People v. Torres

• Citation: 488 N.Y.S.2d 358,128 Misc.2d 129
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of New York v. Lydia TORRES, Defendant.
• Decision Date: 16 April 1985
• Court: United States State Supreme Court (New York)

Page 358

488 N.Y.S.2d 358

128 Misc.2d 129

The PEOPLE of the State of New York v. Lydia TORRES, Defendant.

Supreme Court, Criminal Term,

Bronx County, Part 81.

April 16, 1985.

Richard Rodriguez, Bronx, for defendant.

Mario Merola, Dist. Atty., Bronx County, New York City, for the People; Kevin Colby, Asst. Dist. Atty., New York City, of counsel.

LAWRENCE H. BERNSTEIN, Justice:

In the early morning hours of October 7, 1983, Ruperto Rosado died as the result of three gunshot wounds he suffered while sitting in a chair in the living room of the apartment he shared with the defendant, Lydia Torres, his common-law wife. The defendant was arrested in connection with this fatal shooting and indicted for the crime of Murder in the Second Degree.

The case presents the timely and novel question in New York whether to admit in evidence certain expert testimony proffered by the defendant concerning the "battered woman's syndrome" to buttress defendant's claim that she shot the deceased in self-defense.

In New York, except for People v. Hamel, 96 A.D.2d 644, 466 N.Y.S.2d 748, a brief Third Department memorandum opinion, no reported decision has specifically addressed the question of the admissibility of testimony of this nature. ¹ In Hamel, the court sustained the refusal to admit psychiatric testimony that the defendant's conduct was induced by past psychological trauma involving sexual assaults and threats, but the specific nature of this excluded expert testimony--that is, whether it concerned the battered woman's syndrome--was never discussed. The court therein merely held that in the normal case in which a justification claim is raised it is best to exclude psychiatric evidence as to the defendant's state of mind.

Recently, in other jurisdictions, the battered woman's syndrome has been the subject of considerably more controversy, centering primarily upon whether the concept of a battered woman is a matter of commonly accepted scientific knowledge to warrant expert opinions with respect thereto. (See Frye v. United States, D.C.Cir., 293 F. 1013; also, compare Ibn-Tamas v. United States, 407 A.2d 626 (D.C.App.), with Buhrle v. State, 627 P.2d 1374 (Wyo.).

The courts that have considered the question whether to allow expert opinion about battered women have divided in their result, with the trend more in favor of its admissibility (compare the following cases which support admission--State v. Anaya, 438 A.2d 892 (Me.); Hawthorne v. State, 408 So.2d 801 (Fla.); Smith v. State, 247 Ga. 612, 277 S.E.2d 678; State v. Kelly, 97 N.J. 178, 478 A.2d 364; Ibn-Tamas v. United States, supra, 407 A.2d 626; State v. Allery, 101 Wash.2d 591, 682 P.2d 312, with the following which disallow the expert evidence: Buhrle v. State, supra, 627 P.2d 1374 and State v. Thomas, 66 Ohio St.2d 518, 423 N.E.2d 137).

In order to place defendant's offer of proof in its proper perspective, it is necessary to first summarize some of the law relating to the justification defense and then to briefly recite certain of the essential facts of the case from the defendant's standpoint:

Under the law of justification, a person may use deadly physical force against another when he reasonably believes that his defensive use of such deadly physical force is necessary to prevent serious physical injury or death to himself (Penal Law 35.15 subd. 2).

The standard for the evaluation of the reasonableness of the defendant's belief and conduct is not what the ordinary prudent man would have believed or done under the same circumstances. The test is, rather, whether the defendant's subjective belief as to the imminence and seriousness of the danger was reasonable (People v. Desmond, 93 A.D.2d 822, 460 N.Y.S.2d 619). It is the defendant's state of mind and sense of fear which is critical to a justification defense (See People v. Miller, 39 N.Y.2d 543, 384 N.Y.S.2d 741, 349 N.E.2d 841).

In this regard, proof of violent acts previously committed by the victim against the defendant as well as any evidence that the defendant was aware of specific prior violent acts by the victim upon third parties is admissible as bearing upon the reasonableness of defendant's apprehension of danger at the time of the encounter. (People v. Miller, supra, 39 N.Y.2d 543, 384 N.Y.S.2d 741, 349 N.E.2d 841).

In this case, the defendant did not merely offer proof of a few isolated instances of the deceased's past violent conduct to buttress the claim of self-defense. Instead, it was the theory of the defense that Lydia Torres was a battered woman; that is, a victim of prolonged physical and psychological maltreatment who, as a result of her intimate and long-term familiarity with the deceased's history of violence, was convinced at the time of the shooting that she was in serious danger.

To establish the reasonableness of this conviction, evidence was adduced from the defendant concerning her 10 year common-law relationship with the deceased. She recounted that her life with Rosado had been marred by recurring violent incidents separated by periods of relative calm and harmony, and that the deceased's frequent beatings of her and threats of harm were usually associated with his heavy drinking and accompanied by accusations of infidelity and disloyalty. At times, Rosado's violence escalated to more dangerous proportions as when, in the course of several domestic disputes, he menaced her with a knife and the pistol he was licensed to carry as the owner of a liquor store, and when, with the defendant as a bystander, he stabbed a young man in a street fight and shot another in an attempted robbery of the liquor store.

According to defendant's detailed testimony of the events that culminated in Rosado's death, at around 11:30 P.M. on October 6, 1983 she and Rosado closed the liquor store and returned to their apartment on 137th Street in the company of Roberto, the deceased's son by a prior marriage and Mochito, the defendant's brother. Soon after these relatives departed, a violent quarrel erupted in the bedroom. Rosado, who had been drinking, flew into a jealous rage, accusing the defendant of having sexual relations with his son Roberto. When she denied this, he grabbed her by the hair and repeatedly struck her in the face and back. Screaming that "this is going to be your last night", he placed his pistol firmly against her mouth. He then threw her on the bed, placed the gun on the night table, and walked into the living room where he sat down in a chair. From there, he continued to threaten the defendant, yelling: "I told you the day you would be unfaithful to me, I'll kill you". Convinced that the savageness of this behavior was different in degree from anything she had previously experienced and that this time the deceased really meant to kill her, the defendant grabbed the gun from the table, went into the living room and shot him three times while he sat in the chair.

To complete this portrait of defendant as a reactive victim of domestic violence, the defense proffered the expert opinion of Dr. Julie Blackman that Lydia Torres suffered from the battered woman's syndrome. Dr. Blackman is an assistant professor of psychology at Barnard College of Columbia University with a specialization in the psychology of women. She has conducted research into violence in the family and is awaiting publication of a book based thereon entitled Intimate Violence: A Study of Injustice. She has also published numerous papers in journals on the subject of battered women and on the nature of physical and sexual assaults in family systems.

A "Frye" hearing (see Frye v. United States, supra, 293 F. 1013) at which Dr. Blackman was the only witness was conducted outside of the presence of the jury to determine the relevance of her expert opinion as well as its admissibility under the standards for the acceptance of scientific evidence.

DESCRIPTION OF BATTERED WOMAN'S SYNDROME

According to Dr. Blackman's hearing testimony, a recognition by social scientists of the high incidence of wife beating has produced in the past decade intensive research into the forces that generate and perpetuate domestic violence against women. As a result of this effort, these social scientists have formulated what is termed the battered woman's syndrome, a description of identifiable psychological characteristics exhibited by women who have experienced physical and emotional abuse in an intimate relationship over an extended period of time.

Among the characteristics of such abused women are a decrease in self-esteem, an emotional dependence upon the dominant male and a type of psychological "learned" helplessness arising out of an inability to predict or control the violence directed against them. Numbed by a dread of imminent aggression, these women are unable to think clearly about the means of escape from this abusive family existence; and this emotional paralysis is often reinforced by their traditional beliefs about the sanctity of home and family and their false hopes that things will improve--the latter delusion generated by the brief periods of...