Throughout the U.S., survivors of home violence and their allies have been intently watching the end result of a trial seen as yet one more bellwether for the way in which wherein individuals who defend themselves from abusive relations are handled by this nation’s authorized system.
On October 21, after greater than three years of going through homicide fees and a 10-day trial, Wendy Howard, a 53-year-old mom and abuse survivor, heard the jury’s verdict.
The Kern County, California, jury discovered her not responsible of first and second-degree homicide, involuntary manslaughter and imperfect self-defense within the demise of her ex-partner Kelly Rees Pitts. However jurors deadlocked, seven to 5, on the cost of voluntary manslaughter.
That impasse signifies that Kern County district legal professional (DA), Cynthia Zimmer, can deliver Howard to trial once more on that remaining cost. The court docket will maintain a listening to on November 18 wherein Zimmer’s workplace will announce whether or not she’s going to retry Howard.
“The excellent news is that Wendy obtained to go house together with her household yesterday, with out being instantly arrested and despatched on to jail for many years. For this, we’re really relieved,” the Defend Wendy campaign introduced in a press statement. However, they added, “this ordeal will not be over. The DA’s option to pursue this trial towards Wendy has had devastating penalties for Wendy and her household for over three years after Wendy defended herself from a person who attacked and terrorized her and her household for years.”
The marketing campaign continues to name on Zimmer’s workplace to drop all fees towards Howard.
The Abusive Nightmare That Led to Howard’s Incarceration
Howard’s nightmare started years earlier. She had met Pitts in 2002. All through their relationship, Pitts bodily and sexually abused her.
In 2006, he sexually abused Howard’s then-12-year-old daughter Miranda, who reported his abuse to the police. Police investigated and referred the case to the Kern County district legal professional, who declined to file fees.
His violence didn’t cease when Howard turned pregnant with their daughter Bayley. As Howard testified in court, he beat her with a baseball bat, choked her and tried to rape her. Later, he tried to sexually abuse Bayley as properly.
Even after their relationship ended, Howard remained fearful of Pitts, who lived a number of blocks away.
In June 2019, Howard realized about Pitts’s sexual abuse towards Bayley. They referred to as police who started an investigation however cautioned Howard and her daughters to behave usually round Pitts.
Days later, Pitts rode to her home on his ATV (or all-terrain automobile). “I used to be uneasy that I used to be in a scenario the place I needed to act regular,” Howard testified in court docket. “I don’t know learn how to act regular in the direction of somebody who I simply came upon molested my daughter.”
Ultimately, she confirmed him a photograph of him touching her daughter’s breasts. “He began getting that look in his eyes that I’ve handled earlier than,” she recalled on the stand. “Like he’s going to a darkish place in his thoughts.”
From her previous experiences, Howard knew that look was a warning of impending violence. Pitts started driving towards her, operating over her foot. Howard shot him. He died. She was arrested for homicide. Her preliminary bail was set at 1 million {dollars}; she spent 99 days in jail earlier than the decide diminished the bail quantity to $500,000, permitting her launch.
The decide additionally placed a gag order on Howard, her protection legal professional and the district legal professional’s workplace, stopping them from talking to the press. That gag order stays in place.
Anger and Phantom Intentions
Alisa Bierria is a co-founding member of Survived and Punished, a nationwide community that works with and helps criminalized survivors. Together with members of the Defend Wendy marketing campaign, she was in court docket throughout Howard’s 10-day trial.
All through the trial, Deputy District Lawyer Eric Smith tried to depict Howard as offended and, due to this fact, not afraid of Pitts.
This isn’t an uncommon tactic, Bierria advised Truthout, noting that Florida prosecutor Angela Corey did the identical when Marissa Alexander tried to invoke the state’s stand your floor regulation in 2012. Alexander had fired a single warning shot at her then-husband Rico Gray who was within the midst of assaulting her. The decide dominated towards Alexander, stating that she may have exited her own residence as an alternative.
“The DA argued that she couldn’t have been afraid as a result of she was offended,” Bierria recalled.
“Portray survivors who act in self-defense as offended and due to this fact not afraid is a sample and it’s very efficient.”
Leigh Goodmark, director of the College of Maryland’s Gender Violence Clinic and writer of Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism, agrees. “If you’re offended, then you aren’t afraid and in case you are offended that you’re not passive, and people are issues that we anticipate of victims,” she advised Truthout. “For those who can persuade a jury that somebody is offended or jealous or drunk or any one among 100 different issues fairly than [that they are] afraid as they maintain telling you they’re, it’s a lot simpler to imagine that they’ve taken some form of offensive motion towards their companions and justify their prosecution.”
At trial, Howard acknowledged that, through the three days between studying of Pitts’s sexual abuse and their confrontation, she felt quite a lot of feelings, together with concern, anger and despair. However the prosecutor centered particularly on anger, specializing in textual content messages, and downplaying and dismissing Howard’s different feelings.
“Courts and different programs produce what I name phantom intentions,” Bierria defined. “It’s not simply that they impose false intentions onto survivors. In the middle of attempting to prosecute them, they assemble a complete different persona with a complete different set of intentions to make the case that this individual deserves to be in jail.”
The Authorized Nightmare Continues
On November 18, Howard should return to court docket to be taught whether or not Zimmer will retry her for voluntary manslaughter, forcing her, her kids, and the opposite survivors who testified about Pitts’s violence to relive these experiences earlier than a jury.
That’s what occurred to 53-year-old Michaele Bowers, one other Kern County mom who was charged with homicide within the 2017 demise of her abusive boyfriend. At trial, her protection legal professional argued that she shot him after he threatened to kill her and chased her into the bed room. When her March 2019 trial led to a hung jury, Zimmer’s workplace introduced her to trial once more in February 2020. That too led to a hung jury.
Zimmer’s workplace supposed to deliver her to trial a 3rd time. To keep away from this third authorized ordeal, Bowers pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to six years in prison.
Going by means of a number of trials, Bierria famous, “is a form of torture.” It forces survivors to relive — and re-explain — the numerous situations of abuse they’ve endured. It provokes nervousness for them and their relations and racks up 1000’s of {dollars} in authorized charges. However by doing so, Bierria continued, prosecutors “mainly coerce the sufferer — on this case, Ms. Bowers — into accepting a plea deal. She mentioned she couldn’t do that once more.”
This will have additionally despatched a chilling message to Wendy Howard, who sat in court during Bowers’s sentencing.
In its announcement about Bowers’s plea agreement, Zimmer’s workplace acknowledged, “The District Lawyer’s Workplace is cognizant of how incidents of home violence can affect relationships.”
“As soon as a sufferer turns into a defendant, it is sort of a change flips for the prosecutor they usually can not see the broader context anymore,” defined Goodmark. “They’ll’t see the victimization of both Wendy Howard or her youngsters. Nothing else issues for them besides this discreet incident. Prosecutors act as if they’ve by no means had entry to any of that different info and proceed to not have entry to any of that different info.”
Wendy’s Combat Is A part of a Broader Battle for Criminalized Survivors
“This one story is indicative of a broader disaster,” mentioned Bierria. She famous the significance of protection campaigns, reminiscent of Wendy Howard’s and Marissa Alexander’s, in not solely supporting the person survivor but additionally elevating consciousness and shifting perceptions.
“My hope is that, with each marketing campaign, the general public understands increasingly more that the legal authorized system will not be an advocate for home violence survivors,” Bierria mentioned. These campaigns embody not solely court docket assist, but additionally public schooling reminiscent of twitter storms, social media outreach and standard schooling curricula, reminiscent of community-based research reports produced by Survived and Punished.
On the identical time, she factors to the cultural and linguistic shift {that a} decade of protection organizing has achieved. “The phrase ‘criminalized survivor’ has been taken up as a extra widespread time period,” she mentioned. “The language was once ‘sufferer defendants,’ which naturalizes the prosecution of survivors as if there isn’t a system and other people working within the system making very particular decisions to punish and criminalize survivors.”
Goodmark, whose Twitter deal with is “Recovering Carceral Feminist—Ask Me How,” has labored with survivors of gender-based violence for greater than 20 years. “I don’t have religion that this method will ever deal with criminalized survivors, with the justice and the dignity that they deserve,” she mentioned. “That’s what led me to lastly turn out to be an abolitionist after a few years of this work, as a result of I don’t suppose the system will ever do it.”
As they await her November listening to, the Defend Wendy marketing campaign continues to name for Zimmer’s workplace to drop all fees towards Howard. It additionally continues to fundraise to cover the mounting costs of Howard’s legal fees.
As Howard’s daughter Bayley advised Truthout earlier than the trial began, “This technique failed us right here.”
