Murder and the reasonable man : passion and fear in the criminal courtroom / Cynthia Lee.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lee, Cynthia, 1961-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Self-defense (Law)--United States.

Self-defense (Law).

Provocation (Criminal law)--United States.

Provocation (Criminal law).

Murder--United States.

Murder.

Judicial process--Social aspects.

Judicial process.

United States.

Physical Description:

xii, 371 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, [2003]

Summary:

A man murders his wife after she has admitted her infidelity; a male athlete kills an openly gay teammate after receiving a massage from him; a white man brings a pistol with him when he jogs through a "bad" neighborhood, and shoots an African American teenager who had his hands in his pockets. When brought before the criminal justice system, all three men plead "not guilty": the first two argue that they were provoked, while the third maintains he used his gun in self-defense. In this provocative book, Cynthia Lee demonstrates how two well-established, traditional criminal law defenses -- the doctrines of provocation and self-defense -- enable majority-culture defendants to justify their acts of violence. While the reasonableness requirement, inherent in both defenses, is designed to allow community input and provide greater flexibility in legal decision-making, the requirement also allows majority-culture defendants to rely on dominant social norms, such as masculinity, heterosexuality, and race, to bolster their claims of reasonableness. At the same time, Lee examines other cases that demonstrate that the reasonableness requirement tends to exclude the perspectives of minorities, such as heterosexual women, gays and lesbians, and people of color. Murder and the Reasonable Man not only shows how largely invisible social norms and beliefs influence the outcomes of certain criminal cases, but goes further, suggesting some tentative legal reforms to address problems of bias and undue leniency.

Contents:

Female infidelity

Unreasonable women, gay men, and men of color

Gay panic

Culture and crime

An overview of the doctrine of self-defense

Race and self-defense

Race and police use of deadly force

The elusive meaning of reasonableness

Toward a normative conception of reasonableness

The act-emotion distinction.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 349-364) and index.

ISBN:

0814751156

OCLC:

51216307