Abuse defense
Criminal law defense / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Abuse defense?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
The abuse defense is a criminal law defense in which the defendant argues that a prior history of abuse justifies violent retaliation. While the term most often refers to instances of child abuse or sexual assault, it also refers more generally to any attempt by the defense to use a syndrome or societal condition to deflect responsibility away from the defendant. Sometimes the concept is referred to as the abuse excuse, in particular by the critics of the idea that guilty people may use past victimization to diminish the responsibility for their crimes.[1]
This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
When the abuser is the victim of the crime, as is often the case, the abuse excuse is sometimes used as a way to "put the victim on trial".
The Supreme Court of the United States has held on numerous occasions that the defendant should be permitted to present any information that they feel might affect sentencing. Despite this legal precedent, the availability of the abuse defense has been criticized by several legal experts, particularly in the aftermath of the trials of Lorena Bobbitt and the Menéndez brothers. Legal scholar Alan Dershowitz has described the abuse excuse as a "lawless invitation to vigilantism".