Through Prof. Nancy Neiman Auerbach's Food Politics class last semester, I did an internship at Crossroads Inc, a transitional home for women on parole. I found out that the majority of these women were released from prison because of the battered women's law that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed in 2004. For this weeks blog, I decided to track down that law, which I found out is classified as California Penal Code §1437.5. Part a says that women in prison can petition for a "writ of habeas corpus" to have their case reevaluated if "expert testimony relating to intimate partner battering and its effects...was not received in evidence at the trial". Section C was harder for me to decipher. From my understanding it meant that women who have already petitioned to have their cases reevaluated, and in this reevaluation the court deemed that expert testimony relating to battered women syndrome did not affect the case outcome, than they can be denied a petition to another reevaluation.
Here's a link to a court case In re Hudie Joyce Walker, on Habeas Corpus
in which this law is used to trump Walker's original conviction (19 years to life in prison for second degree murder) and send her to the Los Angeles Superior Court for a new trial.
-Catherine
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