Books and
Cooks West
October 2003
Murder and the Reasonable Man by Cynthia Lee
Murder and the Reasonable Man:
Passion and Fear in the Criminal Courtroom
by Cynthia Lee
Nate's Place
Saturday, October 26 at 5:30 PM
Pizza, salad, wine, smoothies, brownies, angle-food cake
Our rating: 2.75 cups of tea!
A man murders his wife after she has admitted her infidelity; another
man kills an openly gay teammate after receiving a massage; a third
man, white, goes for a jog in a "bad" neighborhood, carrying a pistol,
and shoots an African American teenager who had his hands in his
pockets. When brought before the criminal justice system, all three men
argue that they should be found "not guilty"; the first two use the
defense of provocation, while the third argues he used his gun in
self-defense.
Drawing upon these and similar cases, Cynthia Lee shows how
two well-established, traditional criminal law defenses—the doctrines
of provocation and self-defense—enable majority-culture defendants to
justify their acts of violence. While the reasonableness requirement,
inherent in both defenses, is designed to allow community input and
provide greater flexibility in legal decision-making, the requirement
also allows majority-culture defendants to rely on dominant social
norms, such as masculinity, heterosexuality, and race (i.e., racial
stereotypes), to bolster their claims of reasonableness. At the same
time, Lee examines other cases that demonstrate that the reasonableness
requirement tends to exclude the perspectives of minorities, such as
heterosexual women, gays and lesbians, and persons of color.
Murder and the Reasonable Man not only shows how largely
invisible social norms and beliefs influence the outcomes of certain
criminal cases, but goes further, suggesting three tentative legal
reforms to address problems of bias and undue leniency. Ultimately, Lee
cautions that the true solution lies in a change in social attitudes.
