50 Year Sentence in Iowa

The case of Dixie Shanahan -- a horribly abused woman who shot and killed her husband in the head while he was sleeping, and then left his body to rot in a spare room -- has been attracting a lot of comment on talk radio and morning television. As this article describes, the Iowa trial judge who was (apparently) required by that State's law to sentence Ms. Shanahan to 50 years in prison was candid and blunt in criticizing that law: He blamed state lawmakers for rigid laws that are "in my opinion, wrong. It may be legal, but it is wrong." He added, "perhaps, Dixie, your case will make the Legislature . . . take notice and do something to untie the hands of the judges in this state." (The article also notes that Shanahan turned down a guilty-plea deal that would have required her to serve only 10 ten years).

This case raises (again) important questions about mandatory-sentencing laws and about whether the criminal law's definition of offenses and defenses coheres with the experiences of battered women. More generally, the case returns us to those early weeks in Criminal Law, when we talk about the purposes and justifications of punishment, about desert, retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, etc.

Also interesting are the facts that the final beatings suffered by Ms. Shanahan were precipitated by her refusal to have an abortion, as demanded by her husband; and that she claimed to have acted not only in self-defense, but in defense of her unborn child.

Rick