ten times. Her family was supportive each time she left. Her parents door was always open and her brothers were always ready to help financially but, to no avail. She always went back. I wouldn’t be shocked to someday hear she put a bullet in his head. In this case, and in 99% of all cases, the excuse of “batter wife” is rubbish.

If you are not familiar with Erin Pizzey I suggest you look her up. She opened the first women’s shelter in 1971 in Britain, which she ran until 1982. Today, the shelter denies her entry; her name doesn’t appear in its official history. Her books were removed from most libraries. Why may you ask? Because her findings counter feminist dogma, that women are victims and men are perpetrators.

I predict Barbara Sheehan will be dead of natural causes within a few short, maybe several, years. Unless she’s a sociopath, how will she be able to live with herself ? All the fake glory will soon fade. Oh wait, no it won’t. We’ll soon have a tv mini drama followed by a shelter dedication and then an Ophrah follow up. The feminist spin doctors are going to have a field day with this, as usual.

Laura writes:

Erin Pizzey said that many of the women in her battered women’s shelter were sociopaths.

Robin writes:

I must concur with Jane: for the most part, “battered women’s syndrome” is a joke. My mother’s behavior toward my father while I was growing up with them in the same house would put any violent man’s behavior to shame. They were both awful to each other, mind you, but my mother was one of the most physically violent women I have ever seen: toward my father, toward me and inwardly. She struck him, she screamed profanity at him frequently, she was constantly trying to gain attention from him by swallowing a bottle of Valium in pitiful attempts at “suicide;” she was a violent, manipulative feminist. If battered women’s shelters had existed en masse then, no doubt both of them would have been imprisoned. Women are quite capable of extreme amounts of so-called domestic violence. I don’t care if she was violent in a reactionary fashion; reacting to his violence. There were other choices; she could have separated from him and insisted that they get counseling. She could have even divorced, rather than teach her only daughter the wiles of feminist behavior and the “victim” mentality: it has taken decades now for Christ to free me from the twisted mess. 

In any event, the same may be said for Barbara Sheehan. What was so difficult about leaving? Oh, I forget…I’m sure she would have had to sacrifice something of her own comfort for what she actually did enjoy about the marriage. I suppose the cost was too great in her self-serving mind and she decided it better to murder him. Perhaps he was a wretched, selfish, violent madman. Or, perhaps he was a frustrated man devoid of masculinity (his wife took it all years ago) and in his frustration, he occasionally “snapped” and committed an act of violence. The worst he deserved was a restraining order – a far cry from coldblooded murder at the hands of his wife! 

Have you ever been to one of these “battered women’s shelters?” I have. Unfortunately, I’ve been for myself when I’ve been in relationship with someone I unwisely chose, and I’ve been there with friends who say they have cause to be there. These places are horrid. The women they employ spend mere seconds with each woman before handing them court paperwork for filling out domestic violence restraining orders to keep the men from their wives (and by doing so, alienating them from their children.) EVERY man is a controller, an abuser, a victimizing thug in their eyes. They will send an “advocate” to court with a woman for free, to help her get what she wants from the courts in the way of custody and visitation for the children. It is a horrible ploy; convince a hurting woman that she must blame all of her issues on her husband and most likely the father of her children: she must discredit him, she must publicly humiliate him, she must do whatever it takes to make herself the “victim,” when in many cases, she is not a victim at all, except of her own poor choice in men. 

Yes, there are some bad men who beat women viciously. For these cases, the domestic violence counselor is not likely to help at all. These women are tremendously afraid to leave the house at all, much less leave the house to talk to a counselor who tells her that they can offer her a shelter for a maximum of thirty days while she finds a job, finds child care and avoids her truly sadistic husband. However, most of the time, they are men of less than stellar character: maybe they are stressed and handle it poorly, maybe their wives are too controlling, maybe they have poor control over their emotions and tempers, perhaps they are alcoholics and prone to flares of anger during drinking binges. Who knows, but they are not “batterers.” They do not consistently beat their wives because they feel entitled to and powerful from doing so. They just lose their temper every now and again, as human beings do. They have been known to throw a bowl of soup across the kitchen. Exemplary behavior from a mature man, husband and father? No. Excuse for murderous rage by the wife? Definitely not. 

The battered women’s shelter would have the wives of such men believing that they need to immediately get away, file a court motion for custody and divorce and get while the getting is good…over a temper-charged argument which happens rarely. Worse, they would convince such women (who are quite capable of shredding their husbands with their sharp tongues) that their husband calling them a filthy name during an argument is grounds for removing the children from his home permanently. After all, it is “violence” and it is happening in the domicile. Truly pathetic, and hardly helpful for the few women who do actually find themselves in danger at the hands of their husbands.

Buck O. writes:

This isn’t about a battered wife, but about a “crime of passion” defense. 

Some may remember the murder of Dr. Tarnower, who was famous for writing The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet and then, for being shot to death by the headmistress of the prestigious Madeira School, Jean Harrris. Dr. Tarnower was shot in cold blood by the notoriously sympathetic Jean Harris, who claimed that she was innocent by reason of passion (not the actual defense, but that was the gist of it). I remember at the time how outraged my older sister was. I remember the “conversation”, like it was yesterday (it was 1980). My sister instantly got hysterical and actually screamed: “She was innocent! It was a crime of passion! 

My sister actually meant that Jean Harris should have been found innocent because of her tortured love for Dr. Tarnower, who was interested in another, much younger woman, and for her pathetic demands for sympathy, primarily because she was growing old and “getting ugly”. Many women expressed the same bizarre sentiment about her conviction as my sister did. 

Harris was convicted by her own testimony and the simple facts. She drove from near my neighborhood at that time, Mclean, Va., to Dr. Tarnower’s home in New York with her loaded gun. Her remarks to the courtroom on the day that she was sentenced revealed that she was forever going to maintain that she was innocent because she intended “no harm” to the man that she loved and that her shooting him to death was an accident caused only by her passion for him.

Laura writes:

Barbara Sheehan’s lawyer, Michael Dowd, specializes in the “battered wife” defense so it was about that particular argument. Nevertheless, the reasoning is similar: a woman is overcome by justified rage. She snaps and cannot help herself.

Mrs. P. writes:

Until you posted something about her, I was unaware of Barbara Sheehan and her trial. I read as much as I could find online regarding this woman and her ordeal. I have to say that I am uncomfortable deciding someone’s guilt or innocence based on snippets of information gleaned from news articles that mostly repeat each other. The jury in this case had full exposure to all the facts, all the testimonies, all the arguments, and all the emotion that was on display in the courtroom during this trial. These twelve men and women were far better prepared than any of us to determine her guilt. Still I have some thoughts. 

Either you believe Barbara Sheehan’s testimony and that of her children and others who testified on her behalf or you believe the prosecutor whose job it was to convince the jury that Sheehan was guilty of murdering her husband. I have a hard time believing the prosecutor. 

We can imagine what we might have done had we been in Sheehan’s shoes during her marriage. But imagining is not the same thing as actually living it. For instance, I imagine I would have left long before she tried to leave which was the morning of the shooting. I would have found a way to leave the man much sooner. I certainly do not think I could have slept next to a man who kept a stash of weapons (long bladed knives, guns and bullets) in the nightstand by the bed after he had threatened to kill me. I would have been too terrified to even close my eyes. 

Raymond Sheehan has been described by another one of your readers as a psychopath. Perhaps this is true. To my knowledge psychopaths can not be cured. About one percent of the population are psychopaths. That is kind of scary.

Laura writes:

I’m not sure why you have a hard time believing the prosecutor; you don’t explain. You seem inclined on the basis of what you read to view Raymond Sheehan as a psychopath but not inclined to view Barbara Sheehan as one. If you don’t trust the written reports, I would refrain from judgment. You are right that we have not heard all the testimony, but then discussion of the case and speculation that she was guilty are not tantamount to convicting her of a crime.

Newspaper reporters, albeit with some spin of their own, reported the important facts about the testimony. There was no dispute at the trial  that Barbara Sheehan shot her husband (she admitted to that), that she used two guns in doing so (she admitted to that) and that she picked up the second gun after Raymond Sheehan had already been shot several times and was severely incapacitated. We also know without question that she shot him while he was shaving (the water was still running in the bathroom when the police arrived) and he never left the bathroom.  

In addition to these undisputed facts, we have Barbara Sheehan’s own testimony on Oprah, that was linked in the previous entry. While you cannot attend the trial, you can listen to what she says and how she contradicts herself, saying that she did not know what she was doing and then admitting that with calculation she picked up the second gun and stood over her wounded husband and shot him again.  I find it implausible that she could not have gotten away from a very wounded man at that point. You can also hear her lengthy description of their bad marriage and her caustic, tear-drenched appraisal of the man she chose and to whom she remained married for over two decades.

Barbara Sheehan, who was on the computer planning a vacation to Florida before she shot her husband, was not a shackled prisoner or victim of torture. Also, we know from the son’s testimony that Raymond Sheehan had had an affair, providing possible motivation for Barbara Sheehan to murder him and for his children to resent him. 

The jury was very close to being deadlocked and the jurors reported at least once to the judge that they could not agree. Therefore, trusting their decision is not so simple. 

Mrs. P. writes:

The prosecution taunted (mocked) Barbara Sheehan hoping perhaps to provoke her into a rage in order to prove their point. She was characterized as a skilled pathological liar who was trying to paint herself the victim. The prosecution claimed that the alleged abuse could not have taken place as she did not seek help or try to leave. But this flies in the face of the testimonies her children gave which backed up most of their mother’s story of the type of marriage she had with Raymond Sheehan. And there were other witnesses who testified on her behalf. But the prosecution behaved as if all these witnesses were a bunch of liars. 

The prosecution described Barbara Sheehan’s display of emotion as nothing but crocodile tears. 

These are some of the reasons why I have a hard time believing the prosecution. I understand that it is an adversarial role the prosecution must play, but I believe they crossed the line with tactics like these. 

The jury did not believe what the prosecution had to say about Raymond Sheehan being a “good guy.” They believed the family’s account of the abuse Barbara Sheehan had suffered because it rang true to them. They believed she was justified in fearing him and fearing that he was about to shoot her that morning when she was at the bathroom door and he went for his gun that was near him and aimed it at her. 

What some jury members had trouble with was that Sheehan shot her husband with the second gun when he no longer posed a real threat to her life after the first shooting. I believe interpretation of the law pertaining to self-defense was a factor. According to her account, she suddenly realized what she had done with the first shooting and went to help him. But he reached again for his gun that was by then on the floor and threatened again to kill her. She got to the gun first though and began firing. I believe it is possible the presence of mind that came to her after the first shooting vanished when he reached for his gun there on the floor and threatened her again. Her system was surely saturated with adrenaline by then. I believe she reacted without thinking. 

The jury found her guilty of a weapons violation involving the second gun. According to the jury foreman, this was somewhat of a compromise that allowed the jury to finally reach a not guilty verdict on the murder charge. 

The jury system is not perfect, but it is far more reliable than the court of public opinion where exposure to the many facets of a trial is limited and where personal prejudices can skew the picture anyway. I am comfortable deferring to the jury in this case.

Laura writes:

The real issue is whether Barbara Sheehan was in serious danger that morning and had to kill her husband to protect herself. 

Raymond Sheehan was seriously wounded, probaby in a state of shock and pain, and his wife was able to get the second gun away from him. If she was able to get the gun away from him, and she admitted that she was, why did she then have to shoot him? Don’t you see? Don’t you see how the idea of self defense doesn’t make sense? Under the law, a person is not allowed to kill somone because they feel a rush of adrenaline. They are only allowed to claim self defense if they are in serious danger. At the moment when Barbara Sheehan delivered the fatal shots, she was not in danger because he was wounded and she had the gun.

You say, “Her system was surely saturated with adrenaline by then.”

Any normal person who had just shot her husband, purely out of self defense and not because she wanted to shoot him, and who had disarmed him, would run for the phone and call an ambulance. That’s what “adrenaline” would lead a person to do in this situation.

If she said she was in danger and was not in danger at the moment she shot the second gun, then she was lying and if she was lying about this important detail, there is a good chance she was lying about other things, in which case the prosecution’s claim that she was a liar was true. I disagree that what I am saying is based on “personal prejudice.” It is based on what Barbara Sheehan said happened that morning.

If the jurors believed that they could “compromise” by convicting Barbara Sheehan of the weapons violation, they were in error. It was their duty to decide guilt or innocence of the murder charge.

You say you are comfortable in deferring to the jury and I say that at the very least it is important to question their verdict because of her attorney’s use of the “battered wife” defense. The notion that a woman progressively loses her powers of reasoning when her husband is domineering or cruel, to the point of being justified in killing him even when she is in no imminent danger, is based on junk science. There is no proof that the brain of a woman undergoes incapacitating injury when her husband is cruel. 

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