CAEFS is of the view that these cases demonstrate abuse of prosecutorial authority. Neither Kim Kondejewski nor Lilian Getkate should have been charged at all, in light of the evidence of the threats they were acting under. At the very most, they should have been charged with manslaughter so as to obviate the very high stakes of a first degree murder trial. CAEFS points out that these were both cases in which there was evidence supporting the women’s claim that they were under threat. This is so despite the fact that the Crown in the Getkate case made public and media statements to the effect that “there was no evidence of abuse” in her case. In fact, the house was wired to blow up, much as Getkate had stated that the deceased had threatened to do. In many cases, such as the recent murder of a Québec woman at a shelter (Peritz, 1999), women have no physical evidence to back up their fear that their mates will kill them and thus are not in a position to demand criminal law intervention. These not uncommon predicaments pose a serious challenge to a criminal justice system committed to preserving women’s lives and to treating them justly if intervention prior to self-defensive homicide does not occur.

These cases show that women who defend against violent men are still considered the real criminals by our criminal justice system, and that they will be treated in a very heavy-handed manner by prosecutors in the guise of “gender neutrality”. The need for federal leadership is made manifest by examples such as these. After all, the Criminal Code itself and the mandatory minimum sentence for murder together put battered women in this untenable position. The Charter, as well as basic decency, requires that the federal government respond to Judge Ratushny’s recommendations in this regard. To reform the law of self-defence in the absence of resolution of such prosecutorial dilemmas at the provincial level will compound injustice and forestall this necessary legal change.

CAEFS suggests that a national consultation on how to create workable prosecutorial guidelines for the provinces and territories would be extremely productive. Ideas that could be considered include a guideline that recommends that no charges be laid against a battered woman who has killed her mate where there is any evidence supporting her assertion that she acted under threat of violence; a mechanism to allow review or legal challenge, by way of a preliminary motion, to a prosecutorial decision to proceed with murder charges in these circumstances; formalized training for the Crown Attorneys who must make such decisions; and a legal requirement that the Crown seek and receive approval from the Attorney General of the province, much as they must do when they seek to prosecute hate mongers and child abductors, before charging a battered woman with murder in relation to the death of her mate.