Defendant’s Battered Person Syndrome

Appeals Court Grants New Trial Because Defense Counsel Did Not Address Defendant’s Battered Person Syndrome

Battered Person Syndrome is a form of post-traumatic stress disorder in which a person who has been subjected to chronic abuse believes that, among other things, she deserves it. She will often become submissive and apologetic to her abuser until she’s able to recognize that the abuser is the one at fault. Often at that point, she may begin to defend herself.

Cobb Superior Court found a defendant guilty of aggravated assault when she protected herself against her methamphetamine-enraged boyfriend. The defendant, possibly a victim of Battered Person Syndrome, filed a motion for a new trial, believing that her trial counsel was insufficient, but the court denied her.

Georgia’s Court of Appeals reviewed the case and noted that her attorney erroneously believed that he was too late to ask for a continuance so that he could “investigate and obtain expert evidence regarding battered person syndrome, which was crucial to {the defendant’s] sole defense of justification.” The Court also showed that the evidence presented during trial supported the presentation of Battered Person Syndrome in the defendant, which coincided with her behavior and actions. The diagnosis would have permitted her a jury charge asking the jurors to consider the defendant’s situation in protecting herself from what she felt was imminent danger.

Because the Court determined that the defendant’s counsel did not perform adequately, the Court granted her a new trial and reversed the trial court’s decision.