1. Researching Domestic Homicide

xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS benefited from the perceptions of the following judges: Ron Adrine, Susan 1. Researching Domestic Carbon, Amy Karan, Lynn Tepper, Pete MacDonald, and Martha Glaze. A Homicide special thanks to Beckie Masaki of the Asian Women's Shelter in San Francisco for her insights into the complexities of domestic violence in Asian communities. I talked with a large number of prosecutors and defense attorneys in the course of this research. Again, I cannot mention their names, but I greatly appreciate their ability to fill in gaps, add anomalies, and pose difficult ques- tions. In my travels in Florida I also talked with a number of judges about domestic violence and domestic homicide, and I thank them here. Similarly, I appreciate the help of all the workers in medical examiners' offices, county When I was growing up in England we talked about soccer with religious courts, child protection agencies, police records divisions, and domestic vio- fervor, discussing the moves players made, the goals scored, different playing lence shelters who gave me information. I also thank the staff of the newspaper styles, players' speed and vision, their intentions, and, in our more reflective library at the University of Florida in Gainesville for helping me locate and moments, our overenmeshment in this game of beauty, joy, and sorrow. We read newspaper accounts of domestic homicides. played soccer ourselves and of course attempted to emulate those we adored. Claire Renzetti read the first draft of the manuscript and offered a number At some level the final score or result of the competition did not matter as of thoughtful suggestions. Her interest, insights, and kindness contributed much as the flair, the excitement, and the departure from dull routines. Even greatly to the gradual emergence of the final version. I thank her. Thanks also though we scrutinized league standings and memorized such essential facts to Bill Frohlich, Tara Mantel, and Ann Twombly at Northeastern. I am espe- as who had scored the most goals in a season, which team had spent the most cially grateful to Frank Austin for his meticulous copyediting money on players, and who had won a particular trophy, these ephemera were Most of this book was written in Flagstaff, Arizona. I am grateful to Alex usually a means to enter into the raw, lived experience of the art of soccer. Alvarez for his assistance with the homicide literature. Thanks as well to Jeff It was not until I came to live in the United States that I realized just how much soccer lent itself to detailed cpantification. I had never heard the game Ferrell for his- perceptive - - and- contagious---- sociological insights. The new Chair of the Department of Criminal Justice at ~orthernArizona University, Mari- discussed in percentages before. I had never &en a time clock on my television lyn McShane, has done a wonderful job of supporting my research activities. I screen, marking off the minutes until the final whistle. However, I became rec- am in her debt. My gaduate assistant Christiane Schubert astutely read my onciled to this cultural difference in the way soccer was appreciated and preliminary drafts, and I thank her. I am also gateful to the office staff in the explained by telling myself that the more detailed quantification in the United criminal justice department at Northern Arizona University, who helped in States is one way fans make "everyday empirical sense" of soccer and other many ways with writing and production. Special thanks to Jan Bishop and sports. On either side of the Atlantic, in our appreciation of soccer we employ Helena DeFina. what the sociologist C. Wright Mills once called "the everyday empiricism of On my travels in Florida I was often accompanied by Byron Johnson, with common sense," which is filled with the "assumptions and stereotypes of one whom I discussed a number of the ideas in this book. I am indebted to him or another particular society; for common sense determines what is seen and for his insights into my work. how it is to be explained."' Parts of Understanding Domestic Homicide were written in England, and Although everyday empiricism is employed to appreciate and make some I acknowledge the help of my parents, Molly and John Websdale. The book is sense of soccer, an "abstracted empiricism" dominates sociological and crimi- dedicated to my sisters, Jill Minter and Judy Flew. A special thanks to them for nological understandings of homicide in the United States. Mills refers to many kindnesses. Finally, I am grateful for the love and support of my wife, "abstracted empiricism" as that kind of reflection which leads only to the Amy, and our daughter, Mia, without whom this book could not have been "microscopic or subhistorical level." In his view, "What abstracted empiricists written. it 2 UNDERSTANDING DOMESTIC HOMICIDE t RESEARCHING DOMESTIC HOMICIDE 3 call empirical 'data' represent a very abstracted view of everyday social worlds. times did not count child deaths stemming from abuse and neglect. Similarly, ei; They normally deal, for example, with an age-level of a sex-category of an i those persons who committed suicide after killing one or more family members income-bracket of middle-sized citie~."~Abstracted empiricism dominates were usually not included among the ranks of domestic-homicide victims. i American criminology and has limited the overall understanding of homicide These omissions alone produce an underestimate of the number of domestic- in general, and of domestic homicide in particular. Amidst a plethora of causal violence fatalities. models, regression analyses, controls for this supposedly "discrete" variable or I Although the statutory definition of domestic violence excludes boyfriends that, criminologists lose sight of domestic homicide as a process. Rather, homi- and girlfriends who do not live together or have a child in common, these cides are frozen onto the pages of a supplemental homicide report and then deaths (around 20 in Florida in 1994) have dynamics similar to the cases that grafted onto some model or subjected to the latest statistical obscurity. Like formally meet the statutory definition. Consequently, I include such deaths as packaged frozen vegetables that have long since lost touch with a field or the domestic homicides. Counting the boyfriend-sgirlfriend homicides together earth, homicide statistics and the data sets they become a part of are convenient with all known child domestic deaths and the suicide victims gives a total of but usually bereft of flavor. In short, the use of abstracted empiricism to under- 319 domestic-homicide victims. I do not pretend that this working total stand homicide produces accounts and explanations that are about as far is exhaustive. However, I do contend that it conveys an "everyday empiri- removed from social life and historical change as the dead bodies that generated cal reality" of domestic homicide that is more accurate than the official fig- those statistics in the first place. ure of 230 that became enshrined in supplementary homicide reports from Abstracted empiricism is generally ill suited to understanding the complex Florida. microprocesses and cultural dynamics of domestic homicide. Using abstracted My analysis of domestic death is embedded in the constellations of daily empiricism, it is difficult to gain access to the interaction between human routines and personal interactions between persons connected through net- beings, their respective biographies, and their neighborhoods; it is also difficult works of kinship, those who often combine their earnings, or those who survive to understand the broader social, economic, and political structures that affect from a common pool of resources. Although sexual intimacy is a central and are in turn shaped by those microdynamics. In addition, the use of dynamic in many of the domestic homicides, and although it may appear thal abstracted empiricism, even within the ranks of such empiricists, is fraught other family homicides are somehow traceable to or derivative of those sexual - --- with chfkdyiftfre vziabk "ctorplesric homiciden is ~ubjecrto muftipie and relationships, to focus onIy on sexual intimacy would be to deny the role 01 conflicting social and legal definitions, at the same time as being susceptible to numerous other social forces. For example, it is difficult to explain the lethal significant errors in reporting. The Uniform Crime Reports for 1994 informed conflicts between brothers as part of the sexual intimacy between men, or a: us that there were 230 domestic homicides in Florida. Most police departments somehow deriving from the sexual intimacy or lack thereof between their par- use the Florida statute on domestic violence to classify a homicide as a domestic ents or caretakers. homicide. Florida law defines "domestic violence" as "any assault, battery, sex- In Chapters 2 through 6, I draw upon multiagency case files from the State ual assault, sexual battery, or any criminal offense resulting in physical injury of Florida to explore the microdynamics of intimate killing. Building upor or death of one family or household member by another who is or was residing an everyday empirical breakdown of who kills whom, and upon the essentia in the same single dwelling unit." A "family or household member" refers to demographic characteristics of perpetrators and victims, I move quickly intc "spouses, former spouses, persons related by blood or marriage, persons who relationship histories, familial dynamics, neighborhood, subcultural and cul. are presently residing together as if a family or who have resided together in turd phenomena, agency involvement, and a slew of other contextual materi- the past as if a family, and persons who have a child in common regardless of als. It is out of and through this pastiche of narrative resources that I builc whether they have been married or have resided together at any time."3 In patterns, observe the subtle making and operation of social structures, anc classifying homicides that occurred in 1994, Florida police departments some- identify the intricate workings of power.

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