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Despite this hard data, the myths persist that spousal murders consist almost exclusively of husbands who kill their wives and are then treated leniently by the criminal-justice system. Indeed, there is one figure that is strikingly missing from this otherwise thorough report: namely, whether women who murder their husbands are treated more leniently than husbands who murder their wives. I phoned the author of the report and asked if that data was available. He told me that it was but that it had not been compiled. I asked him if he would compile it and he did, faxing me new tables that compared the outcome of prosecution based on the gender of the victim and the accused. This previously unpublished data dramatically undercuts the myth that husbands who kill their wives are treated more leniently than wives who kill their husbands. The available evidence points overwhelmingly in the opposite direction, Wives who kill their husbands were acquitted in 12.9 percent of the cases studied, while husbands who kill their wives were acquitted in only 1.4 percent of the cases. Women who were convicted of killing their husbands were sentenced to an average of six years in prison, while men received an average of seventeen years for killing their wives, Sixteen percent of female spousal killers get probation, compared to 1.6 percent for males. By almost every other measure as well, female spousal killers are treated more leniently than male spousal killers. To be sure, some of the differences may be attributable to gender-neutral factors such as prior record, provocation, or mental illness. But there is absolutely no support in this data for the claim that husbands who kill their wives are systematically treated with kid gloves by the justice system.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Really? The left is willing to claim Dershowitz? Please. Take him away. He's yours. No backsies.

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Originally posted by Hardware:


Wives kill more than husbands do. What a politically inconvenient fact.

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Originally posted by NewOldBrownCoat:

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Originally posted by Hardware:


Wives kill more than husbands do. What a politically inconvenient fact.

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Dershowitz doesn't claim that, neither in the quote nor the longer piece.

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Despite the unexpected data produced by this justice Department study--that wives kill husbands much more frequently than media accounts suggest and that they are treated more leniently than husbands who kill--the press release issued by the justice Department to accompany the report buried this politically incorrect data under the following politically correct headline: "Wives are the most frequent victims in family murders." But even that conclusion obscures the real picture: that for all family murders--which includes killing of parents and children as well as spouses--55.5 percent of the victims were males and 44.5 percent females, and "female defendants were more likely than male defendants to have murdered a person of the opposite sex.

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While the similarity of rates of physical violence by wives and husbands presented by the various surveys is revealing, such data is not sufficient to make an accurate comparison of the violent nature of wives and husbands. As the definition of “physical violence” used in the various CTS-based studies ranges from “throwing something” to “using a knife or gun,” wives arguably could compare to husbands in use and frequency of violent behavior, but not in the severity of the type of violence employed.
Some differences per type of violence utilized by each sex are certainly evident. Women were found to be twice as likely to throw something at their husbands.Wives were also more likely than
husbands to kick, bite and punch. They were also more likely to hit, or try to hit, their spouses with something and more likely to threaten their spouses with a knife or gun. Husbands, on the other hand, rated higher in the four categories of pushing, grabbing and shoving, slapping or hitting, beating up and actually using a
knife or gun. Yet, such per category differences did not evidence that men were unquestionably more prone to acts of severe domestic violence than women. Combining the data collected on the last five categories of physical violence to create a “Severe Violence Index,” wives were found to engage in more severe acts of violence than husbands. Taking the frequency of severely violent behavior into account does not mitigate these findings. Wives show a pattern of severely violent behavior statistically comparable to husbands. Consistent with this “over-all similarity” found in the 1975 survey other early reports also found that husbands and wives show “equal potential” for intimate violence and that they “initiate[d] similar acts of violence.

These staggering findings on the use, frequency and severity of violence similarly perpetrated by husbands and wives kept sociologists committed to the study of family violence. In 1992, members of
the Family Violence Research Laboratory completed yet another nationally representative survey. The study reaffirmed that wives engaged in intimate violence at rates comparable to husbands. However, a comparison of the 1975, 1985 and 1992 studies also reveals an important trend. Despite the finding that husbands and wives were roughly equal in terms of the percentages of spouses who engaged in any act of violence, the gap in the use of severe violence by husbands and wives had widened. In comparing the 1975 and 1985 results,
researchers observed that while the male use of severe physical violence had declined 21%, the female use of such violence remained virtually constant. In the 1992 results, researchers again found that while severe assaults by wives remained fairly steady, the rate of severe abuse perpetrated by husbands decreased between 1985 and
1992 by almost 37%. In overall comparison to the constant rate of husband abuse, the combination of such significant decreases in wifebeating represented a 50% drop between 1975 and 1992.

While the study of husband abuse by the Family Violence Research Laboratory, its associates, and others engaged in similar projects has received some praise, such support has been completely
overshadowed by the degree and extent of criticism levied against it. Criticisms have ranged from personally attacking the researchers, to more academic efforts directed at attacking the work itself by denying the validity of the reports, to an outright defense of the violent behavior of women or otherwise minimizing its significance. Yet, while the nature of the criticisms has differed, they have invariably all been vehement...

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Originally posted by NewOldBrownCoat:

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Originally posted by Hardware:


Wives kill more than husbands do. What a politically inconvenient fact.

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Dershowitz doesn't claim that, neither in the quote nor the longer piece.

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such data is not sufficient to make an accurate comparison of the violent nature of wives and husbands.

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Originally posted by Hardware:

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Originally posted by NewOldBrownCoat:

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Originally posted by Hardware:


Wives kill more than husbands do. What a politically inconvenient fact.

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Dershowitz doesn't claim that, neither in the quote nor the longer piece.

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NOB,
Wow, reading comprehension is not a strong skillset for you, is it?

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Originally posted by Hardware:
http://www.law.fsu.edu/journals/lawreview/downloads/304/kelly.pdf

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While the similarity of

( SNIP the whole article)


invariably all been vehement...

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:

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Originally posted by NewOldBrownCoat:

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Originally posted by Hardware:


Wives kill more than husbands do. What a politically inconvenient fact.

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Dershowitz doesn't claim that, neither in the quote nor the longer piece.

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Yes, that was what I was thinking. Isn't he talking about sentencing?

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Originally posted by NewOldBrownCoat:

I KNOW I'M RIGHT, Dershowitz is a SCumbag, and anybody who believes him ABOUT ANYTHING is a DUMB-ASS.

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Originally posted by Hardware:

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Originally posted by NewOldBrownCoat:

I KNOW I'M RIGHT, Dershowitz is a SCumbag, and anybody who believes him ABOUT ANYTHING is a DUMB-ASS.

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Ad hominem.

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Originally posted by Hardware:

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Originally posted by NewOldBrownCoat:

I KNOW I'M RIGHT, Dershowitz is a SCumbag, and anybody who believes him ABOUT ANYTHING is a DUMB-ASS.

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Ad hominem. Come back when you have substance.

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Originally posted by Hardware:

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Originally posted by NewOldBrownCoat:

I KNOW I'M RIGHT, Dershowitz is a SCumbag, and anybody who believes him ABOUT ANYTHING is a DUMB-ASS.

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Ad hominem. Come back when you have substance.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:



Hmm, that actually depends. Just because language is insulting does not necessarily make an argument an ad hominem.

The argument that has been made against you is primarily one against your source, questioning his expertise on the subject and also his integrity. These are allowable points of debate and not fallacy, so long as the credibility of the source relates to the credibility of the information as presented, and may or may not be condemning of the information in of itself.

Thus, the comments and actual arguments at hand without insult translate approximately to "I can't believe you believe this guy, because he is not credible as a source." Therefore, not a fallacy. However, for the argument against the source to be complete, some kind of substantiation or evidence of the source and information lacking credibility is required, and merely being on a defense team of a famous murder trial is not sufficient. Side note: I haven't ever heard of this guy. I was a young moron at the time of the trial in question. However, there have been valid arguments against the credibility of the information, which are probably less ambiguous in terms of fallacy.

As for the topic... What kind of bizarre gender warfare thing is this? Does it matter which gender kills more? Do we take pride somehow in believing that our respective gender kills less?

All I care about is that it's bad.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:

As for the topic... What kind of bizarre gender warfare thing is this? Does it matter which gender kills more? Do we take pride somehow in believing that our respective gender kills less?

All I care about is that it's bad.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:

You only weren't ad hominem at Hardware here. You're otherwise skirting the grey area in regards to your argument against Hardware's source. And I'm possibly being generous about that, since I'm willing to buy your claim that the linked report in the original thread post was written dishonestly due to a conflict of interest.

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