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When a team of researchers at Stanford Criminal Justice Center started surveying people in California women’s prisons who had been convicted of manslaughter and murder, it was immediately clear that intimate partner violence (IPV) played a big role in many of their cases.
One person fatally stabbed an ex-boyfriend she said attacked her after months of stalking. Another said she killed a partner who had beaten and raped her, after law enforcement failed to protect her, despite her reports.
Of the 649 people who filled out the survey, nearly three out of four were abused in the year before their offense. According to “Fatal Peril,” the report that analyzes the survey’s findings, most of the survivors who were surveyed were at extreme risk of being killed by their abuser, as determined by a modified version of a danger assessment tool used by prosecutors, victim advocates and domestic violence shelters.
In a recent New York Times opinion piece, Rachel Louise Snyder, author of “No Visible Bruises,” noted that U.S. self-defense law originates in part from the “castle doctrine,” a 17th-century English common law principle, which allowed a man to protect himself against outside attacks in his home.
Snyder wrote that what “these visions of self-defense have yet to adequately imagine is a spouse in a situation in which she is attacked, repeatedly, with increasing severity by another person with an equal right to be in that home.”
But the connection between domestic abuse and incarceration goes beyond the limits of self-defense law.
As they surveyed people, the Stanford researchers quickly realized that their original focus on women who killed their abusers was not broad enough to capture the myriad ways domestic violence can land a person behind bars.
Some survey respondents were in prison for helping an abuser with a crime, because they were afraid of what he would do if they didn’t comply. Other respondents said they were punished for failing to protect their children from deadly abuse. Those responses mirror the findings of a recent Marshall Project investigation.
One survey respondent was in prison because her abusive partner killed one of her children while she was at work. She said he discovered supplies she had packed in order to leave him, and punished her by hurting her kids. California law allows a parent to be punished if they put their child in a dangerous situation.
“When a person is experiencing extreme and severe IPV, their risk of being killed extends to everyone around the survivor,” said Debbie Mukamal, executive director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center and one of the study’s authors.
The experiences of the people in California’s prisons are not unique. The Marshall Project’s investigation found nearly 100 cases across the country of people — almost entirely women — who were punished for the actions of their abusers under little-known laws like “failure to protect” and “accomplice liability.” While laws vary, every state has some version of accomplice liability.
Some of the people Stanford surveyed said they were in prison for actions they took while trying to escape. One person wrote: “I fled from my house with four of my children. I was hit in the back of my car by my ex-husband which caused me to crash.” She said she was in prison for vehicular manslaughter because one of her young children died in the accident.
At least 16 respondents said they were incarcerated for driving-under-the-influence homicides connected to drinking or drugs they used to cope with abuse.
Several states are trying to mitigate punishment of domestic violence survivors. New York, for example, has a law that allows a person’s history of intimate partner violence to be considered at sentencing or resentencing.
Last month, Oklahoma became the latest state to make such a move. The Oklahoma Survivors’ Act allows survivors of abuse to serve shorter sentences in some circumstances. April Wilkens was the first person to file an application for resentencing under the new law. Wilkens has served 26 years behind bars for killing her fiancé. According to The Oklahoman, he had handcuffed and raped her, but, prior to the new law, “she couldn’t use evidence of domestic abuse when she applied for early release.”
Illinois has also recently expanded who can apply for resentencing because of domestic violence. Since 2016, state law has allowed abuse to be considered in sentencing if the abuse was directly connected to the crime. The Illinois Supreme Court had ruled it couldn’t apply to anyone who had pleaded guilty, however. A law signed in August changed that.
Other Illinois cases still remain ineligible. Pat Johnson, whose case was covered by The Marshall Project, was not eligible for resentencing in Illinois, despite strong evidence of abuse and minimal participation in the crime, because Johnson was serving a mandatory life sentence. Unlike in New York, Illinois’ law doesn’t say judges can diverge from mandatory minimums when considering this kind of sentencing relief.
Efforts to pass laws to help incarcerated survivors of domestic violence in other states have failed in recent years, including in Oregon, Louisiana and Minnesota.
Given the significant share of women in prison who report being abused, it’s possible changes in these kinds of laws could have at least some effect on their numbers behind bars. The incarceration rate for women has grown twice as fast as it has for men in recent decades. “Between 2021 and 2022 alone, the number of females in prison grew by 5%,” according to the Fatal Peril study.
Addressing the incarceration rates of women means confronting how surviving abuse and committing an offense can be intertwined, and recognizing that survivors of intimate partner violence might not fit into tidy societal expectations. “There is a myth of a ‘perfect’ victim that needs to be dispelled,” Mukamal said.
The Marshall Project’s staff writer Shannon Heffernan will host an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit about survivors who are incarcerated for crimes committed by their abusers. Join her on Reddit at 11:30 a.m. EST on Sept. 18.
