On Friday, October 6, University of Michigan students and faculty, along with community members from across the state, rallied in Lansing at the Capitol steps. Unlike most groups during this fall midterm election season, they showed support not for a political candidate or party, but instead for a group whose issues are significantly less visible in the public arena: battered women, convicted of murder for killing their abusers.

The Battered Women’s Clemency Project was founded by Susan Fair and is directed by University of Michigan Professor Carol Jacobsen. The Clemency Project works on behalf of women survivors of domestic violence who killed abusive partners in acts of self defense and did not receive a fair trial. The women represented by the Clemeny Project were convicted of murder and sentenced accordingly -- often for life terms. Injustice in these cases came in the failure of the legal system -- more specifically, prosecutors, judges, jury instructions, and even defense attorneys -- to recognize these women’s acts as self-defense.

Over the past few decades, academics and activists have shifted the perception of domestic violence: from a strictly private issue (in other words, something that happens behind closed doors) to one of public concern -- something that affects all of us. But legal understandings of domestic violence lag behind in this transition, leaving battered women vulnerable. For example, if a man kills his assailant in a bar fight, it is a clear case of self-defense in the eyes of the justice system. But if a woman kills her abusive husband or boyfriend who has threatened to kill her if she leaves (and nearly does kill her if she stays), the criminal-legal system fails to identify this as valid self-defense. Current legal understandings of imminence and self-defense function to a battered woman’s disadvantage because they exclude circumstances such as a woman who kills her abuser in his sleep. Though the abuser is not threatening her at that immediate moment, the threat of harm in abusive relationships is continually imminent. Tried without adequate understanding or representation of her circumstances, the woman is convicted. All her appeals are denied. Only clemency is left.

The Battered Women’s Clemency Project currently represents 20 women with petitions for clemency, and hundreds of others in various ways: supporting parole, appeals, and human rights. Petitions are submitted to the Governor, who makes decisions about whether to grant clemency -- which could mean release or shortened sentences -- for each case. This summer, Governor Jennifer Granholm denied all clemency petitions on her desk; this fall, the Clemency Project will submit them again, with new materials and evidence. It is important to the petitioners that supporters make a strong showing for clemency for these women who have been abused by their partners, wronged by the legal system, and have served numerous years towards sentences they did not deserve.

Once in prison, abuse continues. Prisons in the state of Michigan are among the worst in the nation, according to reports by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other organizations. Abuse against women prisoners includes violations of privacy, verbal degradation, sexual assault and abuse, and rape. All levels of the Michigan Department of Corrections are implicated, whether through direct abuse or the creation of impunity by allowing abuse to occur.

Medical care for prisoners is abysmal: two women affiliated with the Clemency Project have died since August, in part due to neglect of important medical concerns, and according to MDOC, 227 Michigan inmates died in prison last year. Applications for medical commutation of inmates dying of cancer or other illnesses are often delayed or ignored, leaving those people to suffer and die in prison where they receive inadequate, if any, medical attention. Many mentally ill prisoners, along with others, are chained down in segregation units, often for extended periods of time. In a recent catastrophe, a young man died in a pool of his own sweat and urine while chained down in a segregation unit that reached 106 degrees at Southern Michigan Prison in Jackson.

In response to deplorable conditions within prisons, more than 440 women inmates have filed a class-action lawsuit against MDOC, citing inappropriate visual surveillance, sexual abuse and rape. These women are demanding that sexual abuse of women prisoners stop immediately, and that those who perpetuate violence against women in prison be held accountable. In this instance again, the legal system works against women in prison -- little priority is given to investigating complaints of abuse from women prisoners, and recent legislation has worked to strip the rights of inmates to file lawsuits.

Our legal system has failed women; our prisons violate their basic human rights. Along with Clemency Project supporters, students in Jacobsen’s “Human Rights and Bodies in the World” class attended the rally, demonstrating solidarity and calling for change through posters and performance. The rally on October 6th sent a message to the Governor, and brought visibility to these issues, both at the rally and in coverage in Michigan newspapers and evening news by WLAJ-TV in Lansing.

Self-defense is not a crime. As Professor Jacobsen said at the rally, “justice is not served by the continued imprisonment of women who act in self-defense”. These issues have fallen beneath the public radar for far too long. We must break the silence, and the time is now.

Amanda Hooper is a senior in the University of Michigan Women’s Studies honors program, and a member of the Battered Women’s Clemency Project.