The Supreme Court of Kenya on Friday, April 11, dismissed a petition by Ruth Kamande, who sought recognition for women who act out of suffering after prolonged abuse to be viewed differently from typical offenders.
Kamande, who was found guilty of murder after stabbing her boyfriend 25 times in 2015, had appealed her conviction on grounds of 'battered woman syndrome'.
In the petition, the Apex court was to make a landmark judgement on whether women in abusive marriages and accused of killing their spouses could use the aforementioned principle to demonstrate that their only means of escaping the abuse was to kill.
However, the Martha Koome-led court held that the battered woman syndrome has not attained the status of a stand-alone defence and it has to be raised in aid or as an extension of one of the existing legal stand-alone defences: self-defense, provocation or temporary insanity.
