Dead Until Proven Innocent

In one of the funniest recent episodes of South Park, Stan’s little brother Ike’s kindergarten teacher seduces the toddler, gets caught, and, in a press conference before the trial, declares to be sorry, and that “…I am an alcoholic”. 

The crowd of reporters, cops and specators nod their heads, and eventually cheer the woman as she goes to rehab. 

It was funny (in South Park’s sick little way) – and pretty dead-on. 

As it were. 

But we’ll get back to that.

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Domestic abuse, of course, is no joke.  People get killed.  Although research shows that men and women are about equally likely to initiate domestic violence, women are more-usually injured or killed in these incidents.  Nobody is denying that. 

And it’s galling to have to make sure I’m understood on that point, since if I don’t some moron will pipe up “ah, so you condone domestic violence”.  Far from it.  But pointing out, for example, that women commit any violence, much less initiate their fair share of it, inflames some of this issue’s dogmatists.  And when  you start trying to address some of the problems in the system itself, some of them get downright apoplectic.

Those problems are pretty serious, though:

• In Minnesota, much of the funding to deal with domestic abuse is allocated according to the “Battered Womens’ Act”, a piece of legislation that, in effect, legally ignores abuse of men, and covers its eyes and plugs its ears and screams “nya nya nya I can’t hear you” when one tries (legally) to address the issue. 
• Some studies estimate that as many as half of domestic abuse allegations are brought immediately before and during divorce proceedings, and that as many as half of those are fake; charging domestic abuse is the “Nuclear Option” in custody battles; the allegation alone is frequently an insurmountable trump card.

Abuse is wrong.  And so is abuse of abuse.

———-

The issue became front-page news last fall…

…well, no.  “The issue” barely made a dent in last fall’s Strib pre-election hatchet job on Alan Fine. The Strib reported that Fine, who was running against DFLer Keith Ellison for the Fifth District congressional seat, had been arrested for domestic abuse in 1994.  The report ran at the top of Page A-1, naturally.  When Scott Johnson at Powerline brought up that there was never any physical evidence against Fine, and that he’d been released, never charged, and that eventually Fine’s ex-wife lost custody of their son to Fine – for domestic abuse! – the Strib carried Fine’s response.  On Page B7.

The Strib, acting as an organ of Keith Ellison’s campaign, used society’s partly-justified myopia about domestic abuse to put ill-informed votes in Keith Ellison’s column – votes that, in the long run, he scarcely needed, but wrong is wrong.

———-

All of that is a lot of background to a really sad, pathetic story; that of Mary Winkler, who was released from jail after serving a little over two months, after being convicted of shooting her husband in the back with a 12 gauge shotgun as he lay in bed.

Her defense?  Abuse, of course.

She then packed her three young daughters, ages 8, 6 and 1, in the family car and drove to Alabama, where she was taken into custody the following day.

During her trial in April, she claimed that she had been abused by her husband, with whom she had appeared to have an ideal marriage. She claimed not to remember getting the shotgun from a closet in their bedroom nor discharging it.

Winkler said that her husband, mortally wounded, rolled off the bed and asked her, “Why?” She said she told him she was sorry.

She was indicted on a charge of first-degree murder, but on April 19, after eight hours of deliberation, the jury found her guilty of voluntary manslaughter. On June 8, she was sentenced to 210 days in prison, with credit given for 143 days she had spent in jail the previous year before making bail. The judge allowed her to spend 60 of the remaining 67 days of her sentence in a mental health facility.

She was not, of course, a person with a long record of being abused.  Indeed, there was no record at all.  Not one domestic abuse call to their house.  Not one shred of physical evidence; not a single bruise, not a single scratch that Mrs. Winkler herself even saw fit to put on the record with a visit to a single doctor. 

Matthew Winkler was a minister at the Fourth Street Church of Christ, a denomination that believes in a literal interpretation of the Bible, including Saint Paul’s teaching that women should be submissive to their husbands.

Mary Winkler’s attorneys claimed that she was beaten by her husband. She said at her trial that he made her watch pornographic videos and wear “slutty” outfits for sex. She said he was controlling and criticized her constantly.

Leave aside the alleged beatings – of which there was apparently no evidence, physical or documentary, whatsoever – for a moment.  All Mrs. Winkler’s other allegations are grounds for, perhaps, examining one’s theology, having a long talk with hubby about one’s bedroom practices, and calling a family therapist or a divorce lawyer. 

Not 12-gauge justice.

Let’s re-iterate; at no time did Mrs. Winkler introduce any evidence that she was “abused” in any sense that’d be recognized, at all, by women and men who do get beaten, punched, stabbed, slapped, burned and kicked every day in this country. She would seem to have introduced no evidence that would have convicted her late husband of any form of domestic battery, were he alive to participate.

None.

No, she introduced a pair of high heels – PG-13-rated strappy “FM” shoes that wouldn’t draw a second glance at all-ages night at any Twin Cities nightclub as evidence of the late Reverend Winkler’s untrammeled perversion. 

The defense responded:

At the time of the killing, the couple had been having arguments about their finances. Prosecutors introduced evidence that Mary Winkler had gotten involved in an online Nigerian check-kiting fraud and had written checks for thousands of dollars. That, the prosecution argued, was the real source of the friction in the marriage.

We’ll probably never know, of course, the real truth of what happened in the Winkler marriage (other than “nothing that Mrs. Winkler managed to bring to any official attention, in a society that meets abused women much, much more than halfway, and that is indeed biased, perhaps justifiably so, toward excessive caution in matters of domestic violence”).   We’ll never know, it’s likely, whether Mr. Winkler did anything that, in a rational universe, would justify having his insides turned to Innard Hash with a 12-gauge blast through the back as he slept (and please bear in mind that I am an advocate for the rights of genuinely-abused people to resist violence with lethal force, and for giving them the means to do so via the Minnesota Personal Protection Act), or whether he was a “controlling” jerk with some “quirks” who was too horny and “kinky” for his wife’s tastes.  It merely seems that the only evidence introduced at trial pointed toward the latter.

Apparently those are now capital crimes in Tennessee.  If you’re a husband, anyway.

Abuse – the real thing, genuine violence – is absolutely wrong.  And this ruling cheapens and devalues the meaning of the term for all the people out there who are suffering from the real thing, day in and day out, no matter what the Winkler’s situation was.

I’ll pray for the daughters.  Especially if their mother ends up getting custody.