Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 9, 1994 TAG: 9401090064
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MANASSAS LENGTH: Medium
But one jury has already rejected her version of events, finding John Bobbitt innocent of marital sexual assault. It's Lorena Bobbitt's turn Monday, when her trial for malicious wounding begins.
The outcome of the second trial is not likely to prove what happened in the Bobbitts' Manassas bedroom June 23, but it could have implications for women who claim abuse provoked them to violence, lawyers and observers say.
Would a jury conviction of this one woman in this single celebrated case deal a blow to all women's believability in abuse cases?
"That really remains to be seen," said Vivian Todini, spokeswoman for the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York City. Regardless of the outcome, Todini said the case should spur beneficial discussion of domestic violence.
Would it be a benefit? "Nonsense," responded Paul Erickson, an attorney for John Bobbitt. "If she is convicted, it sets women back 20 years in terms of rape cases."
The National Organization for Women "should be very careful about elevating to martyr status what turns out in this case to be a false prophet," Erickson said.
"I think it really would be a shame if she were convicted," said Minouche Kandel, a lawyer with the Support Network for Battered Women in Mountain View, Calif. She said, however, that Lorena Bobbitt has a difficult case to prove.
"A lot of times, it does come down to one person's word against the other," Kandel said. "Traditionally when that's the case, the man's word is valued over hers. I think that's what happened in his case."
The attack on 26-year-old John Bobbitt occurred after he returned home from a night of drinking with a buddy.
He said he went straight to bed. He remembers his wife initiating sex but doesn't recall if they finished.
She testified she was asleep when a drunken Bobbitt pinned her to the bed and raped her, then told her he didn't care that he had "hurt my feelings."
No one disputes what Lorena Bobbitt did next. With a red-handled kitchen knife, she severed two-thirds of her sleeping husband's penis, then fled their apartment with the organ and the knife. The penis, found later beside the road, was surgically reattached.
Bobbitt, 24, will argue she was a battered wife driven to the point of temporary insanity. Physical, sexual and emotional abuse led to an "irresistible impulse" to maim her husband, pretrial summaries of her case said.
Defense attorney Blair Howard said a psychiatrist hired by the defense diagnosed Lorena Bobbitt with several mental disorders. State doctors who evaluated her for the prosecution "say she is suffering from a lot of depression," Howard said.
"Whatever Lorena Bobbitt is, she is not a battered wife," said Erickson, her husband's lawyer.
At John Bobbitt's trial, prosecutor Paul B. Ebert described Lorena Bobbitt as a sexually battered woman who "lashed out at the very thing that hurt her."
Now, with the defendants flipped, Ebert will argue that she was sane when she attacked her husband.
Bobbitt is expected to testify against his estranged wife at the new trial. The felony charge of malicious wounding carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.
The battered-woman defense that Howard is basing his case upon is largely an expansion of the concept of self-defense. Women have argued, with some success, that they were prompted to kill a mate by repeated beatings or other abuse, as opposed to a single threatening act.
Experts say Lorena Bobbitt's case differs from most battered women's.
"Ordinarily, these women use deadly force against their abuser" because they fear for their own lives, said Brenda Smith, director of the Women's Law Center in Washington. "What Mrs. Bobbitt did seems a little more calculated. It seems intended not to kill him, but to injure or disfigure him, and that may be one of the hurdles for her."
Also, the Bobbitts were planning to end their four-year marriage and Lorena Bobbitt knew her husband was moving out.
That could complicate any argument she might make that she was warding off future abuse, Kandel said.
John Bobbitt's lawyers claim his wife planned the attack in retaliation for his leaving her.
by CNB