Freeing of women likely to spark debate

Press, 16 November 1981, Page 8

Freeing of women likely to spark debate

By

MARCEL BERLINS,

legal correspondent, and Dr TONY SMITH, medical correspondent of “The Times” (through NZPA) London Two women who killed or threatened to kill last week walked free from British courts after pleading that they acted “out of character” because of pre-menstrual tension. The cases of Miss Sandie Smith and Mrs Christine English are set to cause protracted argument among doctors arid lawyers, not to mention feminists and laypeople of both sexes. Beyond the medical and legal technicalities, lies the fundamental question: can a woman’s natural monthly cycle be commonly accepted as diminishing her responsibility for crimes from traffic offences to murder?

The courts have been faced for some years by women defendants who have explained or excused their crimes by reference to premenstrual tension. But judges have not yet developed a coherent or uniform response. The issue has most often been raised in cases of shop lifting, where the accused woman has attributed uncharacteristic absent-mind-edness to P.M.T. But this week’s cases have brought it to the fore as a factor in much graver criminal charges. Mrs English was conditionally discharged from Norwich Crown. Court on Tuesday after she had admitted killing her lover by running him down in her car. Her plea of guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diininished responsibility was accepted after she explained

that they had had a row when her lover said he had arranged to meet another woman. She followed him in her car and drove it at him, stepping on the accelerator. Mr Justice Purchas said he was satisfied she had committed the offence in “wholly exceptional circumstances.” On Monday, Miss Smith, a 29-year-old barmaid, was put on probation for threatening to kill- a policeman while carrying a knife. Her case was doubly interesting because she was already on probation for stabbing to death another barmaid, again during a period of pre-menstrual tension. Miss Smith had nearly 30 previous convictions for offences ranging from arson and assault to throwing bricks through windows, and had "dozens of times” ’tried to take her own life — again, all the incidents coinciding

with her pre-menstrual tension.

“My days of violence were caused by an illness which made my life hell — and hell for a lot of other innocent people,” she said in court. Her defence counsel said that, without daily injections of a hormone drug, progesterone, Miss Smith “became a raging animal each month.” The Recorder of London (Mr James Miskin, Q.C.) made a new probation order after hearing that the drug normally kept her “sane and benign.” Both judges accepted that the two women — on two separate occasions, in ■ the case of Miss' Smith — committed their offences under “exceptional conditions” caused by P.M.T., which did not warrant imprisonment. But the courts have not gone as far as treating P.M.T. as a defence in the sense, that the

defendant did not know what she was doing, and therefore ought to be acquitted altogether. They have accepted P.M.T. only as an extenuating factor. In its extreme form, however, it appears that P.M.T. can affect a woman so much that she is not responsible for her actions at all, and would not realise she was doing wrong. This raises far wider legal questions on the nature of criminal intent, which the courts will undoubtedly be faced with soon. It is not, however, thought that the two cases this week, and Miss Smith’s last year; will open the floodgates to women defendants claiming P.M.T. as a reason for their crimes. The medical evidence would have to be convincing that the condition was strong enough to have resulted in reducing her responsibility for her actions.

Many women, of course, suffer some degree of P.M.T. and are less than sweetness and light for a day or two.

Miss Smith, both this week and last year, was placed on probation on condition that she took injections of the drug progesterone. A similar order was also made last year on a ballet student convicted of attempted arson.

Both women showed significant improvement in their condition just before their periods, and Miss Smith only committed her later crime when, because of an error, she did not receive the drug. For the time being, therefore, judges can be expected to regard P.M.T. seriously, and pass sentences accordingly, with or without a condition of treatment. They are not yet prepared to consider that in every case P.M.T. should completely

negate criminal intent, thus resulting in acquittal. Despite 50 years research the basic facts about premenstrual- tension are still disputed, its symptoms .remain controversialand there is no agreement on treatment. Some doctors give progesterone, others give diuretic drugs to increase urine flow, others suppress the cycle by continuous treatment with oral contraceptives.

P.M.T. was first recognised by an American physician named R. T. Frank, who described women in the days just before menstruation developing “a condition of indescribable tension, and a desire to find relief by foolish actions difficult to restrain.” This was accompanied by swelling of the face and feet. All the symptoms were relieved when menstrual bleeding began.