Abused Women Abused by the Law: The Plight of Battered Women in California and a Proposal for Revising the California Self-Defense Law
![handle is hein.journals/scws3 and id is 313 raw text is: ABUSED WOMEN ABUSED BY THE
LAW: THE PLIGHT OF BATTERED
WOMEN IN CALIFORNIA AND A
PROPOSAL FOR REVISING
THE CALIFORNIA
SELF-DEFENSE LAW
KYM C. MILLER*
To be, or not to be-that is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.1
I. INTRODUCTION
Brenda Clubine, who filed forty-six police reports against her
husband, told of being stabbed, having her nose broken, and having
the skin torn from her face.' Brenda Aris recited how her husband,
after having severely beaten her in the face, put his hands around her
neck and said, 'I've had it with you. I don't believe I'm going to let
you live till morning'.3 On Tuesday, September 17, 1991, ten state
legislators spent four hours in the confines of the California Institu-
tion for Women (CIW) listening to testimony of battered women4 who
* B.A. 1988, Political Science, Stanford University; J.D. 1993, Santa Clara University
School of Law. The author currently works in Alternative Dispute Resolution and dedicates this
article to her daughter, Jennifer.
1. WILLIAM SHAKFSPEARE, THE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK act 3, sc. 1
(the author intends this quote to be read out of context from the rest of the Hamlet play and
therefore not as a reference to suicide).
2. Patt Morrison, Legislators Listen to Women Who Killed; Jurisprudence: The Officials
Visit a Prison for a Hearing on Whether Battered Wives Who Murdered Their Abusive Husbands
Belong Behind Bars, L.A. TAmms, Sept. 18, 1991, at A3.
3. Id.
4. For the purposes of this article, [a] battered woman is a woman who is repeatedly
subjected to any forceful physical or psychological behavior by a man in order to coerce her to](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/scws3&div=17&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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