License to kill: men and women, crime and punishment - Columns - disproportionately light sentences given to women

Reason, July, 2002 by Cathy Young

Other cases never go to trial. In Brooklyn in 1987, Marlene Wagshall shot her sleeping husband, Joshua, in the stomach, crippling him for life, after finding a photo of him with a scantily clad woman. Wagshall was charged with attempted murder, but on the basis of her uncorroborated assertion that her husband had beaten her, District Attorney Elizabeth Holtzman, a strong champion of women's rights, let her plead guilty to assault with a sentence of one day in jail and five years' probation.

Even when feminists do not actively defend violent women, they hardly ever speak up against inappropriate leniency toward female defendants. Mostly, they refuse to admit that such leniency exists--perhaps because it would be heresy to concede that "patriarchy" has sometimes worked in women's favor--and prefer to focus on real or mythical instances in which the justice system treats women more harshly. (Battered women's advocates have promoted the wholly fictional factoid that a woman who kills her mate is sentenced to an average of 15 to 20 years in prison, while a man gets two to six years.)

As a result, if a man commits a violent crime against a woman and gets off lightly, an outcry from women's groups often follows. If it's the other way round, the only vocal protests are likely to come from the victim's family and from prosecutors.

The Working case, like the Wagshall case, received minimal publicity. Imagine the reaction if a judge had said publicly that a man who had ambushed and shot his estranged wife should have been spared prison because he was depressed over the divorce.

There are feminists, such as Patricia Pearson, author of the 1997 book When She Was Bad: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence, who find feminist paternalism toward women no less distasteful than the traditional kind. They argue that in the long run, excusing women's violence on the grounds of emotional problems may undercut women's ability to be seen as capable workers and leaders.

That may or may not happen. But even if women stand to lose nothing from the new double standards, any self-respecting feminist should still oppose them in the name of equal justice.

Cathy Young (cathyyoung2@cs.com) writes a column for The Boston Globe. She is the author of Cease-fire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality (Free Press).