THE news is always awash with tragic stories of lovers killing or assaulting each other over alleged infidelity and betrayal.
Rights: MIRIAM TOSE MAJOME
Crimes of passion are unlawful violent acts committed in the heat of the moment.
They are committed without any premeditation or prior thinking.
Always violent, they take many forms, ranging from threats, assault, attempted murder or even murder.
A love nest, where only dreamy whispers were once murmured, can turn into a bloody and grisly crime scene in the twinkling of an eye.
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One lover may feel a sudden strong impulse like rage or envy over an issue and just lash out against the other supposedly without regard to the consequences.
No prior malicious intent should belie the spontaneous action for it to be regarded a crime of passion.
Crimes of passion are not exclusive to romantic ventures gone bad and lovers turned rogue, but also refer to other violent acts that are committed impulsively.
A football fan, who suddenly strikes another cold over a mere argument about the sport, also commits a crime of passion.
There should be no opportunity to reflect on the deed or sufficient time to reconcile the act with the consequences.
The emotion is believed to completely take over, but without an existing intention to kill or strike.
It should just happen without thinking. The court is faced with the dilemma of adjudicating a killing, but a killing committed without intent to kill.
Killing, no matter how brutal and violent, is not always regarded as murder because murder involves an element of premeditation and intention.
Premeditation
Agreed that discovering a lover’s unfaithfulness is one of life’s sharpest pains and can have one teetering on the edge of insanity.
The wish to inflict revenge and inflict pain on the cheating partner is only human.
However, actually plotting and scheming to kill them by loading a gun, buying rat poison, sharpening a knife or boiling cooking oil and successfully carrying on the plan is murder.
It will not be a spontaneous heat of the moment action.
Such a planned killing involves all the elements of murder because it is unlawful, intentional and premeditated. So, not all killings of romantic partners are regarded as crimes of passion, as most are just calculated cold blooded murders.
Unfaithful women
Crimes of passion are committed by both men and women. Anybody at all, who is spurned in love, can lash out against the other partner in rage.
However, there is an enduring unspoken belief that it is sometimes excusable and understandable to assault a cheating lover.
This belief is deeper if the cheating lover is a woman and more especially a wife.
Despite popular misconceptions, the belief is not unique to African cultures and other less developed countries. It is a universally held belief, even in the supposedly enlightened western world.
In European countries, the attitudes are steadily changing somewhat, with married women being less commonly regarded as the personal and private property of men.
Despite that, provocation is still a very common line of defence for people, especially men charged with assaulting or killing their partners for infidelity.
Men often defend themselves on the grounds that they felt humiliated and disrespected as men to catch their partners in flagrante delicto.
Women are not precluded from using this line of defence, either. Men usually say they felt drawn to violence to restore their masculinity and male honour.
A woman’s actual or alleged infidelity is usually enough to elicit some measure of condonation in the public eye.
Despite all advances and pretensions to modernity, the world still deems the unfaithfulness of women as worse and far less tolerable than that of men.
Murder by its name
For years until recently, provocation was a perfectly acceptable ground of defence in countries like France, Italy and the United Kingdom (UK) among other advanced countries.
In the UK, provocation was an acceptable ground of defence for a crime of passion until very recently in 2010.
Cheating with another man’s wife was and is still regarded as the highest invasion of property and an act of provocation.
The defence of provocation was replaced with that of “loss of control”, which is still regarded as unsatisfactory by defenders of women’s rights.
Many other world jurisdictions have struck the defence of provocation down or restricted its application as the go to defence for a charge of domestic violence.
Claiming provocation excuses violence and gives men a comfortable landing pad and escape from recrimination.
In recent years, there have been big strides made by United Nations Women and various women’s and interest groups in various countries to compel review of their local laws.
The mammoth problem of domestic violence and murder of women from crimes of passion should never be allowed to find easy defences and excuses.
Historic roots
Traditionally, crimes of passion offenders were and are still treated more leniently than for committing other violent crimes.
The leniency with which crimes of passion are regarded is rooted in Roman Law. Emperor Augustus Caesar of the Roman Empire implemented the moral code Lex Julia de adulteris coercendis in regard to adultery.
The code permitted fathers to kill their unmarried unchaste daughters and also husbands to kill their unfaithful wives.
All three Abrahamic religions i.e. Islam, Christianity and Judaism specifically address adultery by women.
The Bible, Quran and the Torah all give guidance on how to deal with non-virginal brides on their wedding night.
There is a myriad of verses in all the authoritative religious texts prescribing how to kill cheating wives.
The murder style of choice for cheating wives in all three Abrahamic religions is death by stoning.
Cheated husbands, who subscribe to any of the three religions, are spoilt for choice and can cherry-pick supporting verses at will.
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Provocation is a partial defence for a charge of killing a partner in a moment of madness.
This means a successful plea of provocation can change a charge from murder to culpable homicide.
Killing without intent is called culpable homicide.
Culpable homicide is also a very serious charge, but carries a less severe sentence than murder and lesser social and legal implications.
The courts would deem that the conduct of the deceased partner could also have contributed to the criminal conduct of the attacker.
The cheating spouse is regarded as having contributed to the crime by his or her provocative behaviour.
Therefore, the culpability of the killer is reduced and the victim posthumously shares the blame for their own death.
However, we need to move beyond this and get to a stage where adultery is never used as an excuse for violence in relationships or killing romantic partners and getting away with murder.
Miriam Tose Majome is a lawyer and a teacher. She can be contacted on enquiries@legalpractitioners.org