Factors impacting juror perceptions of battered women who kill their abusers: Delay and sleeping status

Community members (N = 187) rendered judgments about a case of a battered woman who killed her abuser allegedly in self-defense. The experiment was designed to isolate the effects of time delay before killing and the victim's sleeping status, as prior research has confounded these two variables. Results showed that delay affected conviction rates only for women; men convicted at high rates regardless of delay, whereas women convicted at higher rates when the killing occurred following a long delay versus a short delay. Regardless of participant gender, sleeping status significantly predicted verdicts: conviction rates were higher when the victim was asleep than when he was awake. Implications for the use of the self-defense plea and potential policy changes related to domestic violence are discussed.