Honor Killings by Cohan

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.
net/publication/309419115
Honor Killings and the Cultural Defense
Article in California Western international law journal · January 2010
CITATIONS READS
2 770
1 author:
John Alan Cohan
30 PUBLICATIONS 232 CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE
All content following this page was uploaded by John Alan Cohan on 25 October 2016.
The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Cohan_Honor_Killings_4_7_2010-1.doc (Do Not Delete) 10/25/16 12:55 PM
HONOR KILLINGS AND THE CULTURAL DEFENSE

JOHN ALAN COHAN
INTRODUCTION.........................................................................................
I.THE NATURE OF HONOR. .......................................................................
A. The Importance of and Need to Safeguard Honor .................
B. The Nature of Honor in Arab Cultures...................................
C. The Nature of Honor in the West. ...........................................
II.THE PREVALAENCE OF HONOR KILLINGS. ............................................
A. Honor Killings Defined. .........................................................
B. Honor Killings in Western Society. ........................................
III.THE CONCEPT OF “SUDDEN PROVOCATION IN THE CONTEXT OF
HONOR KILLINGS. ..........................................................................
IV.PROVOCATION IN THE LAWS OF JORDAN AND PAKISTAN
PERTAINING TO HONOR KILLINGS. .................................................
A. Prosecution of Honor Killings in Jordan. ..............................
B. Prosecution of Honor Killings in Pakistan. ...........................
1. Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas. .............
2. Pakistan’s Qisas and Diyat Law. ......................................
V.THE CULTURAL DEFENSE. ....................................................................
A. An Explanation of the Cultural Defense. ................................
B. The Cultural Defense and Cultural Relativism. .....................
C. Cultural Relativism and Transcultural Psychiatry.................
D. The Cultural Defense in the Context of Honor Killings. ........
E. Evidence of Social Pressures to Show Ongoing
Provocation. ...........................................................................
VI.MODERN REPORTED CASES THAT HAVE ACCEPTED THE
CULTURAL DEFENSE. .....................................................................
VII.DISCUSSION OF PROS AND CONS OF THE CULTURAL DEFENSE. .........
A. Arguments in Favor of the Cultural Defense. ........................
B. Arguments Against the Cultural Defense. ..............................
1. The Cultural Defense Detracts From the Uniformity
of Justice............................................................................
2. The Difficulty of Delineating Cultural Norms. .................
101
102 CALIFORNIA WESTERN INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 40
3. The Cultural Defense May Erode Women’s Rights. .........

4. The Anti-Deterrent Effect of the Cultural Defense. ..........
VIII. CONCLUSION ..................................................................................
INTRODUCTION
Anyone who immigrates to a new country is faced with the choice

of whether, and to what degree, to assimilate into that country’s
dominant culture. The disadvantage of acculturation is that this can
result in the erosion of cultural traditions. On the other hand,
acculturation can enhance social cooperation and respect, as well as
acceptance by those within the dominant culture.
Often enough, immigrants, particularly the younger generation,
will eagerly embrace American ways, including sexual freedom,
feminism, and other patterns of behavior that their parents might find
offensive. There can be a palpable tension between parents and
children regarding language, customs, and morality.
Sometimes assimilation into a new culture is not sought
voluntarily, but rather is thrust upon a people. The treatment of Native
Americans exemplified forced assimilation,1 and this practice has
been repeated in other parts of the world: Indigenous people are
pushed around, some of their customs are outlawed, they are deprived
of political power, dispossessed of their lands, and subjected to forced
resettlement and colonial plans for their absorption into the dominant
society. Colonial authorities often have acted out a sort of
ethnocentrism–the idea that one’s own way of life is to be preferred
over all others.2 A “social demoralization” develops when the
dominant group “actively deprecates the things [others] hold to be of
value.”3
The collision between cultural norms is at its greatest tension in
1. See County of Yakima v. Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakima

Indian Nation, 502 U.S. 251, 254 (1992) (“The objectives of allotment were simple
and clear cut: to extinguish tribal sovereignty, erase reservation boundaries, and
force the assimilation of Indians into the society at large.”).
2. JOHN H. BODLEY, Victims of Progress, in GENOCIDE: AN
ANTHROPOLOGICAL READER 137, 145-48 (Alexander Labon Hinton ed., 2002); see
also Agnes Heller, Can Cultural Patterns be Compared?, 8 DIALECTICAL
ANTHROPOLOGY 269, 271 (1984).
3. MELVILLE J. HERSKOVITS, CULTURAL RELATIVISM: PERSPECTIVES IN
CULTURAL PLURALISM 103 (Frances Herskovitz ed., 1972).
2010] HONOR KILLINGS AND THE CULTURAL DEFENSE 103
the context of criminal law. An increasing number of criminal

defendants have sought to defend themselves–to mitigate or exculpate
criminal charges, or to argue for a more lenient sentence–by asserting
what has come to be called the cultural defense.4 Under this defense,
not yet codified by any state, the defendant seeks to introduce
evidence that his or her charged behavior was a customary way of
dealing with a similar situation in his or her homeland–in other words,
the behavior was reasonable in light of the defendant’s cultural
background. “The rationale behind the cultural defense thus rests
essentially on the fundamental criminal law principle that a defendant
should not be held responsible for acts she committed without the
requisite actus reus or mens rea.”5
This Article will focus on the cultural defense in the context of
honor killings, in which women or girls are killed by family members
because of provocative behavior that dishonors their families.6 In
these cases, the defendant seeks to introduce evidence that such
killings, under the circumstances, are customary in his culture.7
Defendants argue the indignity occasioned by the improprieties of
women or girls of traditional Muslim families can be so great as to
drive others in the family, particularly male members, to kill the
offending family member and thereby reinstate their honor.8 This
provocation may be fueled in large part by community pressures to
deal with the situation.9
By tracing how provocation ties into honor killings in Pakistan,
Jordan and other Middle Eastern countries, this Article seeks to shed
light on how cultural evidence might be understood in honor killing
4. See Note, The Cultural Defense in the Criminal Law, 99 HARV. L. REV.
1293 (1986) [hereinafter The Cultural Defense in the Criminal Law].
5. James J. Sing, Note, Culture as Sameness: Toward a Synthetic View of
Provocation and Culture in the Criminal Law, 108 YALE L.J. 1845, 1849-50 (1999).
6. Mazna Hussain, Note, “Take My Riches, Give Me Justice”: A Contextual
Analysis of Pakistan’s Honor Crimes Legislation, 29 HARV. J.L. & GENDER 223,
225-26 (2006).
7. See Martin P. Golding, The Cultural Defense, 15 RATIO JURIS 146, 149
(2002) (“[U]nder a cultural defense the perpetrator claims a reasonable good-faith
belief in the propriety of his act, based on his cultural heritage or tradition. He
believes that he did ‘the right thing.’”).
8. Hussain, supra note 6, at 225-26.
9. Yotam Feldner, “Honor” Murders–Why the Perps Get off Easy, MIDDLE E.
Q., Dec. 2000, at 41, 42-43.
cases in the West. In fact, there have been a number of instances of

honor killings in urban centers in the West, most notably in the United
States, Canada and the United Kingdom.10
Part I introduces the general concept of honor, the nature of honor
in both Arab and Western cultures, and why men, in particular, feel
that it is important to safeguard honor. In traditional Muslim cultures,
one who is dishonored feels compelled to regain honor by committing
an honor killing, similar to the practice of challenging an offender to a
duel in an earlier period in the West. Part II discusses honor killings:
what they are, the rationale behind them, their justifications, and the
extent to which they are normative in various cultures.
Part III traces the common law principle of “sudden provocation,”
and how the concept is a staple of jurisprudence in the showing of
diminished capacity or other elements that may mitigate against a
finding of first degree murder. That concept will be analyzed in the
context of honor killings. Part IV begins by observing how honor
killings are dealt with in Pakistan and Jordan, two countries with high
incidences of honor killings and where unique statutes take into
account the importance of honor in those cultures. Part V explains the
origin and rationale behind the cultural defense and how it relates to
cultural relativism. Part V also takes a brief detour into the field of
transcultural psychiatry, a discipline that helps bridge cultural
differences, and a discussion of the cultural defense in the specific
context of honor killings.
Modern reported cases of honor killings are briefly discussed in
Part VI, followed in Part VII with a discussion of arguments in favor
of and opposed to the cultural defense. Part VIII concludes the article
by discussing how the cultural defense is a growing component of
American jurisprudence, specifically how the cultural defense appears
to have no limitations on the type of cases to which it may be applied.
I. THE NATURE OF HONOR
Stereotyped roles for men and women seem to be a universal
10. Phyllis Chesler, Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?, MIDDLE
E. Q., Spring 2009, at 61, 61-69; see also Janet Keeping, Honour Killings–
Premeditated Executions–Must be Stopped in Canada, TROY MEDIA CORP., Nov.
18, 2009, http://www.troymedia.com/?p=5854.
phenomenon across cultures and historical eras. In some instances

these stereotyped roles lead to prejudices and customary practices that
are premised on the inferiority of women, who, in many cultures, still
today “are considered a part of a man’s property.”11
A rift between younger and older generations, or between husband
and wife, concerning the role of women in society, can cause not only
fragmentation between those individuals involved, but also can affect
the entire extended family, and in some cases the wider ethnic
community. However, simultaneously, this Article will show many
cultures regard women as moral standard bearers, upon whom the
family’s honor rests.
A. The Importance of and Need to Safeguard Honor
Honor is an important though somewhat intangible and elusive

trait. It is not entirely clear how honor can be recognized or defined,
whether honor is an intrinsic feature of one’s character, or whether it
is a virtue that is cultivated. In the Oxford English Dictionary, there
are a number of definitions for the noun, “honour”: “High respect,
esteem, or reverence, accorded to exalted worth or rank; deferential
admiration or approbation; . . . (Of a woman) Chastity, purity, as a
virtue of the highest consideration; reputation for this virtue, good
name.”12
Honor is a measure of one’s social prestige in the community and
depends upon the community’s collective “view” of the person.13 That
is, the degree of one’s honor seems to be measured through the eyes of
the beholder. In the antebellum South, for instance, “a white man’s
honor was measured not by what he thought of himself, but by what
others thought of him.”14 A person of honor is revered and esteemed
11. Hooma Shah, Comment, Brutality by Acid: Utilizing Bangladesh as a

Model to Fight Acid Violence in Pakistan, 26 WIS. INT’L L.J. 1172, 1181 (2009).
12. 7 The Oxford English Dictionary 357, 358 (John Simpson & Edmund
Weiner eds., 2d ed. 1989).
13. See C. A. Harwell Wells, Note, The End of the Affair? Anti-Dueling Laws
and Social Norms in Antebellum America, 54 VAND. L. REV. 1805, 1809 (2001).
14. Id. at 1822-23; see also EDWARD L. AYERS, VENGEANCE AND JUSTICE:
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN THE 19TH-CENTURY AMERICAN SOUTH 13 (Oxford
Univ. Press 1984) (“Southern men recognized the dictates of honor: a system of
values within which you have exactly as much worth as others confer upon you.”).
by others, is held to have an excellent reputation, and is considered

trustworthy. Honoring someone is to treat that person with special
respect, even reverence. To honor the dead means that people will
treat the corpse with dignity, participate in a respectful funeral rite,
and the deceased will be praised in a eulogy. An honor student is one
who has attained distinction in grades or other academic
achievements.
Perhaps honor is an old-fashioned notion. Today people are rarely
referred to as “honorable” or “dishonorable.” Or maybe, honor is
similar to dignity. Human dignity is something that Kant thought of as
a fundamental, intrinsic and unique feature of humanity.15 However,
honor, unlike the intrinsic dignity, with which every human being is
constituted according to Kant,16 is something a person can lose.17
Thus, honor seems to be an earned trait, along the line of virtues,
namely: courage, magnanimity, kindness, and and the like. One can
both acquire and lose honor.
In a sense, honor is a latent trait. It is noticed more in its absence
than in its presence. When honor is present in a person, others do not
give it much thought; it does not stand out as a trait until someone
commits a dishonorable act or in some other way suffers dishonor.
The acts that cause a person to be stigmatized as dishonorable will
vary across cultures, but in all instances to suffer dishonor is to be
shamed. Shame is an extremely uncomfortable condition. People
shamed feel shunned, humiliated, and embarrassed. They may feel the
need to go into seclusion to avoid being seen by others. People want
more than anything to regain their lost reputations, to re-establish
their statuses in the community. It is at these times that the loss of
honor in oneself or in others is recognized.
The loss of honor both has an inner and outer quality. On the inner
side, the individual may (or may not) feel a genuine sense of shame,
guilt, or similar feelings after having breached some moral norm
customarily embraced in a given culture. On the outer side, people in
15. IMMANUEL KANT, FOUNDATIONS OF THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS 53-54

(Lewis White Beck trans., Bobbs-Merrill Educ. Publ’g 1981) (1785).
16. Id.
17. See Rachel A. Ruane, Comment, Murder in the Name of Honor: Violence
Against Women in Jordan and Pakistan, 14 EMORY INT’L L. REV. 1523, 1530-31
(2000) (discussing honor as a “commodity,” or in terms of value, that can be lost or
diminished).
the community will form the opinion that an individual who has
violated a customary code of behavior, or otherwise has done
something dishonorable, has something for which he or she should be
ashamed. Even if the individual still actually judges himself to be free
of taint––for perhaps he does not embrace the traditional criteria that
define honor––the humiliation imposed on him by the weight of
public opinion in his culture may be too great to bear. He may feel
compelled to take action to free himself of this taint, a taint that he
may or may not believe is justified.18
The loss of honor is not accompanied only by humiliation, shame
and disgrace, but also the loss of reputation. In modern times,
reputation has become a kind of property right for which damages are
recoverable under the law of defamation:
It is to be observed that it is reputation, not character, which the law

aims to protect. Character is what a person really is; reputation is
what he seems to be. One is composed of the sum of the principles
and motives–be they known or unknown–which govern his
conduct. The other is the result of observation of his conduct–the
character imputed to him by others.19
In other words, character is the real person while reputation is the

public’s perception of the individual’s persona.
In the context of honor, there is no boundary between individuals
and their society. One’s self-conception as an honorable person has
little weight if other people in the culture do not concur. While one
can bring dishonor on oneself by words or deeds, acts or omissions,
dishonor can also result from the actions of others, however unfair this
may seem.20 For instance, consider the situation of the parent of
someone who has been convicted of a heinous murder and sentenced
to death. The disgrace of a family member is inevitably a humiliation
18. Alison L. LaCroix, To Gain the Whole World and Lose His Own Soul:
Nineteenth-Century American Dueling as Public Law and Private Code, 33
HOFSTRA L. REV. 501, 513-14 (2004).
19. Van Vechten Veeder, The History and Theory of the Law of Defamation,
4 COLUM. L. REV. 33, 33 (1904).
20. See, e.g., Marie D. Castetter, Note, Taking Law into Their Own Hands:
Unofficial and Illegal Sanctions by the Pakistani Tribal Councils, 13 IND. INT’L &
COMP. L. REV. 543, 550-51 (2003) (discussing how acts females can bring shame
and dishonor on not only her family, but also her tribe).
to others in the family, despite their innocence of any wrongdoing.

The negative feelings toward the child are, at least in some way,
transmitted on to the parents.
In many instances, it is possible to regain honor after it has been
lost, depending on the egregiousness of the circumstances that
triggered such loss. If one has done something dishonorable, a period
of time may have to elapse before the community will come to believe
that honor has been restored. On the other hand, it may require the
performance of some act of penance to restore honor: apologizing,
paying blood money, going to jail, moving to a different community
and starting a new life, or just biding one’s time until the community
gets over the dishonor.
In situations where dishonor is imposed by the action of a third
party, one might be blameless but still feels a loss of honor simply
because the community regards the situation to be one that causes
people to lose face. To regain honor in such cases usually means to
take some action against the offender.21 This might mean a public
airing of one’s grievances, a lawsuit, a hearing before a tribal council,
or some other action that the community recognizes as making one
whole again.22 In some cultures it might mean self-help in the form of
retaliation against the offender.23 The primeval instinct, if it is to be
called that, to wreak vengeance against those who have caused the
dishonor or other harm, is familiar to all people in all periods of
history: “[T]he basic urge for retribution is a cultural universal, across
time and place, and it establishes itself early in life. Some evidence
even hints that non-human primates experience a retributive urge.”24
Thus, to regain honor is not only to reestablish external validation
from those in one’s culture, but also the ability once again to hold
one’s head high, and be accepted as a worthy member of one’s
community.
21. See, e.g., LaCroix, supra note 18, at 502-03 (discussing practice of
initiating a duel with the offender in order to reestablish honor).
22. E.g., id. at 503 (discussing one of the purposes of dueling as a “public
performance” to restore honor in the community: “[T]o duel was to perform the
specific role of gentleman by asserting the right to vindicate personal honor in the
realm of public notice.”).
23. E.g., id.
24. Kenworthey Bilz, The Puzzle of Delegated Revenge, 87 B.U. L. REV. 1059,
1063 (2007).
B. The Nature of Honor in Arab Cultures
In Arab cultures, a distinct honor code, known as purda, calls for

females to comply with social norms, under which they are required to
be safeguarded from contact with unauthorized persons.25 A man’s
honor depends in large part on whether the female members of his
family are vigilant in adhering to these norms.26 In these cultures, “the
ideal of masculinity is underpinned by a notion of ‘honour’–of an
individual man, or a family or a community–and is fundamentally
connected to policing female behaviour and sexuality.”27 One
commentator states the importance of women to honor: “The woman
holds all of the honor for the family and the social order depends upon
her maintaining this honor. In addition, the woman’s honor or shame
strongly affects the general standing of the tribe within the
community.”28
Honor in these cultures is associated with Islam’s “male-
dominated interpretations of concepts like female chastity and male
authority.”29 The following discussion of men’s honor epitomizes
these interpretations:
As the embodiment of her family’s honor, women must guard their

virginity and chastity–after all, “a man’s honor lies between the
legs of a woman.” By engaging in a freely chosen illicit sexual
relationship, a woman undermines the ownership rights of others to
her body and challenges traditional social order.30
In these cultures there is often hostility with respect to “women’s

human rights activism,” and women are “often treated as little more
than human chattel.”31
25. Castetter, supra note 20, at 550-51.

26. Feldner, supra note 9, at 41-42.
27. Radhika Coomaraswamy, Violence Against Women and ‘Crimes of
Honour’, Preface to ‘HONOUR’: CRIMES, PARADIGMS, AND VIOLENCE AGAINST
WOMEN, at xi, xi (Lynn Welchman & Sara Hossain eds., 2005) [hereinafter
‘HONOUR’].
28. Castetter, supra note 20, at 550-51.
29. Hussain, supra note 6, at 237.
30. Ruane, supra note 17, 1531 (footnotes omitted).
31. Ann Elizabeth Mayer, A “Benign” Apartheid: How Gender Apartheid
Has Been Rationalized, 5 UCLA J. INT’L L. & FOREIGN AFF. 237, 259-60
In traditional Arab culture a distinction is made between two

kinds of honor: sharaf––pertaining to dignity of an individual, tribe, or
family––and ‘ird––relating to the honor of women.32 The failure of a
person to adhere to proper moral behavior will weaken the dignity,
and hence the social status, of one’s family or tribe, while dignity can
increase if one is exemplary in hospitality, generosity, and similar
virtues.33 The concept of ‘ird means “chastity” or “purity.”34
Exemplary behavior of a woman cannot increase her ‘ird, but
misbehavior decreases it.35 Moreover, “‘ird trumps sharaf: the honor
of the Arab family or tribe, the respect accorded it, can be gravely
damaged when one of its women’s chastity is violated or when her
reputation is tainted. Consequently, a violation of a woman’s honor
requires severe action . . . .”36 The concept of honor in women is
further discussed as follows:
Women serve their male guardians and families as vessels of honor;

however, they do not possess any honor of their own. A woman is
not in sole control of her honor. Instead, it is a combination of
community norms and societal policing. Honor is maintained by
constraining “[the] movement, conversations, friendships, choice of
marriage partners, and so on,” of women. Likewise, when honor is
supposedly betrayed or lost, disciplining, or even killing, the
woman at fault may restore honor that has been damaged by a
woman’s immoral or unchaste actions.37
Modesty in women’s behavior is emphasized.38 Women must

cover themselves completely except for the upper part of their faces
when going outdoors, and must be accompanied by a male family
member.39 The honor of the village group lies with the modesty of its
(2000/2001).
32. Feldner, supra note 9, at 41-42.
33. Id.
34. Id. at 42.
35. Id.
36. Id.
37. Stephanie Palo, A Charade of Change: Qisas and Diyat Ordinance Allows
Honor Killings to go Unpunished in Pakistan, 15 U.C. DAVIS J. INT’L L. & POL’Y
93, 98 (2008) (alteration in original) (footnotes omitted).
38. See Castetter, supra note 20, at 550.
39. Id.
women and the readiness of its men to protect this modesty.40 In part,
the modesty code is derived from the idea that men can become
contaminated or defiled by women.41
In other cultures some of these norms may seem extremely
antiquated: Women out in public should not be heard; they must not
speak or glance at other men; if a kinsman passes by he can address
her only by such terms as “O Mother” or “O Daughter” or “O Aunt,”
terms that imply sexual distance.42 Women must not leave home
without good reason.43 Women do not enter shops but remain at the
entrance communicating their request and passing on their money
from the outside.44 In public places they must walk a few paces behind
their husbands.45
In these cultures, it is believed that women are the initiators of
illicit relations, and that “[w]omen’s propensity for sexual license is
attributed to the animalistic impulses that move them.”46 In these Arab
cultures, women’s lust is considered greater than that of men.47 A
woman is given a virginity test on the day of consummation, and if
found to not be a virgin she can be punished, even put to death.48
Women are never allowed to choose their husbands as their minds are
deemed deficient.49
As will be discussed in Part II, often, honor killings are the means
by which honor is restored to a family. The prevalence of and
environment surrounding honor killings in Arab culture are
highlighted by the following excerpt from a State Department report
40. See Richard T. Antoun, On the Modesty of Women in Arab Muslim

Villages: A Study in the Accommodation of Traditions, 70 AM. ANTHROPOLOGIST
671, 687-88 (1968).
41. Id.
42. Id. at 675; see also Hamid R. Kusha, Anti-Criminogenic Impacts of
Culture on Female Gang Formation: The Case of Islam, 19 J. HUM. BEHAV. SOC.
ENV. 242, 247-48 (2009).
43. Antoun, supra note 40, at 675.
44. Id. at 676.
45. Id.
46. Id. at 678.
47. Id. at 679.
48. See Glenn E. Weisfeld, Sociobiological Patterns of Arab Culture, 11
ETHOLOGY AND SOCIOBIOLOGY 23, 30, 41 (1990).
49. Antoun, supra note 40, at 678.
concerning Pakistan: “Significant numbers of women were subjected

to violence, abuse, rape, and other forms of degradation by spouses
and members of society. The Government publicly has criticized the
practice of ‘honor killings’ but failed to take corrective steps, and such
killings continued throughout the country.”50 Killing the offending
woman is considered an obligation of the aggrieved family: “[A] man,
his family, and his tribe are obligated to take revenge for wrongs––
either real or perceived––to redeem their honor.”51
C. The Nature of Honor in the West
In the West there exists an entirely different culture of honor. An

individual’s honor depends on a much less restrictive code of
behavior. Women have a great deal more freedom–sexual freedom,
reproductive freedom, freedom to marry or to date whom they wish,
and entitlement to equal rights with men.52 In contrast to Arab culture,
a Western man’s honor is not based on the behavior of women in
one’s family so much as it is on his own behavior.
There is a rich history of how honor has been conceived in the
West. In the Sixteenth Century, the English conception of “natural
honour” was defined as:
[T]he good opinion of others founded in the assumption that the

person honoured by the good opinion was morally worthy of such
esteem and respect. It was distinguished from acquired honour by
the fact that, whereas acquired honour had positively to be earned,
natural honour was established negatively: it was simply one’s due
if one had not failed in any principal virtue (particularly courage).53
For many years in the United States, honor was so important that men
felt it was imperative to retaliate against someone who had impugned
their honor.54 An insult or perceived insult–through words or writing,
50. U.S. DEP’T OF STATE, BUREAU OF DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND

LABOR, COUNTRY REPORTS ON HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES, PAKISTAN 2001 (2002).
51. Id.
52. In modern America, the Equal Protection Clause has been construed to
accord equal rights to women in numerous contexts. See, e.g., U.S. v. Virginia, 518
U.S. 515 (1996).
53. JEREMY HORDER, PROVOCATION AND RESPONSIBILITY 26 (1992).
54. Id. at 26-27.
a disparaging gesture, a contemptuous sneer, a defamatory comment,

other expressions of contempt, an assault or other affront to one’s
sense of autonomy and dignity, or lewd touching of one’s wife,
daughter, sister or a female companion–could easily cause dishonor to
a man.55
Passions were hardly under control, and political arguments often
advanced to stabbing.56 Alexis de Tocqueville described the frontier of
America as “a wild country where [men] must fight daily against all
the miseries of life” and that this made “their passions still more
irritable and violent and further removed from society.”57 “Men of
honour were expected to retaliate swiftly and forcefully in the face of
an affront.”58 “The act of retaliation, regardless of the consequences,
would negate the threat to honor.”59
Consequently, dueling was an outgrowth of a culture of honor,
and an accepted element of the social code.60 It was the honorable and
just mode of settling personal differences.61 In fact, dueling was a
retaliatory, even obligatory course of action.62 Men participated in
duels out of fear of what would happen to their reputation if they
allowed an insult or a disagreement to go unchallenged.63 Even after
anti-dueling statutes were enacted in the Nineteenth Century, public
55. See generally JACK K. WILLIAMS, DUELING IN THE OLD SOUTH:

VIGNETTES OF SOCIAL HISTORY 13-14 (Texas A&M Univ. Press 1980) (discussing
grounds for a challenge to a duel in the antebellum South).
56. See, e.g., CLAYTON E. CRAMER, CONCEALED WEAPON LAWS OF THE
EARLY REPUBLIC: DUELING, SOUTHERN VIOLENCE, AND MORAL REFORM 35
(Praeger 1999).
57. ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, JOURNEY TO AMERICA 285 (J. P. Mayer, ed.,
George Lawrence trans., Anchor Books 1971) (1957).
58. HORDER, supra note 53, at 26-27.
59. Sing, supra note 5, at 1867 (discussing HORDER, supra note 53, at 26-27).
60. LaCroix, supra note 18, at 512-14.
61. See Jack Kenny Williams, The Code of Honor in Ante-Bellum South
Carolina, 54 S.C. HIST. MAG. 113, 113 (1953). “What is more, the man of honour
was not expected to retaliate reluctantly, out of a sense of duty or a fear of shame, in
the face of a threat to his natural honour. He was expected to resent the affront, and
retaliate in anger.” HORDER, supra note 53, at 27. “Anger, rage, and retaliatory
measures, then, were culturally programmed reactions, . . . .” Sing, supra note 5, at
1867.
62. Sing, supra note 5, at 1867.
63. LaCroix, supra note 18, at 516.
sentiment made it rare to convict a man of killing another in a duel

because jurors still regarded dueling as an appropriate response to
insults, slander, and libel.64
Duels were motivated in fundamentally the same way as honor
killings: “Participating in a duel communicated to others–it meant–
that the duelists were men of honor. Duelists felt compelled by
internal and external pressures to duel.”65 Duels were thought to be the
only way of repairing one’s honor that had been damaged by personal
transgressions.66 Men who had lost public favor were “likely to
benefit if they won their duels and so gained attention. Indeed, some
men entered into duels precisely to establish their claim to the status
of a gentleman.”67 The consensus about what a man should do to
defend his honor has changed over time. Today it is no longer the
case, as it was in the Nineteenth Century, “that a gentleman either
defend his honor in a duel or else sacrifice the respect of his peers.”68
A difference between the loss of honor in American dueling
culture and that of Arab cultures is that in the former instance a man
could be made whole again if his offender apologized for making the
insulting remark to the affronted party.69 This would avert a duel and
both parties would come away satisfied that the insult, whether it was
an accusation of being a liar or some other challenge to a one’s
integrity, was publicly acknowledged and withdrawn. But, in cultures
where honor killings are normative, the act itself cannot be atoned for,
no apology or acknowledgment of remorse will dissolve or repair the
64. Wells, supra note 13, at 1823 (“For a man to turn to the legal system to
repair his honor, perhaps by filing a libel or slander suit, was akin to a man
admitting that he was unable to protect himself.”). “Anti-dueling laws were on the
books in all states, but often ignored. Public opinion supported dueling, and until
this changed the law would be a dead letter.” Id. at 1807.
65. Id. at 1810.
66. Id. at 1823.
The Southern attitude toward honor, personal transgressions, private violence, and
the law is probably best summarized by a piece of advice given to Andrew Jackson
by his mother. As he recalled it, she advised Jackson: “Never tell a lie, nor take what
is not your own, nor sue anybody for slander, assault and battery. Always settle them
cases yourself.”
Id.
67. Id. at 1823-24.
68. Id. at 1809.
69. Id. at 1822.
taint. The stain is indelible unless the offending party is killed. Then
only may honor be restored.
II. THE PREVALENCE OF HONOR KILLINGS
A. Honor Killings Defined
Honor killings are a longstanding cultural practice in which

family members will attack a female relative–by stoning, stabbing,
beating or shooting, in order to kill her for bringing dishonor to her
family or clan.70 This practice is thought to be “rooted in patriarchal
norms of male superiority and control and female inferiority and
obedience, encased in familial and social and economic structures of
inequality, terrorizing women and perpetuating gender conformity and
oppression.”71
The dishonor is usually the result of violating sexual taboos such
as: engaging in premarital sex or extramarital relations, elopement
with a man not approved by her parents, or a romantic involvement
with someone disapproved by the woman’s family.72 “A man who
feels such an act has dishonoured the family will kill the woman in
question as a means of restoring that honour. Motives for honour
killing, however, have started to expand beyond female adultery,
targeting women for enjoying basic freedoms. . . .”73
Honor killings are a worldwide phenomenon, concentrated in
Middle Eastern and Asian nations, including Pakistan, Turkey,
Afghanistan, India, and Jordan.74 While honor killings may be
70. Leyla Pervizat, In the Name of Honor, HUMAN RIGHTS DIALOGUE, Fall
2003, at 30, 31.
71. Rhonda Copelon, International Human Rights Dimensions of Intimate
Violence: Another Strand in the Dialectic of Feminist Lawmaking, 11 AM. U. J.
GENDER SOC. POL’Y & L. 865, 872 (2003).
73. Megan O’Toole, ‘Honour Killing’ Cases Spark Debates Over Religion,
Racism; Practice Dates Back Centuries to Rural Pakistan, NAT’L POST (Can.), July
24, 2009, at A6.
74. Expert Group Meeting on Good Practices in Legislation to Address
Harmful Practices Against Women, Addis Ababa, Eth., May 25-28, 2009, Harmful
Traditional Practices in Europe: Judicial Interventions, p. 11-12, U.N. Doc.
EGM/GPLHP/2009/EP.12 (May 21, 2009) (prepared by Carole Ageng’o) available
at
concentrated in certain regions, the following illustrates the worldwide

nature of honor killings: “Honor killings have been reported in
Bangladesh, Great Britain, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Israel, Italy,
Jordan, Pakistan, Turkey, [the United States,] and Uganda according
to reports submitted to the United Nations Commission on Human
Rights.”75 Currently, the United Nations Population Fund estimates
that there are 5,000 honor killings per year,76 although the number is
likely greater given the fact that these crimes frequently go
unreported.77 The accuracy of statistics on the number of honor
killings in given countries is further suspect because many murders
are said to be hidden as suicide or accidents.78
It is estimated that in Pakistan honor killings account for hundreds
of women’s deaths.79 In Istanbul, Turkey alone, it is estimated there
were about 1,000 honor killings in a five-year period.80 In Turkey, the
“honor suicide” has emerged as a way for parents to avoid engaging in
killing their disobedient daughter: the parents seek to convince their
daughter to kill herself in order to spare them a possible prison
sentence for murder.81
In many countries, honor killings are cultural practices that
members of the society do not readily question; they become part of
the “rules of the game,” in other words, a social norm, defined as:
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/egm/vaw_legislation_2009/Expert%20Paper%
20EGMGPLHP%20_Carole%20Ageng’o%20revised_.pdf [hereinafter Expert
Group Meeting].
75. Id. at 11.
76. Colleen Carroll Campbell, Editorial, Political Correctness is No Excuse to
Ignore Honor Killings, ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, Feb. 19, 2009, at D7.
77. Christina A. Madek, Note, Killing Dishonor: Effective Eradication of
Honor Killing, 29 SUFFOLK TRANSNAT’L L. REV. 53, 56 (2005).
78. Feldner, supra note 9, at 41.
79. Salman Masood, Pakistan Begins Inquiry into Deaths of 5 Women Amid
Dispute over Honor Killings, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 3, 2008, at A6; see also Peter
Worthington, No ‘Honour’ in Killings, TORONTO SUN, Aug. 5, 2009, at 18 (“A
conservative estimate has three women per day subjected to honour killings in
Pakistan”).
80. Honor killings claim 1,000 lives in five years, HÜRRIYET DAILY NEWS &
ECON. REV., June 21, 2008, available at
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/h.php?news=turkish-press-scanner-2008-06-21.
81. Dan Bilefsky, How to Avoid Honor Killing in Turkey? Honor Suicide,
N.Y. TIMES, July 16, 2006, at 3.
[A] “social regularity,” a behavior that is in fact widely adopted in

society. What distinguishes these social regularities as social norms
is that they are not only what people do, but what society holds that
people should do. The particular actions constituting a social norm
have larger cultural or social meanings, which lead other members
of society to approve or disapprove of them. The meanings attached
to a social norm cause members of society to feel obliged to
conform to social norms, either because the meaning has become
internalized or because to do otherwise would risk sanction from
other members of society.82
Moreover, “[n]orms constrain an individual’s behavior, but not

through the centralized enforcement of a state. If they constrain, they
do so because of the enforcement of a community.”83 In some
instances an honor killing might be motivated simply because a
woman believes, or is perceived to believe, in values that are in
conflict with the norms of her culture.84
Once the family decides, rightly or wrongly, that an assault on the
family’s honor has occurred, shame and humiliation cry out for swift
revenge.85 This revenge can only transpire through the death of the
female family member who has violated the prevailing moral norms.
“[H]er male relatives cannot walk in the village with heads high. To
reclaim their manhood in the eyes of other men, they cleanse their
honor by stabbing or sometimes stoning her [to death].”86 However
horrendous cultural outsiders may view this to be, adherents to the
practice of honor killings believe this form of violence is a “family
problem” or a “domestic situation.”87
Even a minor indiscretion, such as talking to a man who is not a
relative, will bring dishonor,88 not only upon the woman, but upon her
82. Wells, supra note 13, at 1809-10 (footnotes omitted).

83. Lawrence Lessing, The New Chicago School, 27 J. LEGAL STUD. 661, 662
(1998) (footnote omitted).
84. Pervizat, supra note 70, at 30.
85. See id. at 31.
86. Id.
87. Id. at 30.
88. See, e.g., Feldner, supra note 9, at 42 (discussing the murder by stoning of
a fifteen year-old Jordanian girl at the hand of her brother for “walking toward a
house where young boys lived alone.”).
husband, parents, siblings, children, aunts, uncles and cousins.89 In

tribal communities, this dishonor may extend to her entire clan or even
the entire tribe.90 Women are killed for their refusal to wear head
coverings, having a love poem written in their name, calling a radio
station to request their favorite song, or arguing with their parents over
clothes.91 Even failing to serve a meal on time or flirting can be
perceived as destroying family honor.92 In one bizarre case, a man
killed his wife after he dreamed she was unfaithful, feeling the killing
was justified on that basis.93 In another case, a man in Gaza City was
accused of bludgeoning his daughter to death with an iron chain in a
brutal honor killing, after discovering that his daughter owned a cell
phone.94 He suspected that she used it to speak to a man not related to
the family.95 Disposition of his case is pending.96 Despite what are
likely considered heinous from a Western perspective, human rights
groups indicate assailants of honor killings in the Palestinian
territories usually receive light sentences.97
In Pakistan, a well-publicized honor killing involved Samia
89. See Madek, supra note 77, at 54-55 (“From this tradition followed the
belief that a male had a duty to protect the honor of his entire family by killing any
female relative involved in an inappropriate sexual relationship.”).
90. See, e.g., Castetter, supra note 20, at 543 (“In June 2002, a Pakistani tribal
village council sentenced a woman to be gang raped in order to restore honor of an
opposing tribe.”).
91. Pervizat, supra note 70, at 31 (discussing a females transgression of
“calling the radio station and requesting her favorite song); Worthington, supra note
79 (“Thousands of women are killed every year for reasons ranging from refusal to
wear head coverings, to having a love poem written in their name, to having
arguments over clothes.”).
92. Hillary Mayell, Thousands of Women Killed for Family “Honor,” NAT’L
GEOGRAPHIC NEWS, Feb. 12, 2002,
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/pf/15061734.html.
93. Manar Waheed, Domestic Violence in Pakistan: The Tension Between
Intervention & Sovereign Autonomy in Human Rights Law, 29 BROOK. J. INT’L L.
937, 945 (2004).
94. Rizek Abdel Jawad, Gaza Father Held in ‘Honor Killing’ of Daughter,
Associated Press, July 29, 2009,
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=8202225.
95. Id.
96. Id.
97. See, e.g., id. (“In the West Bank and Gaza, ‘honor killing’ assailants serve
between six months and three years in prison . . . .”).
Sarwar.98 After she was subjected to ongoing physical abuse at the

hands of her husband (in her arranged marriage), she told her parents
that she was getting a divorce.99 Her parents were upset about the
shame this would bring to the family, and soon everyone in the family
turned against Sarwar.100 Her mother, on a ruse, arranged to meet
Sarwar at her lawyer’s office.101 The mother was accompanied by a
hired gunman, who shot and killed Sarwar on the spot, and attempted
to kill her lawyer as well.102 The gunman was never arrested, and
subsequently the lawyer and her law partner, both of whom are
prominent Pakistani women’s rights lawyers, were subjected to
fatwas, or religious edicts, by religious organizations in Peshawar,
declaring them kafirs, or “nonbelievers,” thereby encouraging all
Muslims to kill them.103 The two lawyers have been subjected to
ongoing death threats, while authorities have done nothing to protect
them.104
Honor killings predate all modern religions, and originated among
ancient desert tribes.105 According to one Muslim tribal leader,
“[m]en’s honor comes before the Book.”106 The justification for honor
killings is not based on the Koran or any related Muslim teachings.107
However, Chapter 4:15 of the Koran states that if women are “guilty
of lewdness, confine them to houses until death do claim them.”108
This does not seem to mandate homicide but simply suggests that
98. Waheed, supra note 93, at 944.

99. Id. at 944-45 (“The breaking point occurred when Samia became pregnant
and her husband threw her down a flight of stairs.”).
100. Id. at 945.
101. Id.
102. Id.
103. Id. at 958-59; Ruane, supra note 17, at 1579 (defining fatwas and kafirs).
104. Ruane, supra note 17, at 1525.
105. Id. at 1530.
106. Pervizat, supra note 70, at 31.
107. Id.
108. Rachelle Cassman, Fighting to Make the Cut: Female Genital Cutting
Studied within the Context of Cultural Relativism, 6 NW. J. INT’L HUM. RTS. 128,
132 (2007) (citing Kathleen A. Portuan Miller, The Other Side of the Coin: A Look
at Islamic Law as Compared to Anglo-American Law – Do Muslim Women Really
Have Fewer Rights than American Women?, 16 N.Y. Int’l L. Rev. 65, 91 n.153
(2003).
some sort of severe punishment is in order for women who exhibit

offending behavior.109
Honor killings are often based on false allegations.110 Whether or
not the woman in question has actually done something that defiles
the honor of her family, or is simply the subject of gossip and false
rumors, does not matter: “Only the public perception of honor matters
and ultimately provides the catalyst for thousands of murders. If the
woman shames the family, then she must die–only ‘blood cleanses
honor.’”111 One troubling aspect of honor killings is that many of the
killings are mistaken honor killings: “Lack of verification as to
whether illicit sexual activity actually occurred results in a high
percentage of mistaken honor killings, because male suspicion of
immoral activity is often based on rumor and is factually
unfounded.”112
According to Momen Hadidi, head of Jordan’s National Institute
of Forensic Medicine, most female victims of honor killings stemming
from accusation of illicit sexual relations are found to be virgins
during their autopsies, bolstering the argument that most honor crimes
turn out to be based on false suspicions.113 Dr. Hadidi was quoted as
saying that “killers based their judgements [sic] of the victims on mere
suspicions that they had improper relationships.”114
Another aspect of honor killings pertains to the not uncommon
109. Id.
110. See Kathryn Christine Arnold, Are the Perpetrators of Honor Killings
Getting Away With Murder? Article 340 of the Jordanian Penal Code Analyzed
Under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women, 16 AM. U. INT’L L. REV. 1343, 1360 (2001).
111. Ruane, supra note 17, at 1532.
112. Arnold, supra note 110, at 1360. Of course, passions can be aroused
based on a false belief, particularly if it is reasonably formed. “Such a belief, though
a mistaken one, is calculated to induce the same emotions as would be felt were the
wrongful act in fact committed.” Lama Abu-Odeh, Comparatively Speaking: The
“Honor” of the “East” and the “Passion of the “West,” 1997 UTAH L. REV. 287,
298-99 (1997).
113. Hani Hazaimeh, No Legal Exemption for ‘Honour Crimes,’ JORDAN
TIMES, July 10, 2009,
http://www.jordantimes.com/index.php?news=18296&searchFor=honor%20killings
.
114. Id.; see also Arnold, supra note 110, at 1369 (“More than ninety percent
of honor killings occur based on suspicion or rumor of illicit sexual relations.”).
practice in the Middle East for women or girls who have been victims
of rape to be killed by relatives.115 The following example is shocking,
but not atypical: A sixteen-year-old girl in Amman, Jordan, became
pregnant after being raped by two relatives.116 After she delivered a
baby boy, her uncle decided to kill her in the name of family honor.117
He went to the girl’s room at night and shot her nine times while she
was asleep.118 She was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.119
Honor killings or other attacks against women are sometimes a
means of punishing a man for wrongs he has committed. For instance,
in 2002 a Pakistani tribal council heard the case of a twelve-year-old
boy who was accused of having an illicit affair with a woman of
another tribe.120 To restore the honor of the woman and her tribe, the
council ruled that a member of the boy’s family needed to be
disgraced.121 They ordered the boy’s sister to be gang raped in order to
restore the honor of the woman of the other tribe.122 The “sentence”
was immediately carried out: his sister was dragged to a hut by men
from the other tribe and gang raped while a crowd jeered.123 She was
then forced to walk home naked.124
There are many other instances where women have been used as
vehicles for the restoration of honor, such as through acid
throwings.125 Like honor killings, acid throwings are invariably
premeditated.126 The significance to honor of acid throwing is
explained by the practice’s purpose, “[t]o change the appearance of a
woman by maiming or burning her, or to sexually assault her or kill
115. See, e.g., Rana Husseini, Man Charged with Premeditated Murder of his
16-year-old Niece, Jordan Times, Aug. 12, 2009,
http://www.jordantimes.com/index.php?news=19146.
116. Id.
117. Id.
118. Id.
119. Id.
120. Castetter, supra note 20, at 544.
121. Id.
122. Id. at 543.
123. Id. at 545.
124. Id.
125. Shah, supra note 11, at 1188.
126. Id.
her, devalues her worth to the family and dishonors the family.”127
Honor killings might be explained, to some degree, by the fact the
State might not be prepared to punish the women who have denigrated
the honor of their family. Although in some instances the government
police step in and arrest the offending woman, for offenses including
drinking in public, going about without an escort, and similar offenses
to Islamic sensibilities. For an adulterer, stoning her to death might be
endorsed by the Islamic courts, and for less egregious offenses public
lashings might be imposed. For instance, in Malaysia, in a case that
drew international attention in 2009, authorities sentenced a Muslim
woman to whipping for drinking alcohol in the lobby of a hotel.128
While Malaysia is a multi-cultural country with a secular leaning, half
of the population of twenty-seven million is Muslim, and Islamic laws
are on the books and enforceable against Muslims by a huge
bureaucracy.129 The family might be deeply resentful if the State
refuses to punish the woman, or if the law does not even consider the
wrong to be a crime.
Honor killings are mostly, but not always against women.
Consider, for example, the honor killing in Turkey of a twenty-six-
year old gay man.130 Ahmet Yildiz chose to live an openly gay
lifestyle.131 This provoked his father to hunt him down in Istanbul,
more than six-hundred miles from his hometown, shooting him to
death as he left his apartment to buy ice cream.132 Afterwards, his
family refused to claim his body.133 A cousin said in an interview,
“Ahmet’s father had warned him to return to their village and to see a
doctor and imam in order to cure him of his homosexuality and get
married, but Ahmet refused.”134 Ahmet had filed a complaint with the
local prosecutor’s office about his family’s threats to kill him, but the
127. Wendy M. Gonzalez, Karo Kari: Honor Killing, 9 BUFF. WOMEN’S L.J.
22, 23 (2000-2001).
128. Thomas Fuller, Malaysia Postpones Whipping of Woman Who Drank
Beer, N.Y. TIMES, Aug. 25, 2009, at A6.
129. Id.
130. Dan Bilefsky, Soul-Searching in Turkey After Killing of Gay Man, N.Y.
TIMES, Nov. 26, 2009, at A16.
131
Id.
132. Id.
133. Id.
134. Id. (emphasis added).
office had refused to investigate his allegations or provide him with

protection.135 Another young man, Didar Erdal, also fled from
Ahmet’s home town and moved to the Netherlands after his family
learned he was gay.136 He said that his father had ordered him home so
that the tribal elders could decide his fate.137 Didar told a reporter, “I
know all too well what the tradition demands must happen to me.”138
B. Honor Killings in Western Society
Honor killings are a worldwide phenomenon, occurring not only

in Arab cultures, but also among Muslim communities in Western
urban centers. In recent years, episodes of honor killings have been
increasingly reported among Muslim urbanites in the West, including
the United States, Britain and Canada. The following is a list
containing several recent instances of honor killings cases in both
Canada and the United States.
• In Brampton, Ontario, two men–accused of a high-profile death
of a sixteen-year-old girl, Aqsa Parvez, who was found strangled
in her family’s home–were charged with first-degree murder in a
case that drew international attention for the apparent clash
between Muslim and Western cultures.139 The girl had been at
odds with her family over her refusal to wear the hijab, the
familiar Islamic headscarf that is often worn by Muslim
women.140 She had reportedly spent time away from home,
sleeping at various friends’ houses or community shelters.141
• In Kingston, Ontario, four young women, whose family thought
the women had committed social transgressions, were found dead
135. Id.
136. Id.
137. Id.
138. Id.
139. Louis Rosella, Aqsa Parvez Father, Brother Charged with First-Degree,
SOUTH ASIAN FOCUS (Toronto), Sept. 17, 2009, at 5, available at
http://zoominlocal.com/pub-
files/123640573049b20de2db76b/pdf/12531112834ab0f5f3444ba.pdf.
140. Id.
141. Matthew Coutts, Hearings Open in the Murder Trial of Asqa Parvez,
NAT’L POST (Can.), Jan. 8, 2009, at A2.
in a car in what was described as an episode of honor killing.142

• In Cleveland, Ohio two young men were prosecuted for
murdering their cousin, twenty-one year-old Methal Dayem, who
was living independently and had backed out of an arranged
marriage the year before.143 The trial ended in acquittal,
apparently because gloves found at the crime scene had gunshot
residue, but did not match DNA of either of the two defendants.144
• In October 2009, a Phoenix, Arizona man, born In Iraq, drove
over and killed his daughter with a two-ton jeep because she was
“too westernized.”145 The prosecutor told the court in a
preliminary hearing: “By his own admission, this was an
intentional act and the reason was that his daughter had brought
shame on him and his family.”146
• Rifqa Bara, a seventeen year-old girl from Columbus, Ohio,
born of a Muslim family, decided to convert to Christianity.147
According to Shariah law, those who convert have engaged in
apostasy, a capital offense.148 The girl’s father threatened to kill
her, so she fled to Florida by bus, and found a safe haven with two
pastors she had met on the social networking website
Facebook.149 When the girl’s family discovered her whereabouts,
they filed an action in the juvenile court in Orlando, Florida, to
compel her to return.150 Her return to her parents’ custody would
142. Andrew Chung, Were Deaths of 4 Women a Matter of ‘Honour’?,

STAR.COM (Toronto), July 24, 2009,
http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/671148.
143. Amanda Garrett, Cousin Acquitted in Killing, PLAIN DEALER (Cleveland),
July 26, 2000, at 1A.
144. Id.
145. Phyllis Chesler, Honor Killings All Over America–Why Are the Islamists
Suddenly Silent?, CHESLER CHRONS., Nov. 1, 2009,
http://www.pajamasmedia.com/phyllischesler/2009/11/01/honor-killings-all-over-
america-why-are-the-islamists-suddenly-silent/.
146. Id.
147. See Frank J. Gaffney Jr., Stay of Execution; Shariah and Constitution
Collide, WASH. TIMES, Aug. 25, 2009, at A19.
148. Id.
149. Id.
150. Id.
have meant certain death at their hands.151 Public outrage over the
girl’s plight led the juvenile court to permit her to stay in the state
system for ninety days pending investigation of the danger she
might face if she were returned to her parents’ custody.152
• In Buffalo, New York, the founder of a television network,
which was designed to improve the image of Muslims in the
United States, was arrested and charged with murdering his
estranged wife shortly after she had filed for divorce and a
protective order barring him from their home.153 There have been
conflicting reports on whether he admitted to decapitating her in
February 2009, in an apparent effort to restore his honor lost by
her filing for divorce.154
• Chaudhry Rashid, a Pakistani immigrant living in Clayton
County, Georgia, strangled his daughter to death with a bungee
cord in July 2008.155 There is speculation that this murder was an
honor killing. He said that his daughter was planning to end her
arranged marriage, and that she was having an extramarital
affair.156
These represent just a fraction of cases regarding honor killings
that can be culled from news sources throughout the world.
III. THE CONCEPT OF “SUDDEN PROVOCATION” IN THE

CONTEXT OF HONOR KILLINGS
In principle it would seem difficult to imagine how a father or a

brother could be prompted to kill his daughter or sister, or how a
151. Id.
152. Id.
153. Fred O. Williams, Muslim Influence Speculated in Slaying; Estranged
Husband Charged with Murder, BUFF. NEWS, Feb. 17, 2009, at A1.
154. Compare Chelsea Schilling, Was New York Wife Alive During
Beheading, World Net Daily, Feb. 23, 2009,
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=89824 (“While CNN reports Hassan
admitted to killing Aasiya, Hassan’s defense attorney, James P. Harrington, claims
his client never confessed to the murder.”), with TV Owner Accused of Beheading
Wife Says He was Abused, YNN (Buffalo), Jan. 22, 2010 (stating that Hassan
admitted to killing his wife).
155. Austin Fenner & Hasani Gittins, ‘Honor’ Killing for God - Dad’s Sick
‘Confession,’ N.Y. POST, Aug. 6, 2008, at 15.
156. Id.
husband could kill his wife over what some may categorize as
relatively minor indiscretions. However, some Arab states consider
honor killings to fall within the “crime of passion” category, where the
defendant is blinded by rage, operating under sudden provocation or
other mitigating circumstances.
It is a time-honored common law principle that one’s state of
mind is crucial in establishing elements of specific intent crimes. This
reflects society’s recognition and understanding that some situations
can inflame the passions of an ordinary person to such an extent that
killing is not an unexpected result. If someone kills another while
acting under some sort of provocation, one’s criminal intent may be
diffused, one’s ability to premeditate may be overcome by passion,
and accordingly, “homicides committed as a result of provocation
should be treated differently from other homicides . . . .”157 The
element of provocation is evidence of the defendant’s state of mind,
suggesting that the defendant, in acting in the “heat of passion,” did
not have the opportunity to deliberate about what he was about to
do.158
The most serious provocation was thought to be catching one’s
wife in an act of adultery.159 Under common law, a killing in this
circumstance was likely prosecuted as voluntary manslaughter–killing
in the heat of passion–rather than murder in the first degree.160 The
law recognizes provocative conduct by a spouse “could arouse a
passion of jealousy, pain and sexual rage in an ordinary man of
average disposition such as to cause him to act rashly from this
passion.”161
As discussed in Part II, in traditional Arab cultures a woman or
girl who commits an act that dishonors her family may cause shame,
humiliation and public pressure that provokes the family to kill her,
and thereby restore their honor.162 However, in almost all instances,
honor killings are committed after a period of time has elapsed from
157. Abu-Odeh, supra note 112, at 296.

158. Jide Nzelibe, Courting Genocide: The Unintended Effects of
Humanitarian Intervention, 97 CAL. L. REV. 1171, 1214 (2009).
159. R. v. Mawgridge, (1707) 84 Eng. Rep. 1107, 1116 (K.B.).
160. Id.; see also 4 WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES *191-92.
161. People v. Berry, 556 P.2d 777, 781 (Cal. 1976).
162. See discussion supra Part II.A.
the provocative incident–after considerable discussion, planning and

deliberation among family members.163 “[A]lmost all honor killings
occur after concerted planning and without actual observance of illicit
sexual activity that might cause one to commit a crime based on
experiencing a heat of passion or rage. In fact, often elaborate family
planning occurs before a family commits an honor killing.”164
Only rarely do honor killings occur on the spot.165 Thus, it would
seem that honor killings rarely involve a situation where the killer acts
in the heat of passion. The motivation for the killing may be the desire
to reclaim honor that has been lost due to the provocative incident, but
prevailing interpretations of provocation under the law would suggest
that at the time of the killing the defendant had cooled off and killed in
a deliberate and planned manner. As Blackstone observed, “in every
other case of homicide upon provocation, if there be a sufficient
cooling-time for passion to subside and reason to interpose, and the
person so provoked afterwards kills the other, this is deliberate
revenge and not heat of blood, and accordingly amounts to murder.”166
Under prevailing Western legal principles:
[H]eat of passion must be such a passion as would naturally be

aroused in the mind of an ordinarily reasonable person under the
given facts and circumstances, and that, consequently, no defendant
may set up his own standard of conduct and justify or excuse
himself because in fact his passions were aroused, unless further the
jury believe that the facts and circumstances were sufficient to
arouse the passions of the ordinarily reasonable man. . . . For the
fundamental of the inquiry is whether or not the defendant’s reason
was, at the time of his act, so disturbed or obscured by some
passion–not necessarily fear and never, of course, the passion for
revenge–to such an extent as would render ordinary men of average
disposition liable to act rashly or without due deliberation and
reflection, and from this passion rather than from judgment.167
There is also a subjective element. That is, the defendant must be

164. Arnold, supra note 110, at 1368-69 (footnotes omitted).
165. See, e.g., supra notes 98-104 and accompanying text (discussing planned
killing of Sania Samwar).
166. 4 BLACKSTONE, supra note 160, at *191.
167. People v. Logan, 164 P. 1121, 1122 (Cal. 1917).
under the actual influence of a strong passion at the time of the

killing.168 In many if not all instances, honor killings are conducted
with cool deliberation,169 so that it might be difficult to convince a
jury that an ordinary, reasonable person would really be experiencing
a strong passion while committing the act of killing. Just the mere
lapse of time between the provocative incident and the killing suggests
the heat of passion has dissipated: “[I]f sufficient time has elapsed
between the provocation and the fatal blow for passion to subside and
reason to return, the killing is not voluntary manslaughter . . . .”170
Thus, is the defense must address the initial hurdle of whether an
American jury would find that an ordinary, reasonable person would
be provoked to kill based on the particular conduct of the woman or
girl who was killed. The decision would come under the standard
instructions of provocation: the jury would need to find that the
passion was such “as would naturally be aroused in the mind of an
ordinarily reasonable person under the given facts and
circumstances . . . .”171 It is hard to imagine, for example, that an
American jury would agree that a girl’s refusal to marry a man chosen
by her parents would be sufficient provocation to inflame their
passions and kill her.
Further, even if a jury believes the behavior of the woman or girl
constituted something that would evoke a strong passion in an
ordinary, reasonable person, it would seem difficult to convince them
that the defendant was truly acting under that passion at the time of
the killing, as perpetrators of honor killings usually strike after a
period of deliberation, plotting and planning.172 The killing usually
occurs after what Blackstone referred to as a “sufficient cooling-
time,”173 so that an ordinary, reasonable actor would not likely be
under a strong passion at the time of the killing. An ordinary,
reasonable person, under Western standards, would not likely
experience inflamed passions by the sort of conduct that might
provoke people in traditional Arab cultures, and moreover the lapse of
168. People v. Wu, 286 Cal. Rptr. 868, 884 (Ct. App. 1991) (depublished).
169. Arnold, supra note 110, at 1369-70.
170. Wu, 286 Cal. Rptr. at 884.
171. Logan, 164 P. at 1122.
173. BLACKSTONE, supra note 160, at *191.
time, deliberation, and other factors that often exist would suggest that
the heat of passion had turned into premeditation.
Thus, defendants in the West who wish to be successful in seeking
mitigation of charges or leniency in sentencing must rely on some
theory other than provocation. Part V will discuss that theory: The
cultural defense.
IV. PROVOCATION IN THE LAWS OF JORDAN AND PAKISTAN

PERTAINING TO HONOR KILLINGS
It is noteworthy that in cultures where honor killings are not

uncommon, perpetrators of the killings often go free or get off with
mild punishment due to the strong societal norms that recognize the
depth of shame families experience if faced with an incident of
unchaste conduct by a female in the family.
The laws of various jurisdictions make successful prosecution of
such cases very difficult. For example, Jordan, Syria, Egypt,174
Pakistan,175 and Iran, among other nations, have laws allowing for a
partial or complete defense against criminal charges on the basis that
the act was an honor killing.176 Until recently, Syria’s Penal Code
allowed for a complete exemption from penalty for honor killings
committed for “illegitimate sex acts.”177 As discussed below, the
Jordanian Penal Code specifically allows exemption from penalties or
reduced sentences for honor killings, including those situations where
a man catches his wife or female relative in an act of adultery.178
174
Lama Abu-Odeh, Crimes of Honour and the Construction of Gender in Arab
Societies, in FEMINISM & ISLAM: LEGAL AND LITERARY PERSPECTIVES 141, 143-145
(Mai Yamani ed., 1996) (citing Jordanian Penal Code, Article 98) [hereinafter
FEMINISM & ISLAM].
175
See Moeen H. Cheema, Judicial Patronage of ‘Honor Killings’ in Pakistan: The
Supreme Court’s Persistent Adherence to the Doctrine of Grave and Sudden
Provocation, 14 BUFF. HUM. RTS. L. REV. 52, 54-56 (2008) (discussing mitigated
punishments for honor killings in Pakistan, as well as the Qisas and Diyat
Ordinances, that allow for private settlement of these cases, and will be elaborated
on in Part IV.B.2).
176. See Expert Group Meeting, supra note 74, at 11 (stating how honor
killings are “given the tag of crimes of passion and are therefore heavily mitigated”
in Iran and Iraq).
177. Syria: Half Measures Against Honour Killings Not Enough – HRW, IRIN
NEWS, July 29, 2009, http://irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=85481.
178. Arnold, supra note 110, at 1348.
Additionally, in Pakistan, where honor killings have been

criminalized, there are still tremendous hurdles in getting defendants
prosecuted.179
A. Prosecution of Honor Killings in Jordan
According to one account, Jordan has the highest rate of honor

killings in the world.180 Moreover, honor killings comprise about fifty-
five percent of documented crimes against women and twenty-five
percent of all homicides in Jordan.181 In Jordan, honor killings are not
only common, but according to one commentator, “[c]learly, honor
murders enjoy the approval of the majority of Jordanian society.”182
In Jordan, the defendant of an honor killing can benefit from a
reduced penalty or even avoid punishment altogether. Article 98 of the
Jordanian Penal Code states: “He who commits a crime in a fit of fury
caused by an unlawful and dangerous act on the part of the victim
benefits from a reduction in penalty.”183 This provides a general
provocation rule that allows judges to impose lenient sentences for
any crime committed in the heat of passion, and this provision is
usually applied in cases involving honor killings.184 The provision has
been liberally construed by judges in cases of honor killings.185 Judges
construe an illegal, and to some extent dangerous act to mean illicit
sexual relations or other indiscretions that violate norms of behavior
expected of women and girls.186 “[T]he court’s application of Article
179. See Yolanda Asamoah-Wade, Women’s Human Rights and “Honor

Killings” in Islamic Cultures, 8 BUFF. WOMEN’S L.J. 21, 21 (1999-2000).
180. Arnold, supra note 110, at 1347.
181. Id. at 1347-48.
182. Feldner, supra note 9, at 45 (discussing a Jordan Times survey showing
62% of Jordanians opposed amending the law to inflict harsher penalties on those
guilty of honor killings).
183. Lama Abu Odeh, Crimes of Honour and the Construction of Gender in
Arab Societies, in FEMINISM & ISLAM, supra, note 174, at 141, 158-59 (Mai Yamani
ed., 1996) (citing Jordanian Penal Code, Article 98).
184. Rana Husseini, Criminal Court Appoints Special Tribunal for Honour
Crimes, JORDAN TIMES, July 29, 2009 [hereinafter Husseini, Special Tribunal for
Honour Crimes].
185. See id. (“[J]udges often consider a woman tarnishing her family’s honour
as a dangerous and unlawful act, resulting in a reduced penalty for her killer.”).
186. Id.
98 allows judges to grant lenient sentences and total exoneration to

perpetrators of honor killings by classifying the murder victim’s act,
whether it is adultery, rape, or another act, as unrightful and
dangerous.”187
The defendant’s “extreme anger” in the killing is implied from the
circumstances even when, as is almost always the case, it is
committed after a period of deliberation and planning.188 Article 98, in
effect, allows defendants the benefit of reduced penalties without
requiring evidence that the honor killing was committed either in the
heat of passion or some other sudden provocation.189 “Jordanian
courts have not enforced the requirement that the honor killing occur
simultaneously with discovery of the illicit sexual activity, and critics
argue that such application of the passion clause to premeditated
murder cases completely disregards the entire purpose of the
provocation defense.”190
Moreover, there is no requirement that the defendant in fact have
witnessed the woman’s “illegal, and to some extent dangerous act” in
order to benefit from a reduced penalty.191 “Thus, fathers could kill
their daughters after hearing that they were pregnant, and brothers
could kill sisters two days after hearing that they were committing
adultery, and still manage to be granted total excuse.”192
When the court allows the defendant to invoke Article 98 in an
honor killing, the sentence will typically be as little as six months in
prison.193 It has been remarked that this provision is based on “the
Islamic principle that allows a Muslim to defend his honor, property,
and blood.”194
In addition to the provisions of Article 98, Article 340 of the
Jordanian Penal Code contains a specific “defense of honor” provision
that pertains to adultery:

191. Id. at 231.
193. See, e.g., Feldner, supra note 9, at 45; see also Arnold, supra note 110, at
1366-67 (“[C]ourt’s application of Article 98 allows judges to grant lenient
sentences and total exoneration to perpetrators of honor killings . . . .”).
(i) He who catches his wife, or one of his female mahrams

committing adultery with another, and . . . kills, wounds, or injures
one or both of them is exempt from penalty . . . . (ii) He who
catches his wife or one of his female mahrams with another in an
unlawful bed, and he kills or wounds or injures one or both of them,
benefits from a reduction in penalty.195
Thus, a man may achieve complete exoneration if he witnesses actual

adultery of a female relative, whereas a reduction in penalty is
available if a man catches a female relative in an unlawful bed, even
without witnessing any sexual activity.196 However, there is no
comparable exculpatory provision for a woman who kills a husband or
other male relative whom she catches in an act of adultery or finds in
an “illegitimate bed.”197
Article 340 appears to be somewhat on par with Western “heat of
passion” laws, requiring the elements of surprise, immediacy of
action, and flagrante delicto.198 However, unlike these seemingly
similar Western laws, “Article 340 has been used successfully as a
defense in cases in which the killer acted in cold blood.”199 Article
340, like Article 98, is a provocation defense.200 It allows the
defendant to claim that he acted in an uncontrollable rage and that the
court should be lenient in sentencing him.201 But as mentioned above,
the defendant in an honor killing almost always acts in a premeditated
manner.202
Jordan’s treatment of perpetrators of honor killings is more lenient
than that of other Middle Eastern countries in that it offers a complete,
rather than a partial defense to a man who kills a female relative after
195. Hussain, supra note 6, at 230-31 (emphasis added). “Mahram is a person

to whom marriage is forbidden by Islamic law. For men, this includes, but is not
limited to, sisters, mothers, and daughters.” Id. at 230 n.51.
196. Id. at 231.
197. Id.
198. Id. In flagrante delicto is defined by Black’s Law Dictionary as: “[Latin
‘while the crime is ablaze’] In the very act of committing a crime or other wrong;
red-handed.” BLACK’S LAW DICTIONARY 848 (9th ed. 2009).
199. Id.
201. Id. at 1368.
202. Id. at 1368-69.
finding her in an act of adultery.203 In other Middle Eastern countries,

a legal excuse exists only for a husband who finds his wife in
flagrante delicto, whereas in Jordan any man enjoys the excuse with
respect to those women he is related to.204 In the West, while the law
of homicide is clear that killing in the heat of passion is unlawful, it
accommodates human frailties so that the husband may be charged
with manslaughter, but by no means exonerated.205
Article 340(ii) also provides a reduction in penalty for any male
relative who kills a female relative after discovering her in “an
illegitimate bed,” while again, in other Middle Eastern countries this
defense is limited to the victim’s husband.206 In addition to the wider
array of Jordanian males that can take advantage of the exemption or
reduction in penalty,207 the perpetrator of an honor crime rarely
witnesses an act of adultery or catches a female relative in an
illegitimate bed. In fact:
[M]ost honor crimes perpetrators do not use the defense of honor

crime exculpation or mitigation laws because such statutes often
require proof that the perpetrator witnessed sexual activity. Since
statistics indicate that most honor crimes occur on the basis of mere
allegations, many perpetrators are unlikely to meet the evidentiary
burden required by statutes like Section 340.208
Moreover, in what one commentator refers to as “improper

application” of these laws, courts in Jordan have bent over backward
to fit the defendant’s conduct under a defense to grant leniency in
honor killing cases.209
The difficulty of prosecuting honor killings is exacerbated “by the
Jordanian police’s failure to investigate or recommend prosecution of
honor killings.”210 It is suggested that these biases “encourage[] men
to disobey the law and promote[] crime because honor killing can
203. Id. at 1371-73.

204. Id. at 1363, 1372.
205. Abu Odeh, supra note 101, at 296.
207. Id. at 1373.
209. Id. at 1369-70.
210. Id. at 1388.
serve as a disguise for other criminal acts against women.”211

Recently, The Jordan Times reported that in the past two years
judges have been less inclined to allow defendants to invoke Article
98 in honor killing cases.212 Also, effective August 1, 2009, the
Criminal Court established a special tribunal to hear honor crime
cases, so as to ensure consistency in verdicts.213 Jordan’s Justice
Minister, Ayman Odeh, is said to be in favor of amending Article 98
so there will be no exemption for honor crimes even if committed in a
fit of fury, and it is expected that this will be debated by lawmakers in
the near future.214
B. Prosecution of Honor Killings in Pakistan
1. Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas
Crimes against women are rarely brought to justice in Pakistan

because of the prevalence of tribal courts, known as jirgas.215 The vast
rural areas of Pakistan consist mainly of tribes that function somewhat
like autonomous governments,216 each with their own set of tribal
rules.217 Jirgas exist mainly in Pakistan’s Federally Administered
Tribal Areas (FATA), which include the region between the Pakistan-
Afghanistan border and the North West Frontier Province.218
Honor killings are socially and morally sanctioned by tribal
communities.219 Moreover, “the State does not generally condemn
these activities nor take action against the murderers.”220 Tribal rules
are a product of traditional local customs, and these in turn trump
national laws:
211. Id.
212. Husseini, Special Tribunal for Honour Crimes, supra note 184.
213. Omar Obeidat, Penal Code ‘An Endorsement for Murdering Women’-
Rights Group, JORDAN TIMES, Sept. 9, 2009.
214. Id.
217. See Shah, supra note 11, at 1179 (discussing the power and authority
afforded the jirgas).
218. Id.
220. Id.
Ethnic, regional, caste, and family loyalties factor more in society

than the national loyalty. . . . The people of Pakistan have always
remained distant from the political system and they have been
unable to understand a Constitutional theory or relate to the idea of
a consensual plurality or national identity. On the contrary, the
citizens have continued to follow the local tribal leaders whom they
trust.221
Jirgas are completely autonomous from Pakistan’s judicial system

because the Pakistani Constitution prevents the courts from exercising
any oversight or jurisdiction in the tribal areas.222 It has been
suggested the reason why Pakistan’s government has limited legal
presence in the tribal areas is that “since its inception, Pakistan has
experienced near constant social and political upheaval. . . . When
decisions handed down by tribal councils have brought about human
rights violations or severe physical harm, jirga members have not
been held accountable by the State in any way.”223 Moreover, the
Pakistani police have no authority in the tribal areas.224 As a practical
matter, enforcing human rights laws could cause uproar in tribal
cultures, leading to a backlash, a wave of rebellion, and other
repercussions against the national government.
These tribal councils are impaneled with men who determine legal
issues that in urban areas are heard within the formal court system.225
Jirga membership is based on political connections and land
ownership, not legal training or other qualifications.226 Violations of
social codes that bring dishonor to a woman’s family, such as adultery
or seeking a divorce, are among the many issues heard in these
councils.227 Women have difficulty in achieving justice in jirgas
because of their inferior social status.228 Jirga law is customary law,
221. Id. at 552 (footnotes omitted).

223. Id. (emphasis added).
224. Id.
227. See Castetter, supra note 20, at 550-51; see also Shah, supra note 11, at
1180-81 (“A jirga’s subject matter jurisdiction provides it with the authority to
resolve disputes concerning women, money, and land.”) (emphasis added).
228. See Shah, supra note 11, at 1181-83.
handed down orally rather than codified.229 Thus, it is not uncommon

for “arbitrary and inappropriate” decisions to result.230 On top of the
other hardships that women face under this system, the rulings of the
jirgas cannot be appealed.231
2. Pakistan’s Qisas and Diyat Law
Outside the Pakistani tribal communities, where there are laws

pertaining to honor killings and other instances of domestic violence,
cases of violence against women are not pursued with any degree of
earnestness.232 The Pakistani authorities often regard domestic
violence cases as private, family matters,233 and many women endure
wife-beating without going to the authorities to complain.234 If a
woman reports a case of domestic violence, she frequently will
encounter police refusal to register the complaint, or even physical
and/or sexual abuse.235 Even if these difficulties did not arise, “the
majority of police officials do not possess the requisite training to
effectively deal with gender specific violence.”236 Further
undermining a woman’s pursuit of justice is the perception “[t]he
Pakistani police are viewed as a corrupt organization. Their legitimacy
and effectiveness has been seriously compromised by their reputation
for accepting bribes in exchange for a perpetrator’s freedom.”237 For
all intents and purposes, the legal system in Pakistan grants “male
family members a virtual license to kill their women on the pretext of
‘honour.’”238
If a complaint actually gets registered, frequently there are errors,
229. Id. at 1181.

230. Id.
231. Id.
232. Id. at 1182-83.
233. Palo, supra note 37, at 95.
234. Parveen Azam Ali & Maria Irma Bustamante Gavino, Violence Against
Women in Pakistan: A Framework for Analysis, J. PAK. MED. ASS’N 198, 202
(2008).
235. Shah, supra note 11, at 1182-83.
236. Id. at 1182.
237. Id.
238. Sohail Akbar Warraich, ‘Honour Killings’ and the Law in Pakistan, in
‘HONOUR’, supra note 27, at 78, 83.
irregularities, and tampering with the reports due to bribes by the

suspect.239 If the suspect’s family is prominent in the community, the
police will rarely act to pursue allegations of abuse.240 Certain acts of
violence against women are not recognized as crimes.241 For example,
presently there are no laws specifically criminalizing acid violence in
Pakistan.242
In Pakistan, murder, attempted murder, and any crime causing
bodily harm are prosecuted under the provisions of the Qisas and
Diyat law.243 Qisas is defined as “retribution,”244 but it also can mean
“equality” or “equivalence” for murder and other crimes resulting
from intentional, reckless or negligent acts.245 Diyat is the
compensation provided to the victim or the victim’s family by the
guilty party, 246 essentially “blood money” that in effect pardons the
killer. Along with the options of Qisas and Diyat, the deceased’s heirs
may also seek “total forgiveness of the victim.”247
Under Pakistani law, the State cannot decide on its own to
prosecute violent criminal cases.248 Further, there is no mandatory
punishment for murder and other crimes that inflict bodily injury.249
Honor killings are viewed as private matters, and charges of murder
must be brought, if at all, by individuals, not the state.250 The Qisas
and Diyat laws in effect “place the choice of prosecution wholly in the
hands of the victim or her heirs, rather than the government.”251
As a practical matter, since honor killings are almost always
orchestrated and executed by close family members of the victim,
there is no aggrieved party to press for prosecution, since the family as

240. Id.
241. See id. at 1184.
242. Id.
243. Id. at 1187.
246. Id.
248. Id. at 93.
249. Shah, supra note 11, at 1187-88.
250. Palo, supra note 37, at 93-95.
251. Id. at 97.
a whole approves of the killing.252 Thus, the killer only rarely gets
prosecuted.253
If the victim’s family decides to press for prosecution, they have a
choice of asserting Qisas or “equivalence,” 254 associated with the
ancient an eye for an eye justice; or the family can opt for Diyat,
compensation in lieu of prosecution, which exonerates the perpetrator
and the very crime itself.255 In many instances the perpetrator may not
even get arrested because the victim’s family will accept Diyat before
the matter even gets reported to the police, thus ending the matter.256
Furthermore, the family can absolve the perpetrator of the crime, thus
protecting the perpetrator from prosecution, at any stage of the
proceeding.257
In Pakistani culture, women are not usually allowed to have a say
in this matter, and men in the family may decide to accept Diyat
“when the victim [of an attempted killing] would prefer to prosecute
her attacker or may not consult with the female victim when
determining the amount of the monetary compensation to request from
the perpetrator.”258 As illustration, for some honor killings:
[T]he legal heirs of the victim have the choice of exercising qisas,
that is capital punishment as retribution, or pardoning the offender
either in lieu of compensation or even without any compensation. If
the heirs choose to exercise their right of qisas, the state has no
authority to pardon the offender or remit the sentence. However, if
any one of the heirs pardons the offender and waives his or her
right of qisas, qisas can not be enforced. The judge may,
nonetheless, give a sentence of imprisonment of up to fourteen
years as tazir (discretionary punishment under Islamic law) keeping
in view the principle of fasad-fil-arz, i.e. if the offender is a
previous convict, professional criminal or if the murder was
252. Id. at 93-95.

253. See id. at 93-94 (“The prosecution[’s] case collapses in almost all
scenarios of an honor killing . . . .”).
255. Id. at 1187-88.
256. See Waheed, supra note 93, at 964.
257. Id.
committed in a brutal manner.259
This discretionary fourteen year maximum sentence was increased to

twenty-five years in a 2004 Amendment to Pakistan’s Criminal Law,
but as a practical matter judges are extremely lenient in sentencing of
honor killings.260
Often enough, in Pakistan, intense poverty compels many families
to opt for the financial compromise to be paid by the killer, who often
is a relative.261 A National Geographic documentary in 2002 depicted
the plight of a Pakistani woman whose son-in-law killed her daughter
in an honor crime.262 “Although the elderly mother abhorred the man
who killed her daughter, she accepted the financial compensation
package he offered, amounting to the equivalent of two hundred U.S.
dollars because she needed the money to support her other
children.”263 The financial incentives to forgive the killer are
buttressed by “the cultural obstacles and familial ties that deter them
from seeking [criminal] redress. . . . [I]t is estimated that only three
percent of honor crime cases actually result in convictions.”264
Diyat is Pakistan’s wergild, or blood money, which is a medieval
practice of exacting compensation from perpetrators of homicide,
whether murder, manslaughter, or accidental killing, as well as other
crimes.265 In medieval Europe wergild was formalized in the Anglo-
Saxon legal codes, which Professor Emily Sherwin describes as
follows:
Anglo-Saxon legal codes consisted mainly of schedules of

payments for common types of wrongs, such as killing, maiming,
and theft. They specified gelds, which fixed the value of things
destroyed, and bots, which fixed payments for damage, including
259. Cheema, supra note 175, at 58 (discussing PAKISTAN PENAL CODE [PAK.
PEN. C.] ch. 16, § 302(a)) (emphasis added).
260. Id. at 65-66.
261. Hussain, supra note 6, at 233; Shah, supra note 11, at 1189.
262. Hussain, supra note 6, at 233 (discussing World Diary: Honor Killings
(National Geographic Television 2002)).
263. Id.
264. Id.
265. See, e.g., BERTHA SURTEES PHILLPOTTS, KINDRED AND CLAN IN THE
MIDDLE AGES AND AFTER 148-51 (1913) (illustrating Northern Frisian Wergild
allocation in the fifteenth century).
bodily harm. The payment due for killing a person was the wergeld
(or wergild), or man-price. Wergelds varied dramatically with the
status of the victim. A free peasant might have a wergeld of 200
shillings, while a noble might be worth 1200 shillings. Bots for
injury were prescribed in colorful detail. The laws of Alfred, for
example, prescribed payments of five shillings for slicing off a
thumbnail, thirty shillings for cutting off a thumb, sixty-six
shillings and six and one-third pennies for gouging out an eye, and
thirty shillings for inflicting a head wound “if both bones . . . be
pierced.”266
Historians agree that wergild, “at least in part, [was] a civilized

substitute for violent revenge. According to typical accounts, codified
compensation schedules supplanted a system of blood feuds, in which
victims and their kin were entitled, and probably honor-bound, to
retaliate against wrongdoers and their kin.”267
Eventually, wergild “was turned at a later day into a duty of
prosecuting the murderer before the legal tribunals.”268 Wergild is still
operative not only in Pakistan, but exists on a local tribal level in
many villages in the Middle East and Asia to help patch up feuds
between families to avenge someone’s death.269 In the village of
Diyarbakir, Turkey, for instance, during a ten-year period an elderly
man, Sait Sanli, brokered more than 500 deals for blood money
between feuding families.270 In many instances the payment of blood
money is a way of ensuring that the families will not engage in tit-for-
tat revenge killings.271
In modern society there is a counterpart to the custom of wergild:
lawsuits for wrongful death where plaintiffs seek to obtain a financial
judgment or settlement for the death of a relative due to intentional,
reckless, or negligent conduct. Usually, however, redress for murder
and other crimes is reserved for the state to prosecute in criminal
266. Emily Sherwin, Compensation and Revenge, 40 San Diego L. 1387, 1398
(2003) (footnotes omitted).
267. Id. at 1398-99 (footnotes omitted).
268. GILBERT T. SADLER, THE RELATION OF CUSTOM TO LAW 7 (1919).
269. See, e.g., Nicholas Birch, The Man Who Heals Deadly Kurdish Feuds;
‘Kurdish Kofi Annan’ Brings Sweet Voice of Reason to Halt Tradition of Bloody
Vendetta, INDEPENDENT (London), Nov. 18, 2008, at 24.
270. Id.
271. Id.
proceedings. Still, people can, and do, sue for wrongful death in cases
of intentional homicide. For instance, consider the civil suit against
O.J. Simpson for wrongful death after he was acquitted of murder in a
criminal trial.272
Diyat is also a factor in acid attacks;273 in many instances “the
victim opts to drop criminal charges because of external pressure or
fear.”274 As a result, most perpetrators of acid attacks are not
prosecuted and may pay a very small amount of Diyat.275 “The
extreme economic hardship that afflicts a vast majority of Pakistan’s
population forces the victims’ family members to make normally
unconscionable compromises.”276 Additionally, by law, women are
only entitled to receive half the Diyat that men receive.277
The frightening reality is that the Qisas and Diyat laws of
Pakistan allow the perpetrators of violent crimes against women to go
unpunished.278 These laws in effect excuse honor killings pursuant to
Pakistani custom.279 No doubt it is more a matter of custom, rather
than law, that explains why some jurisdictions allow perpetrators of
honor crimes to go free or receive only minimal punishment. “[T]he
judge must, in a sense, recognise some customs, if order is to be
272. Kenneth B. Noble, In Civil Court, a Second Chance at Retribution, N.Y.

TIMES, Oct. 22, 1995, § 4 (Week in Review), at 5 (providing a legal context and a
discussion of challenges for O.J. Simpson’s civil suit, which was pending at that
time).
273. Acid attacks are common across South Asia, including Bangladesh, India,
Pakistan, Cambodia, Nepal, and other areas. See Shah, supra note 11, at 1172. Acid
attacks involve the disfigurement and blinding of women or girls by throwing acid
in their faces. Id. at 1172. These women are left with almost no face: their eyes,
nose, and mouth are all but gone, leaving a gruesome appearance. S. N. M. Abdi,
Following Bangladesh’s Example, Indian Authorities Are Beginning to Crack Down
on Acid Attacks Against Women, S. CHINA MORNING POST, Aug. 28, 2008, at 13.
However, about ninety-five percent of acid attacks result in immediate death of the
victim. Shah, supra note 11, at 1173.
275. Id.
276. Id. “The wealthy perpetrators take advantage of their victim’s extreme
desperation and coerce the victim’s family members to waive Qisas in exchange for
monetary compensation.” Id. at 1189-90.
277. Id.
278. Hussain, supra note 6, at 232-33; see also Shah, supra note 11, at 1187-
90.
279. See Hussain, supra note 6, at 232-33.
preserved. Customs which the people hold as sacred or essential to

their life, or reasonable, must be recognised as law by the
judge . . . .”280
In 2005 Pakistan’s Criminal Law, which had been amended the
preceding year, provided for tougher punishments for honor crimes,
including the death penalty in extreme cases.281 However, the
amended law has been referred to as “defective and incomplete” in
light of the Qisas and Diyat laws, which continue to allow the victim’s
family to “forgive[]” the crime and accept compensation, rather than a
conviction.282
V. THE CULTURAL DEFENSE
A. An Explanation of the Cultural Defense
In her book, The Cultural Defense, Alison Dundes Renteln argues

that evidence of a defendant’s cultural background should be admitted
in civil and criminal cases to help explain the motivations behind
defendants’ behavior.283 Renteln says that “culture shapes the identity
of individuals, influencing their reasoning, perceptions, and
behavior.”284 The cultural defense takes into account whether the
defendant’s culture has a tradition claimed by him or her and whether
the defendant was influenced by this tradition when acting. A Note
published in the Harvard Law Review in 1986 seems to provide the
first detailed discussion regarding whether a defendant’s cultural
background is relevant to the question of his or her mental state at the
time of a crime.285 At the time that Note was published, some judges
allowed evidence of cultural factors for the limited purposes of
establishing the defendant’s degree of culpability or in meting out
appropriate punishments.286 In addition, American prosecutors have
taken into account extenuating circumstances based on cultural
280. SADLER, supra note 268, at 53.

282. Id. at 239-40.
283. See ALISON DUNDES RENTELN, THE CULTURAL DEFENSE 14-15 (2004).
284. Id. at 10.
285. The Cultural Defense in the Criminal Law, supra note 4, at 1293-94.
286. Id. at 1294-95.
variations when filing charges or negotiating plea bargains.287

The cultural defense is used in connection with helping establish
the defendant’s mens rea–a matter of some importance in
distinguishing murder from lesser species of homicide. “[E]vidence
pertaining to a defendant’s cultural background may be pertinent
regarding the state of mind of the defendant at the time of the act in
question or the context in which the act was committed, context which
might make the wrongful act seem to warrant less severe
punishment.”288 This is “in much the same way that the criminal law
allows other information about a defendant’s life history to mitigate
sentences or charges in a criminal trial.”289
In the context of honor killings, the cultural defense is important if
the defendant hopes to show mitigating factors to convince the jury
that the killing was manslaughter instead of murder. The cultural
defense in such cases may allow evidence to help explain the mindset
of the defendant on the crucial issue of mens rea.290 The defense
would “negate or mitigate criminal responsibility where acts are
committed under a reasonable, good-faith belief in their propriety,
based upon the actor’s cultural heritage or tradition.”291 The
perpetrator claims a reasonable good-faith belief in the propriety of
the act, based on his cultural heritage or tradition. He believes that he
did the “right thing” because it was something approved by his
culture.
The cultural defense is allowed by courts on a case-by-case basis;
it “has not been formalized–an attorney cannot walk into a courtroom
and plead ‘the cultural defense.’”292 Rejection of the cultural defense
might occur in the case-in-chief but still may be allowed as a
287. Id. at 1295.

288. Valerie L. Sacks, An Indefensible Defense: On the Misuse of Culture in
Criminal Law, 13 ARIZ. J. INT’L & COMP. L. 523, 523 (1996).
289. Leti Volpp, (Mis)Identifying Culture: Asian Women and the “Cultural
Defense,” 17 HARV. WOMEN’S L.J. 57, 95 (1994).
290. See WAYNE LAFAVE, CRIMINAL LAW 240 (4th ed. 2003).
291. John C. Lyman, Cultural Defense: Viable Doctrine or Wishful Thinking?,
9 CRIM. JUST. J. 87, 88 (1986).
292. Neal A. Gordon, Note, The Implications of Memetics for the Cultural
Defense, 50 DUKE L.J. 1809, 1811 (2001) (footnote omitted); see also Sharon M.
Tomao, Note, The Cultural Defense: Traditional or Formal?, 10 GEO. IMMIGR. L.J.
241, 242 (1996).
mitigating factor in the sentencing phase.293 Courts in the West

usually recognize an array of mitigating factors in sentencing
defendants.294 Recently the Supreme Court, in Porter v. McCollum,
ordered a new sentencing hearing for a war veteran who had been
sentenced to death for murdering his former girlfriend and her
boyfriend.295 The Court said the trial judge should consider mitigating
factors such as the intense stress and emotional toll of combat on the
defendant, as well as evidence of post-traumatic stress disorder
resulting from combat.296 The Court specifically noted:
Our Nation has a long tradition of according leniency to veterans in

recognition of their service, especially for those who fought on the
front lines as Porter did. Moreover, the relevance of Porter’s
extensive combat experience is not only that he served honorably
under extreme hardship and gruesome conditions, but also that the
jury might find mitigating the intense stress and mental and
emotional toll that combat took on Porter.297
The cultural defense provides a legal basis in which immigrant

defendants may introduce evidence of their cultural background to
provide a legal excuse for an otherwise unlawful act.298 Considering
the cultural defense issue with regard to immigrants:
The defendant’s actions, had they been committed in the

defendant’s home country and culture, either would not have been a
crime under the laws of the defendant’s native jurisdiction, or
would not have been punished as severely. The defendant adverts to
cultural influences and argues that her native culture would have
excused her conduct, that cultural factors or patterns of behavior are
relevant to a determination of her state of mind at the time of the
criminal act, or that cultural factors warrant reduced charges or
293. See generally Damian W. Sikora, Note, Different Cultures, Differing

Culpabilities?: A Sensible Alternative: Using Cultural Circumstances as a
Mitigating Factor in Sentencing, 62 OHIO ST. L.J. 1695 (2001).
294. E.g., Porter v. McCollum, 130 S.Ct. 447, 454-55 (2009).
295. Id. at 456.
296. Id. at 455.
297. Id.
298. Daina C. Chiu, The Cultural Defense: Beyond Exclusion, Assimilation,
and Guilty Liberalism, 82 CAL. L. REV. 1053, 1096 (1994).
punishment.299
The cultural defense considers that a defendant, born of a

particular culture, “will feel compelled to follow the rules of this
culture. . . . [E]vidence of cultural values can be introduced in order to
demonstrate how a particular culture recognizes that, in certain
situations, the actions of the victim are sufficient provocation to
justify the criminal act.”300 For those individuals caught between the
divergent ideas of two or more cultures and/or legal systems, the
cultural defense seems to act as a concession:
What is correct or even required by a folk law may be deemed a

criminal act by the official legislation in force in the area. This
could be the case in what was once colonial Africa or among the
minority residents in urban London or New York City. Such
instances serve as constant reminders of the continuing importance
of folk law in the modern world.301
In effect, the cultural defense allows the defendant to interpose his or

her culture’s norms as “an independent, substantive defense in
criminal trials.”302 This allows “a robust recognition of culture’s role
in individual life, as well as a concession to the sociological fact of
multiculturalism.”303
The cultural defense is not an argument that the defendant was
ignorant of the law. “[The cultural] defense requires that the defendant
have relied upon a positive, normative rule from his own cultural
background, rather than merely having acted in ignorance of the
dominant culture’s laws.”304 Moreover, “[i]n most cases in which a
cultural defense could be raised, there is little question that the
defendant actually intended to commit the act for which she is being
299. Id.
300. Aahren R. DePalma, I Couldn’t Help Myself--My Culture Made Me Do
It: The Use of Cultural Evidence in the Heat of Passion Defense, 28 CHICANO-
LATINO L. REV. 1, 10 (2009).
301. 2 FOLK LAW 751-52 (Alison Dundes Renteln & Alan Dundes eds., 1994).
302. The Cultural Defense in the Criminal Law, supra note 4, at 1293-94.
303. James M. Donovan & John Stuart Garth, Delimiting the Culture Defense,
26 QUINNIPIAC L. REV. 109, 111 (2007).
304. Id. at 112.
tried.”305
The cultural defense takes into consideration the effect that
culture has in forming the individual, including aspects of reasoning,
perception, and behavior.306 The impact on jurisprudence, under this
view, is that judges should assess responsibility and mete out
punishment by taking culturally embedded propositions into account
rather than presuming the dominant culture’s ideology wins the day.
[A]n ordinarily law-abiding person raised in a foreign culture may

have committed a criminal act solely because the values of her
native culture compelled her to do so. Mere awareness that her act
is contrary to the law may not be enough to override her adherence
to fundamental cultural values. . . . Thus, persons raised in other
cultures, who are subject to influences that inculcated in them a
different set of norms, will likely feel morally obligated to follow
those norms. Once norms have acquired this moral dimension,
conformity with conflicting laws becomes more difficult.307
The cultural defense is at odds with long-standing precedent

stemming from the Supreme Court decision in Carlisle v. United
States.308 In Carlisle, the Court held that an alien who comes into the
United States immediately adopts all the laws of the nation.309 In its
decision, the Court, quoting the words of former Secretary of State
Daniel Webster, stated:
[E]very foreigner born residing in a country owes to that country

allegiance and obedience to its laws so long as he remains in it, as a
duty upon him by the mere fact of his residence, and that temporary
protection which he enjoys, and is as much bound to obey its laws
as native subjects or citizens. This is the universal understanding of
all civilized states, and nowhere a more established doctrine than in
this country.310
305. The Cultural Defense in the Criminal Law, supra note 4, at 1297.
306. RENTELN, supra note 283, at 10.
307. The Cultural Defense in the Criminal Law, supra note 4, at 1300
(footnote omitted).
308. Carlisle v. United States, 83 U.S. 147 (1872).
309. Id. at 155.
310. Id.
While the cultural defense is relatively new in the courtroom, it

actually dates back to the early days of American jurisprudence. In Ex
parte Crow Dog, the Supreme Court held that an Indian who was
accused of murdering another Indian on their reservation was not
subject to federal criminal law, but only to tribal law.311 Two years
later the governing law was changed, holding Indians to the same set
of federal laws and penalties as other persons.312
Generally speaking, in Muslim cultures, upholding the honor of
one’s family is a fundamental value.313 “Blanket repudiation of a
cultural defense in a case in which a person’s attempt to uphold that
honor collides with the criminal law might be perceived as an official
indictment of the principle of honor, rather than as a denunciation of
the particular means of vindicating that ideal.”314 Thus, the cultural
defense seems to be a way of mediating the clash between two
systems. “Equality among different ethnic groups ultimately requires
that each group respect the other groups’ right to be different and that
the majority not penalize a minority group simply because it is
different.”315
B. The Cultural Defense and Cultural Relativism
There are tremendous variations in how people carry on their lives

across cultures; people often live with unique or distinct norms that
are at odds with those of other cultures. The cultural defense takes into
account cultural relativism–an anthropological and philosophical
account of the diversity of norms across cultures.
Cultural relativism holds that moral principles are relative, so that
there is no such thing as a “one-size-fits-all” morality. Moral
311. Ex parte Crow Dog, 109 U.S. 556, 570-72 (1883).

312. See 18 U.S.C. § 1153 (2006) (“Any Indian who commits against the
person or property of another Indian or other person any of the following offenses,
namely murder, manslaughter, kidnapping, maiming, [and other crimes] . . . shall be
subject to the same law and penalties as all other persons committing any of the
above offenses, within the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States.”).
313. See generally Peter C. Dodd, Family Honor and the Forces of Change in
Arab Society, 4 INT’L J. MIDDLE E. STUD. 40 (1973) (discussing the importance of
family honor in Arab society).
314. The Cultural Defense in the Criminal Law, supra note 4, 1302.
315. Id. at 1301.
principles are not self-evident propositions that are truth assessable,

final or certain. Terms such as “right” and “good” are relative terms so
that if one says “X is good,” that simply means “One’s culture regards
X as good.” A different culture might claim that “X is bad,” and this
inconsistency is explained simply by the idea that there is no objective
truth in the matter.
People tend to regard their own patterns and customs as “good,”
and customs that contradict their own as “bad.” Some cultures might
regard certain practices of other cultures as barbaric, bizarre, or cruel.
For instance, cultures that impose female genital mutilation regard it
as a “great moment in the life of women, [and] a celebration.”316 Other
cultures find the practice a form of torture and humiliation.317 Here is
the essence of cultural relativism: the fact that diverse cultures have
different solutions to moral dilemmas makes it inappropriate to argue
that a particular norm is good or bad for everyone. While people of
one culture might disapprove of certain practices, in another culture
these same practices might be morally approved.318
The cultural defense considers the practices of other cultures
through the lens of cultural relativism, to enable the jury to consider
the roles played by customs, the explanations of these customs,
notions of honor, and other peoples’ ideas of right and wrong. Thus, in
cases of honor killings, defendants of Islamic cultures will seek to
show that “moral order is thought to be disrupted by alleged or actual
sexual impropriety. Consequently, to restore the ‘social equilibrium
and avoid feuds, the local culture requires the shedding of blood to
wash away the shame of sexual dishonor.’”319
316. Radhika Coomaraswamy, Identity Within: Cultural Relativism, Minority

Rights and the Empowerment of Women, 34 GEO. WASH. J. INT’L L. REV. 483, 492
(2002).
317. See, e.g., Nina Lakhani, UK Fails to Halt Female Genital Mutilation,
INDEPENDENT (London), Dec. 20, 2009,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-fails-to-halt-female-genital-
mutilation-1845731.html (discussing outrage in the United Kingdom over lack of
prosecution of those that take girls overseas for the purposes of genital mutilation).
318. See Melford E. Spiro, Cultural Relativism and the Future of
Anthropology, 1 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 259, 260-62 (1986).
319. Cassman, supra note 108, at 132 (quoting Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban,
Anthropologists Cultural Relativism, and Universal Rights, CHRON. HIGHER EDUC.
(June 9, 1995),
http://home.sandiego.edu/~baber/globalethics/CulturalRelativism.html).
C. Cultural Relativism and Transcultural Psychiatry
An analogy of sorts to the cultural defense is the trend in

psychiatry to take into account cultural differences in diagnosing
mental disorders. Mental disorders are not universally defined across
cultures because of fundamental differences in local social practices,
values, and cultural and even scientific beliefs. Particularly in recent
years, it is apparent that what constitutes a mental disorder depends
entirely on context, on social identity, and on proper interpretation of
cultural factors. Two people can perceive reality in entirely different
ways, yet both be clearly sane.
Psychiatrists have come to recognize that symptoms of a mental
disorder in the West might constitute normal behavior in other
cultures. Behavior regarded as deviant in Western culture might be
acceptable, even praiseworthy, in another. People in many cultures
believe the world is populated by a variety of unseen creatures, ghosts,
witches, spirits, and demons,320 and that animals have souls that can
come back and harm people unless amends are made to them after a
hunt. One might find their criteria for perceiving reality to be
fundamentally at odds with one’s own reality, yet those belonging to
other cultures are perfectly sane. The idea that illness is caused by
malevolent spirits, the curse of an enemy, the evil eye, or the violation
of taboos may seem to be preposterous in Western culture, but today
these ideas are completely normative to many people in the world.321
Thus, what is considered “dysfunctional” or “crazy” in the West (for
example, seeing ghosts, hearing voices when no one is present,
believing that a witch has cast a spell causing nervous symptoms or
physical ailments, or attributing misfortune, ill health or nervous
symptoms to violation of a taboo, or revenge from ancestral spirits
who have been insulted by something, and so on) may be perfectly
normal to people of other cultures.
Certain mental syndromes are unique to certain non-Western
populations and may be misdiagnosed if based on Western psychiatric
models. These syndromes are known as “culture-bound
320. Karma Norjin Lhamo, A Gathering of Ghosts and Demons: Generosity

and Realization in Tibetan Buddhism, LIVING SEASON, Oct. 20, 2009,
http://www.livinginseason.com/spirit/ghosts-and-demons/.
321. See id.
syndromes.”322 Culture-bound syndromes are defined as “aberrant

forms of behavior often interpreted as mental disorder by Western-
trained observers, but nonetheless seemingly restricted to given
cultural situations.”323 With culture-bound syndromes, cultural
explanations simply do not fit into Western psychiatric theory.324
Thus, Western psychiatrists find it important to take cultural
factors into account in assessing whether a particular behavior is a
mental disorder.325 In many cultures the ways illnesses are explained
and treated are completely different than in the West. Moreover, in
native cultures the symptoms might be regarded as relatively benign
or something to be treated with folk remedies or by a shaman or
medicine man. In any event, the behavior patterns are unique to
certain cultures, and are seldom ever found outside those cultures.
As psychiatry has come to recognize the importance of cultural
factors in diagnosing mental disorders, the law, too, is coming to
recognize the importance of cultural factors in assessing the
motivations behind certain conduct that might be brought before the
criminal justice system.
D. The Cultural Defense in the Context of Honor Killings.
The cultural defense accounts for the possibility that some

immigrants’ acts, while seeming heinous to those in the West, reflect a
normative pattern in their indigenous culture:
The values of individuals who are raised in minority cultures may

at times conflict with the values of the majority culture. To the
extent that the values of the majority are embodied in the criminal
law, these individuals may face the dilemma of having to violate
either their cultural values or the criminal law.326
In the context of honor killings the cultural defense may be

applied to show that the defendant acted in the heat passion, to thereby
322. M. G. Kenny, Introduction, 21 SOC. SCI. & MED. 163, 163 (1985).
323. Id.
324. See AMERICAN PSYCHIATRIC ASS’N, DIAGNOSTIC AND STATISTICAL
MANUAL OF MENTAL DISORDERS: DSM-IV-TR, Appendix I, 897-98 (4th ed. 2000).
325. Id.
mitigate to manslaughter what would otherwise be murder.

Cultural evidence would be introduced for the jury to consider
that the circumstances would have aroused the passions of a
reasonable person from the defendant’s cultural background.
Evidence of the defendant’s cultural background would help the jury
evaluate how an “ordinarily reasonable man” of this cultural
background would react under the given circumstances.
Many Americans are not familiar with the species of provocation
that prompts men to commit honor killings. Some honor killings are
provoked by what Americans would regard as fairly minor
provocations, such as: dressing immodestly, refusing to marry a man
chosen by her parents, or talking to a man who is a stranger. Without
the benefit of the cultural defense, jurors would be limited to the
American standard of what is a “reasonable man.” Under that
standard, provocation, as a mitigating factor in homicide, relies on
what a “reasonable person” of American culture would do. “Naturally,
if a member from an ethnic group is judged against the standards of
the dominant culture, his or her traditions are likely to be condemned
as unreasonable.”327 However, to various immigrant groups “[t]his
reasonable person does not come from their neighborhood[,]” but
rather represents the standards of the dominant culture.328 In other
words, an American “reasonable person” may be a legal fiction to
immigrants who have been taught traditions that differ from American
principles of day-to-day living. The cultural defense allows the jury to
weigh cultural evidence in “specifically applying a subjective
approach to the reasonable-person standard. A subjective approach to
instructing the jury on the reasonable-person standard allows jurors to
compare the defendant’s actions to those of a reasonable person from
the defendant’s culture.”329
E. Evidence of Social Pressures to Show Ongoing Provocation
Even with the cultural defense, a jury still would have to be
327. RENTELN, supra note 283, at 15.

328. Deirdre Evans-Pritchard & Alison D. Renteln, The Interpretation and
Distortion of Culture: A Hmong “Marriage by Capture” Case in Fresno,
California, 4 S. CAL. INTERDISC. L.J. 1, 34-35 (1995).
329. Rosie M. Williams, Why the ‘Cultural Defense’ Belongs to ‘Us,’ 22 ME.
B. J. 36, 41 (2007).
convinced not only that the act of dishonor was sufficient to provoke a
person of the defendant’s cultural background, but that at the time of
the killing the defendant acted under the sway of passion. Usually,
those who commit honor killings do so after a lapse of time, with
planning and deliberation, lying in wait, or under other circumstances
that suggest the defendant had cooled off and therefore had the
requisite mens rea for murder, not manslaughter.330
Further cultural evidence would be needed to overcome this
hurdle. The defendant would need to show that the stresses imposed
by the community were so potent, so ongoing, the shame so utterly
debasing that the element of provocation continued alongside the
coolness with which the defendant acted. The father who kills his
daughter is not likely to be acting in the heat of passion, but out of the
cool necessity to avenge the dishonor. The actor feels compelled to act
not because he has flipped but because of the culturally-imposed
necessity of avenging the dishonor.
Just as social pressures during the period of dueling necessitated
retaliation against another who had impugned one’s honor–despite the
fact that dueling was illegal long before the practice abated331–social
pressures exist today in many cultures that endorse honor killings.332
Social pressures compel even the reluctant to commit honor
killings.333 After a woman or girl has done something perceived to
dishonor her family, the family not only experiences humiliation and
social ostracism, but there can be significant social pressures,
particularly in tribal communities, to kill a woman who has impugned
her family’s honor.334 “Murderers repeatedly testify that their
immediate social circle, family, clan, village, or others expected them
and encouraged them to commit the murder. From society’s
perspective, refraining from killing the woman debases her
relatives.”335
For instance, a father who hesitates to kill his unmarried pregnant

331. Wells, supra note 13, at 1807-09.
333. See, e.g., id. at 43 (discussing an Egyptian man who strangled his
unmarried pregnant daughter because he could no longer deal with the shame and
mocking of those in his village).
334. Id. at 42.
335. Id.
daughter will be subjected to jokes and mockery among the villagers

and will be forced to endure unbearable shame until he yields to the
pressure.336 One perpetrator reported that he acted “in response to the
will of society that would not have had any mercy on me if I
didn’t.”337 Another said that he was “under tremendous mental
pressure,” while a third stated that he acted “to get rid of what people
were saying. They were blaming me that I was encouraging her to
fornicate . . . .”338 According to a psychiatrist at the Gaza Program for
Mental Health, one who refrains from “washing shame with blood” is
perceived as “a coward who is not worthy of living[,] . . . [often] as
less than a man.”339 Once the killing is accomplished, the family
regains its original social status.340
Even if a defendant knew the killing was unlawful under
American law, the cultural defense would permit him to introduce
evidence that cultural pressures compelled him to act, taking into
account both his own sense of shame at the dishonor, and the
unbearable humiliation and pressure from others in the community.
The argument that the defendant was under the stress of “ongoing”
provocation is a concept recognized in American jurisprudence.341
Courts have recognized as relevant to a claim of heat of passion that
the defendant was under the effect of “a series of events over a
considerable period of time,”342 so that he was under a “pre-existing
stress.”343 Heat of passion “need not mean ‘rage’ or ‘anger’ [but] . . .
may be any ‘[v]iolent, intense, high-wrought or enthusiastic
emotion.’”344
It is not contradictory that a defendant might act both under
provocation and in a cool, rational manner, with no loss of self-
control. The historical roots of the provocation doctrine do not suggest
that the defendant must have acted “rashly or without due deliberation
336. Id. at 43.

337. Id.
338. Id.
339. Id.
340. Id. at 44.
341. See Sing, supra note 5, at 1869-70.
342. People v. Borchers, 325 P.2d 97, 102 (Cal. 1958).
343. People v. Pacheco, 172 Cal. Rptr. 269, 274 (Cal. Ct. App. 1981).
344. Borchers, 325 P.2d at 102 (citation omitted).
and reflection, and from this passion rather than from judgment.”345 A
“hot-blooded” impulse to act may co-exist with rational thought.346
Indeed, modern psychology suggests that emotion and reason are
“tightly linked” rather than at odds with one another.347 In other
words, one can commit a killing in the heat of passion while retaining
full control of one’s rational thinking. Notably in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries in England, the defense of provocation was
viewed as follows:
[A] justification defense analogous to self-defense or necessity,

suggesting that the defendant should have acted as he did. . . .
[R]etaliatory measures were not viewed as the byproduct of a
“temporarily irrational” state of mind. Hence, there is a strong
argument that the defendant who retaliated in order to preserve his
natural honor was eminently rational.348
This reasoning was equally applicable with dueling; “a ‘hot-

blooded’ reaction was regarded as natural by the early modern code of
honor, and did not correspond necessarily with a loss of
rationality.”349 Men who had been debased by another man’s offensive
conduct sought to regain honor in a manner which “reflect[ed] not a
loss of reason, but rather conformity to its dictates.”350 Provoked by
another’s offensive conduct, and reacting according to the code of
honor that was the custom of the time, they retaliated out of a
combination of outrage and reason.351 “The defendant who raises a
provocation defense points to the central significance of external
factors, arguing that he behaved in a way that any ‘man of honour’
should have acted, . . . the way any reasonable person would have
acted.”352
If cultural evidence is admitted, the jury would consider the
element of provocation in a context that departs from its Western
345. Id.
347. Id.
348. Id. at 1870.
349. Id. at 1869.
350. Id. at 1870.
351. See id. at 1869-70.
352. Id. at 1870 (footnote omitted).
notion. Under the cultural defense, the jury “must engage in a more
probing inquiry when presented with the ‘unfamiliar’ meanings that
attach to emotions claimed by cultural defendants.”353 In considering a
provocation claim in the context of a cultural defense, the defense
would urge the jury to recognize that the defendant has been
influenced by his or her cultural background, that he may have acted
coolly and after a period of time had elapsed, but that rage and reason
are not incompatible. The defense would also urge the jury to
recognize that there was ongoing provocation stemming both from the
defendant’s own humiliation and from community pressures, and that
“the defendant behaved in the same manner as any other similarly
situated reasonable person.”354
VI. MODERN REPORTED CASES THAT HAVE ACCEPTED THE CULTURAL

DEFENSE
Many foreign and domestic courts have accepted some variation

of the cultural defense. Some courts have taken an expansive view of
what constitutes provocation that would militate against first degree
murder, based on cultural evidence. For instance, in R. v. Awaba, a
Papua New Guinea judge decided that words alone could be sufficient
to excuse an intentional homicide.355 There, the defendant made a
crude comment to a young girl.356 The girl’s mother immediately
rebuked the defendant, telling him: “You cannot find a woman to
marry, and if you talk like that to a girl child you will die still
unmarried.”357 The man took this to be so provocative a remark that
he killed the woman.358 The judge stated:
[In] western communities which apply common law principles, the

view that words alone cannot be relied upon as a provocation has
hardened since the seventeenth century. As a general proposition
353. Id. at 1874.

354. Id.
355. L.C. Green, “Civilized” Law and “Primitive” Peoples, in 2 FOLK LAW,
supra note 301, at 763 (discussing R. v. Awaba (1960) (unreported case from
Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea)).
356. Id.
357. Id.
358. Id.
that thesis is hardly open to dispute, but it does not necessarily

follow that the same principle should apply in a native community
where sophistication does not approach to that of, say, seventeenth-
century England, where a type of insult such as the one here in
question is calculated and not infrequently intended to throw a man
into an ungovernable rage.359
In Western courts, the cultural defense has been used with some
degree of success in a variety of cases, suggesting that “attorneys have
increasingly sought to introduce cultural evidence for mitigating or
exculpatory purposes.”360 An example of a case illustrating use of the
cultural defense is State v. Kargar.361 In Kargar, a man, born in
Afghanistan, faced charges of “gross sexual assault” for kissing the
penis of his eighteen-month-old son.362 Witnesses testified this act was
“considered neither wrong nor sexual under Islamic law and that
Kargar did not know his action was illegal under Maine law.”363 The
Maine Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of his case based on a
statute which provides for a dismissal if the court “finds the
defendant’s conduct . . . presents such other extenuations that it cannot
reasonably be regarded as envisaged by the legislature in forbidding
the offense.”364 In effect, Kargar represents a successful use of the
cultural defense.
In People v. Moua, a man abducted a woman of Laotian descent
from a college campus in Fresno, California, and forced her to have
sex with him.365 The defendant, Moua, was a recent immigrant from
Laos,366 who belonged to a Hmong tribe, which practices marriage-
by-capture, a ritual where a man abducts a woman, takes her home
359. Id.
360. Sacks, supra note 288, at 523.
361. State v. Kargar, 679 A.2d 81 (Me. 1996).
362. Id. at 82.
363. Nancy A. Wanderer & Catherine R. Connors, Culture and Crime: Kargar
and the Existing Framework for a Cultural Defense, 47 BUFF. L. REV. 829, 838
(1999).
364. Id. at 837; see also ME. REV. STAT. ANN. tit. 17-A, § 12 (2009).
365. Golding, supra note 7, at 148 (discussing People v. Moua, No. 315972-0,
(Fresno County Super. Ct., Feb. 7, 1985)).
366. See Evans-Pritchard & Renteln, supra note 328, at 9 (indicating that the
defendant, who was twenty-three at the time of the crimes, moved to the United
States from Laos as a teenager).
and “consummates” a marriage with her.367 Moua was charged with

kidnapping and rape.368 In the Hmong tribe, it is customary for the
woman to protest the man’s advances as a sign of her virtuousness.369
At trial, Moua testified he did not think her protests were anything
more than what would customarily be expected.370 His attorney
introduced into evidence a twenty-two page pamphlet entitled “A
Guide to Understanding Dating and Marriage in the Hmong Culture,”
which contained cursory descriptions of a few marriage practices in
Laos.371
The judge agreed that Moua’s culture was such that the defendant
truly believed the victim had consented to the traditional marriage
ritual, and that Moua mistakenly believed the victim consented to this
ritual.372 Moreover the judge stated that when cultural factors are
considered the idea of intent gets confusing.373 The judge thus
accepted a plea bargain, which allowed the defendant to plead guilty
to a charge of false imprisonment while the charges of kidnapping and
rape were dismissed.374 The defendant was sentenced to ninety days in
jail and required to pay a fine.375
An additional example is the case of a Greek immigrant charged
with murdering a man who raped his daughter, who was acquitted
based on cultural evidence that in Greece his daughter’s rape was a
matter of honor to him, and he was therefore obliged to avenge the
act.376
In another California case, cultural evidence helped an Ethiopian
man, tried for attempted murder, to be found guilty of the lesser
charge of assault with a deadly weapon for shooting an Ethiopian
367
Golding, supra note 7, at 148.
368. Id.
369. Id.
370. Id.
371. Evans-Pritchard & Renteln, supra note 328, at 20-21.
372. Taryn F. Goldstein, Comment, Cultural Conflicts in Court: Should the
American Criminal Justice System Formally Recognize a “Cultural Defense”?, 99
DICK. L. REV. 141, 150 (1994).
373. Id.
374. Evans-Pritchard & Renteln, supra note 328, at 26.
375. Id.
376. Myrna Oliver, Immigrant Crimes; Cultural Defense--A Legal Tactic,
L.A. TIMES, July 15, 1998, at 1.
woman whom he claimed was practicing witchcraft on him.377 The

defendant claimed he assaulted the victim because he believed she had
cast a spell on him, causing headaches and stomach aches.378 There,
an anthropologist testified as to Ethiopian customs.379 The judge in the
case said the following about cultural evidence:
[Cultural evidence] was important to show two things–to show

whether his mental state was diminished by his belief and to show
that he was not making this up. I thought it was similar to having a
psychiatrist testify if a guy has a mental disease manifested by
believing he’s Jesus Christ.380
The cultural defense was also invoked in People v. Chen.381

There, after learning his wife was having an affair, the defendant “left
the room, returned with a claw hammer, knocked her onto the bed,
and hit her on the head eight times until she was dead.”382 The defense
attorney argued the defendant had “diminished capacity” as a result of
Chinese cultural pressures regarding infidelity, and that he was unable
to form the necessary premeditation to be found guilty of murder.383
“The defense argued that ‘[m]arriage is a sacred institution in
China . . . . When there is this kind of [adulterous] situation, the
attendant shame and humiliation is magnified a thousandfold.’”384
A professor of anthropology testified as an expert witness that
Chen’s reaction to his wife’s infidelity was culturally appropriate.385
The anthropologist explained that “in the Chinese culture, a woman’s
adultery is proof of her husband’s weak character and a source of
377. Id. (discussing statement by Alameda County Superior Court Judge

Richard A. Hodge regarding allowance of anthropological evidence, which resulted
in a conviction on a lesser charge and subsequent lesser sentence for defendant).
378. See Harriet Chiang, Profile, L.A. DAILY J., Oct. 25, 1985, at 1.
379. Oliver, supra note 376, at 1.
380. Id. (quoting Alameda County Superior Court Judge Richard A. Hodge).
381. Nancy S. Kim, The Cultural Defense and the Problem of Cultural
Preemption: A Framework for Analysis, 27 N.M. L. REV. 101, 119-121 (1997)
(citing People v. Chen, No. 87-7774 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Mar. 21,1989) (unpublished
decision)).
382. Goldstein, supra note 372, at 151.
383. Id. at 151-52.
384. Kim, supra note 381, at 120 (alterations in original) (footnote omitted).
385. Goldstein, supra, note 372, at 151.
great shame upon his ancestors. A husband often becomes enraged

upon learning of his wife’s infidelity and threatens to kill her.”386 The
anthropologist also testified that when a fight erupts between husband
and wife, people expect others will rush to intervene and thereby
prevent the situation from escalating into a tragedy.387
The episode resulted in a death because, unlike what typically

occurs in China, the community failed to intervene to prevent the
tragic outcome. The dysfunctional element, therefore, was not
Chen’s outburst–which in fact conformed to the cultural “script”–
but rather the dissociation of the Chens from a culture in which
other Chinese would have played their own parts in this tragic
drama.388
The diminished capacity argument, supported by cultural evidence of

Chinese norms regarding infidelity, resulted in a conviction for the
lesser charge of second-degree manslaughter rather than first-degree
manslaughter, and the defendant received five years probation.389 The
judge said this leniency was due to “cultural aspects” and “the effect
of the wife’s behavior on someone who is essentially born in China,
raised in China, and took all his Chinese culture with him to the
United States . . . .”390
In traditional Japanese culture it appears joint parent-child suicide
(oyako-shinju) is an acceptable way for a woman to rid herself of the
shame of her husband’s infidelity.391 In Japan, oyako-shinju is not
regarded as a serious offense, particularly where the motivation is to
avert shame associated with marital infidelity.392 Survivors are rarely
punished.393 A well-known case on this point is People v. Kimura,394
386. Id. (footnote omitted).

387. See Donovan & Garth, supra note 303, at 121.
388. Id.
389. Goldstein, supra note 372, at 151-52, 156.
390. Id. at 156 (citing People v. Chen, No. 52587, Record at 302 (N.Y. Sup.
Ct. Mar. 21, 1989) (unpublished decision)).
392. Rhoda J. Yen, Racial Stereotyping of Asians and Asian Americans and Its
Effect on Criminal Justice: A Reflection on the Wayne Lo Case, 7 ASIAN L.J. 1, 21
(2000).
393. Williams, supra note 329, at 38 n.35.
394. Id. at 38 (citing People v. Kimura, No. A-09133 (L.A. Sup. Ct. Apr. 24,
where a woman was charged with murder for drowning her two
children.395 In the same act she tried to drown herself.396 She did this
in response to the shame of her husband’s unfaithfulness.397 Evidence
of her mental state, revealed through evidence of Japanese custom, led
to conviction of manslaughter instead of murder.398 The evidence
showed she was not able to appreciate the criminality of her actions
“or take measures to conform it as a result of cultural pressures
associated with spousal infidelity. In addition, because of Kimura’s
cultural background she did not even understand the charges brought
against her; she believed she was being charged with a failed suicide
attempt.”399 Mrs. Kimura was given a sentence of one year in prison,
which was time she had already served, and was placed on
probation.400 After the trial Mr. Kimura forgave his wife and they
reconciled.401 Further, in several other California cases adult Japanese
women who killed their children introduced evidence that the practice
of oyako-shinju is not generally regarded as a serious crime in Japan,
and this evidence led to convictions of manslaughter instead of
murder.402
In People v. Wu,403 an appellate court held that the trial judge
committed reversible error by refusing to instruct the jury on the effect
the defendant’s cultural background might have had on the issue of
premeditation, malice aforethought, deliberation, or the existence of
heat of passion at the time of the killing.404 The defendant, Helen Wu,
who had been born in China, strangled her son to death and then
attempted to kill herself.405 The boy was living with his father in the
1985)).
395. Id.
396. Id.
397. Id.
398. Id.
399. Id.
400. U.S. Justice System Called Ambivalent on use of ‘Cultural Defense’ by
Immigrants, L.A. TIMES, Dec. 13, 1987, at 6.
401. Woman Whose Children Died in Suicide Attempt Living Quietly,
ASSOCIATED PRESS, Apr. 6, 1986.
402. Oliver, supra note 376, at 1.
403. People v. Wu, 286 Cal. Rptr. 868 (Cal. Ct. App. 1991).
404. Id. at 883.
405. Id. at 872.
United States and the defendant, who gave birth to the boy out of
wedlock, had left the boy with his father while she returned to her
native Macau because she felt disillusioned that Mr. Wu had refused
to marry her.406 Eventually the couple did get married when she
returned for a visit in the United States.407
At trial she argued her actions would have been acceptable in
China because her son had informed her that he was being mistreated
by his father, whom the son said was having an affair with another
woman.408 She had wanted to prove that the motive for her son’s death
was a desire for revenge against her husband, and fear that her son
would be mistreated in the future.409 She wanted to show that in
Chinese culture what she did was “out [of] the mother’s love, [the]
mother’s responsibility to bring a child together with her when she
realized that there was no hope for her or a way for her to survive in
this country or in this earth.”410 She wanted the jury to be able to
consider that from her cultural perspective she was not doing anything
“criminal or even wrong,” that she was “moved by love, pity, [and]
sympathy” because she was “removing someone from the wicked
world before the wickedness has touched [her son].”411
While the judge allowed testimony from various mental health
professionals about her state of mind and about Chinese cultural
practices, he refused to instruct the jury on the cultural defense.412 Ms.
Wu was convicted of second degree murder.413 The California Court
of Appeal reversed the conviction, ruling that the defendant’s cultural
background was relevant in assessing mens rea in the case.414 The
Court further noted her cultural background was relevant because it
“could have provided the trier of fact with a reasonable doubt that one
of the necessary mental states existed.”415 The appellate court said the
406. Id. at 871.

407. Id. at 872.
408. Id.
409. Id. at 870.
410. Id. at 885.
411. Id. at 887.
412. See id. at 880-81.
413. Id. at 869.
414. See id. at 882.
415. Alice J. Gallin, The Cultural Defense: Undermining the Policies Against
Domestic Violence, 35 B.C. L. REV. 723, 733 (1993).
jurors should have been given the following instructions:
You have received evidence of defendant’s cultural background and

the relationship of her culture to her mental state. You may, but are
not required to, consider that the [sic] evidence in determining the
presence or absence of the essential mental states of the crimes
defined in these instructions, or in determining any other issue in
this case.416
Importantly, in any case where the cultural defense is allowed,

cultural traditions of the defendant are presented by expert
testimony.417 In this instance, a professor of anthropology testified
“that a man considered ‘normal’ in the category ‘Chinese’ would react
very differently from someone in the category ‘American’ to the belief
that his wife was having an affair.”418 On retrial, Ms. Wu was found
guilty of voluntary manslaughter, and the judge sentenced her to the
maximum term, eleven years in prison.419
VII. DISCUSSION OF PROS AND CONS OF THE CULTURAL DEFENSE
A. Arguments in Favor of the Cultural Defense
Perhaps one of the best rationales behind the cultural defense is

that the American ethos embraces pluralism and diversity. The goal is
to “avoid repeating the ethnocentric excesses of its past and instead
learn to accord respect to members of other cultural groups.”420 In
recent decades, the pressure to assimilate has been replaced somewhat
by a more tolerant philosophy that “insist[s] that cultural pluralism has
made this nation strong and that immigrant groups must not be
compelled to sacrifice their unique heritages. Thus, dominant
American culture should learn from and help to celebrate the unique
customs, history, and languages of its immigrant groups.”421
416. Wu, 286 Cal. Rptr. at 879-80 (alteration in original).

417. See, e.g., Volpp, supra note 289, at 87-90.
418. Id. at 67.
419. Mike Kataoka, Indio Woman Who Strangled Son Sentenced to 11 Years
in Prison, PRESS ENTERPRISE (Riverside, CA), Oct. 31, 1992, at B1.
Proponents of the defense argue that “cultural backgrounds should

be considered because our society should respect cultural diversity,
[and] thus the American legal system should not punish individuals
from a culture that emphasizes different values . . . .”422 The idea of
“equal justice for all” suggests we are all equal before the law, that we
must all be accorded uniform respect and dignity, and moreover, that
personal differences should be respected by the judicial system.
Individual differences matter in a great many contexts. We usually
expect the differences of peoples’ attributes, abilities, and so on to be
taken into account in ensuring an orderliness of the wheels of justice.
An illustration:
Legal proceedings would otherwise be marred by any insensitively

strict adherence to a preordained set of rules. For example, the
financially impoverished are often assigned representation that
would not otherwise be available to them; and speakers of foreign
languages may be given access to interpreters. The American
society has an established history of granting exemptions from
general rules and laws to minority convictions of conscience,
whenever doing so does not threaten the public interests (e.g.,
exempting the Amish from compulsory education laws, exempting
Jehovah’s Witnesses from mandatory recitations of the Pledge of
Allegiance, and allowing Jews in the military to wear
yarmulkes).423
Further, it is argued:
[D]enial of a cultural defense may be perceived as evidence of

disdain for an ethnic minority’s cultural values. When an ethnic
group’s cultural values are ignored by the mainstream society, the
group is likely to become alienated from the majority culture.
Alienation could, in turn, engender hostility and intergroup conflict
that disrupt social order.424
Moreover, if the dominant culture vehemently rejects a deeply held
422. Nicole A. King, The Role of Culture in Psychology: A Look at Mental

Illness and the “Cultural Defense,” 7 TULSA J. COMP. & INT’L L. 199, 223 (1999).
423. Donovan & Garth, supra note 303, at 128 (footnotes omitted).
(footnote omitted).
tradition or custom of an ethnic community, this may impede the

acculturation process of ethnic groups. “Ethnic groups may adjust
more readily to the majority culture when the majority respects their
ways . . . .”425
Cultural pluralism means “that each ethnic group is entitled to
retain certain cultural values, thereby maintaining its own identity.”426
Perhaps this embracing of diversity “justifies the recognition of the
cultural defense. Although society has countervailing interests in
imposing common values on all of its members, . . . an appropriately
defined cultural defense is consistent with the objectives behind these
interests.”427
One might also argue the cultural defense is a way of providing
equal protection of the laws, a sort of reasonable accommodation for
people of foreign cultures that helps juries recognize crucial
differences among groups, shedding light on defendants’ mental
states, with a view towards ensuring a fair trial. Taking into account
the cultural differences of foreign defendants provides the defendants
“with the same basic protection ‘in respect to life and liberty’
available to all other persons.”428 On the other hand, denying the
cultural defense means the defendant lacks a meaningful opportunity
to provide evidence of provocation, which in itself may well violate
the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.429
One must keep in mind that the cultural defense is simply an
evidentiary safeguard that protects the due process rights of the
defendant. In a variety of other contexts, defendants’ rights may in a
sense trump the rights of victims to see justice served. Often enough a
defendant will be acquitted or a case dismissed due to procedural
technicalities: a coerced confession, botched evidence, a prejudicial
lineup, a tainted jury, improper admission or exclusion of evidence,
prosecutorial misconduct, and so on. In such instances, the
defendant’s constitutional rights trump whatever rights the victim or
her family have to seek just deserts.
425. Id. at 1306.

426. Id. at 1307.
427. Id.
428. Sing, supra note 5, at 1883 (footnote omitted).
429. Id. at 1879.
B. Arguments Against the Cultural Defense
Of course, there are understandable objections to the cultural

defense. In this section, two major objections are discussed: the
cultural defense offends the notion of uniformity of justice, and there
is significant difficulty in delineating a culture or subculture and what
norms are embraced by it. Also, two secondary objections will be
touched upon: the cultural defense may erode women’s rights, and the
anti-deterrent effect of the cultural defense.
1. The Cultural Defense Detracts From the Uniformity of Justice
The cultural defense inevitably erodes the uniformity of justice

because it leads to radically disparate treatment of defendants charged
with identical crimes, depending on the cultural background of the
actor. The cultural defense allows a court to apply a completely
different set of standards to defendants who invoke it than to the rest
of the population accused of similar crimes. The defense allows for
special treatment of foreign defendants, while denying such
consideration to members of the American homeland. One
commentator posits the following questions of fairness that may arise
with the adoption of the cultural defense:
Why should I be severely punished for attacking my wife, but

someone else not, when the principal difference between our two
cases is that I acted out of personal delinquency while the second
defendant modeled a cultural norm? Is not spousal abuse just as
bad, and worth preventing and punishing, whatever the
circumstances? Surely migrating from another culture should not be
a sufficient excuse for acts criminalized in the new setting.430
By granting “special rights” to people based on group-based

differences, the cultural defense “create[s] an unfair legal system that
is skewed in favor of immigrant defendants, and one that provides
immigrant victims less protection than non-immigrant victims.”431
Turning the situation around, suppose a gay American couple
emigrated to Iran or Saudi Arabia, where homosexuals are routinely
430. Donovan & Garth, supra note 303, at 123.

431. DePalma, supra note 300, at 15.
punished, even tortured or executed.432 Would the Iranian courts allow

the cultural defense to apply? Surely not. In other words, their reliance
on Islamic law is so great a cultural norm, and so embedded in their
legal systems, that they would admit no exceptions.
By the same token, why should the American system give way to
norms intrinsically offensive to its notions of justice? In other words,
why should a perpetrator of an honor killing persuade the jury that the
practice is normative in a foreign country, and get off lightly? Surely,
even for those who advocate the doctrine of cultural defense, some
limitations must be imposed.
If the cultural defense is allowed, then should it not also be
allowed for non-immigrants who are members of urban subcultures?
For instance, why not allow urban gang members to defend
themselves against homicide charges on the grounds that it is a grave
provocation for a gang member to snitch to the police on another
member? Why not allow black men to defend criminal charges on the
grounds that their behavior was influenced by forces such as racism?
Should a terrorist who bombs innocent people be allowed to plead
under the necessity defense–that the action was necessary under
protocols established by his terrorist cell, in order to gain a political
voice–that the action was the right thing to do? What about parents
who wish to defend themselves against charges of child abuse when
they refuse to provide the child with medical treatment, based on
religious teachings that prayer is the answer? What about
fundamentalist Mormons who seek to practice polygamy in violation
of state laws, relying on their own code that customarily binds their
membership?433 Should Hassidic Jewish communities that hold
rabbinic councils to adjudicate a variety of domestic issues, including
suspected criminal offenses,434 be insulated from the authorities just as
their ancestors of past centuries?
432. See Sanaz Alasti, Comparative Study of Cruel and Unusual Punishment
for Engaging in Consensual Homosexual Acts (In International Conventions, the
United States and Iran), 12 ANN. SURV. INT’L & COMP. L. 149, 159 (2006); see also
Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Book Review, 99 AM. J. INT’L L. 302, 304 (2005).
433. Jerald Joersz, Mormon Fundamentalism and Plural Marriage, LUTHERAN
WITNESS, August 2008, available at
http://www.lcms.org/pages/wPage.asp?ContentID=347&IssueID=24.
434. Paul Vitello, Orthodox Jews Rely More on Sex Abuse Prosecution, N.Y.
TIMES, Oct. 14, 2009, at A1.
In considering the cultural defense it is important to weigh

society’s interests in “imposing certain common values on all of its
members–interests that include maintaining order and forging bonds
between its people.”435 Providing a common set of values remains
crucial to a society:
Perhaps the principal reason for imposing a set of common values

is to maintain social order. Societies usually regard the preservation
of social order–societal self-protection–as a primary aim. To
maintain this order, it has been argued, societies must lay down a
body of positive law that compels the obedience of all regardless of
individual notions of morality: if each person were required to
adhere to the law only to the extent that it was consistent with her
own values, societies would tend toward anarchy. 436
Moreover, other advantages may be attained by removing the

uncertainty of application associated with the cultural defense:
By rejecting the “cultural defense,” and therefore not excusing the

immigrants’ ignorance, the courts will encourage them to adapt
more quickly to the legal system of their new homeland. This
hastened adaptation by the newcomers to unfamiliar laws may aid
their assimilation into other aspects of life in the United States.437
The law should provide stability for social relationships and serve
as a predictable means in which peoples’ actions are judged. In
assessing a defendant’s conduct, objective standards applicable to all
reasonable people provide the greatest measure of stability and
predictability. Personal idiosyncrasies of the individual defendant
ought not be entertained.
2. The Difficulty of Delineating Cultural Norms
There is a virtual Pandora’s box of problems in defining what

constitutes a “culture,” belongs to a given culture, and what cultural
practices are part of that culture. First of all, the definition of culture is
437. Julia P. Sams, The Availability of the “Cultural Defense” as an Excuse
for Criminal Behavior, 16 GA. J. INT’L & COMP. L. 335, 348-49 (1986).
somewhat vague. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and

Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defines culture as: the distinctive
traits, including the total spiritual, material, intellectual, and emotional
traits that characterize a society or social group, and that include, in
addition to arts and literature, their traditions and beliefs.438 There may
well be disagreement as to what “distinctive traits” exist in a
population, who embraces them, and how longstanding the traits are.
How important or significant is the particular cultural tradition that
excuses or justifies the prohibited act, and how can this be presented
to the jury with any degree of clarity? Accordingly, “[b]ecause a
cultural defense confers a partial ‘exemption’ from an otherwise
legitimate law, only values of sufficient importance to the defendant’s
culture should be protected.”439 Should any and all cultural practices
be admitted as evidence if relevant to the defendant’s guilt or
innocence? Should child-rearing practices be allowed except for when
they involve the killing of children?
Moreover, “Which groups can be said to have a ‘culture’ such that
the defense should be available to its members, and why?”440 How
does one define the “boundaries of a culture in time, space, and
person[?]”441 Is the defendant really a member of the cultural group,
or merely a descendant of ancestors who lived in that culture? “Every
individual has his own personal experiences, beliefs, and patterns of
behavior that we can aggregate to identify what we call culture.”442
It is a daunting challenge to present reliable expert testimony as to
various norms, traditions, and customs of the defendant’s culture or
subculture.
Cultures are complex and symbolic systems, and an understanding

of culture is important in gaining an understanding of an individual.
Explanations of what constitutes a person, the internal and external
forces that animate or affect a person, and beliefs about how these
forces interact with an individual are all a part of the person’s
438. UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, at pmbl., ¶ 5,

UNESCO 31st Sess. (Nov. 2, 2001).
441. Id. at 538.
442. Eliot M. Held & Reid Griffith Fontaine, On the Boundaries of Culture as
an Affirmative Defense, 51 ARIZ. L. REV. 234, 241 (2009).
culture.443
To what extent is the culture in question homogeneous? It seems

people of different status within a community experience culture
differently. For example, in many cultures there are tribal units that
not only have different languages, but rely on different marriage rites,
different taboos, different gods, different ways of raising their
children, and so forth.444 Particularly in Middle Eastern cultures, there
are varying attitudes and diverse laws with regards to honor killings–
some being more tolerant about the practice than others.445
Perhaps an undesirable side effect of the cultural defense is that it
presents a “problem of negative stereotyping of members of the
defendant’s culture, to the detriment of all members of that culture.”446
A further difficulty is the degree to which the defendant has become
acculturated to American ways. Should there be different degrees of
allowing the cultural defense, depending on whether the defendant
grew up in the United States, or had lived in the country of origin? If
the defendant was raised in the United States, attended public schools,
and had an upbringing that departed, to some degree, from the cultural
traditions of the old country, the individual may not be an appropriate
candidate to invoke the cultural defense, simply because the old
traditions may no longer hold currency for that individual.
Presumably, some degree of cultural change, depending on the degree
of acculturation, would apply to immigrants who had lived in the
country for a period of years.
On the other hand, many immigrants choose to live in urban
neighborhoods where others of their culture have established a haven,
443. Kaustubh G. Joshi, Richard L. Frierson & Tracy D. Gunter, Shared

Psychotic Disorder and Criminal Responsibility: A Review and Case Report of Folie
à Trois, 34 J. AM. ACAD. PSYCHIATRY L. 511, 514 (2006).
444. See generally, MAX GLUCKMAN, POLITICS, LAW AND RITUAL IN TRIBAL
SOCIETY (Aldine Transaction 1968) (illustrating traditions in different tribal
societies); see also 2 FOLK LAW, supra note 301, at 751.
445. Laure Moghaizel, The Arab and Mediterranean World: Legislation
Towards Crimes of Honor, in EMPOWERMENT AND THE LAW: STRATEGIES OF THIRD
WORLD WOMEN 174, 174-80 (Margaret Schuler ed., OEF International 1986); see
also Melissa Spatz, A “Lesser” Crime: A Comparative Study of Legal Defenses for
Men Who Kill Their Wives, 24 COLUM. J.L. & SOC. PROBS. 597, 598-606 (1991).
446. Janet C. Hoeffel, Deconstructing the Cultural Evidence Debate, 17 U.
FLA. J.L. & PUB. POL’Y 303, 304 (2006).
and they might stick to their traditional way of life, customs, beliefs,
values and norms, despite contrary pressures by the dominant culture.
People want to preserve obscure languages, traditional apparel,
cuisines and other elements of their culture. As to just where an
individual defendant falls in the acculturation continuum is a matter
for the jury to determine, and this is no easy matter.
3. The Cultural Defense May Erode Women’s Rights
The rights of women would be eroded if the defense could apply

to defend an honor killing. As discussed in Part II, often such killings
occur for what many of us would view as trivial provocations, such as
getting a divorce or choosing to marry a man against the wishes of the
woman’s parents.447 Moreover, provocation claims are often
“demonstrably false and rely on a belief system that validates male
control of wives and lovers.”448 Moreover, there is an argument set
forth by feminists that “the provocation defense has historically been
selectively available to men and therefore registers an adversely
disproportionate impact on women.”449
If the cultural defense is allowed in cases of honor killings or
other instances of domestic violence, what voice if any is given
concerning the right to life of the victim? Any discussion of her at trial
would focus on her behavior that provoked the killing. The
perspective is that the male violence takes a back burner to her
provocative conduct. The trial is likely to lack any female perspective.
Such an approach sends a message to other immigrant women that
they might have no recourse against domestic violence.
Fundamentally, the question is: Whose rights should prevail over
whom?
4. The Anti-Deterrent Effect of the Cultural Defense
It could be argued that the cultural defense sends the message to

foreigners that their criminal behavior is acceptable. In turn, the
criminal law fails to serve a deterrent function, particularly since such
447. See, e.g., supra notes 98-104 and accompanying text.

448. Donna K. Coker, Heat of Passion and Wife Killing: Men Who Batter/Men
Who Kill, 2 S. CAL. REV. L. & WOMEN’S STUD. 71, 94 (1992).
cases usually get high media exposure that no doubt increases the
immigrant community’s awareness of the leniency accorded to them.
Therefore:
Courts may oppose the cultural defense because they feel that it
would undermine the specific deterrent effects of the law. A person
punished for breaking a law would normally be less likely to
misbehave again than one who received no punishment. . . .
According to some observers, general deterrence is most effective
when punishment for committing a proscribed act is certain. Thus,
members of immigrant groups might be less deterred by the law if
their transgressions could be excused by their cultural values.450
At the same time, people who are compelled to commit certain crimes
based on cultural practices may not be deterred, whether or not the
cultural defense is available. For example, like other culturally related
crimes:
[Honor killings are] motivated by a sense of moral and social

compulsion–punishing the defendant may only marginally deter
others . . . whose actions are similarly motivated. Further, to the
extent that extreme acts induced by adherence to cultural mores . . .
are relatively rare, the threat to social order, and thus the need for
deterrence, becomes less pressing.451
In other words, for people set on vindicating honor perceived to have

been lost as a result of a woman’s impropriety, the drive may be so
compelling, the community pressure so great, the humiliation so
unbearable, that “the threat of punishment may have only a marginal
deterrent effect.”452 One interesting wrinkle that may hint that there
would be more of a deterring effect to not allowing the cultural
defense comes from an idea of Jordanian Minister of Social
Development, Hala Latouf: family honor is often given as the reason
for killing to hide “motives involving inheritance, extortion or other
disputes among relatives.”453
(footnote omitted).
452. Id.
453. Hazaimeh, supra note 113.
In the end, the anti-deterrent effect may not matter one way or the
other, for by the very nature of these crimes, the offender is not likely
to repeat them. In the case of honor killings, for instance, the
likelihood of recurrence is rare.454
VII. CONCLUSION
It is not unusual for American jurisprudence from time to time to

introduce new legal concepts such as the cultural defense. “The
battered spouse defense, for example was created in response to
situations in which convicting the defendant would be unfair, but
traditional defenses of self-defense and insanity would not be entirely
appropriate.”455 The cultural defense is a useful evidentiary tool,
where appropriate, “to shed light on the defendant’s state of mind or
the circumstances surrounding” the act in question.456 The cultural
defense might be viewed as a vindication of what happened repeatedly
to indigenous populations at the behest of colonialists: “When colonial
imperialists moved to an area of colonization, they took their law with
them. When refugees from a culture moved to escape persecution,
they were usually required to leave their folk law behind them.”457 In
North America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa colonists
who essentially invaded the regions made the territory their own,
established a government and set of laws, even without intending to
make the place their permanent home.458 There was “no hesitation
about imposing their own system of law,”459 but the reverse does not
hold: Immigrants are expected to discard the laws of their homeland
and conform to the laws of their adopted country.460
One should be mindful that “[t]he cultural values that conflict
with criminal laws are often among the most fundamental, involving
questions of life, death, and morality.”461 If the cultural defense is
454. Id. at 1303.

455. Id. at 1299.
457. 2 FOLK LAW, supra note 301, at 751.
458. L.C. Green, “Civilized” Law and “Primitive Peoples, in 2 FOLK LAW,
supra note 301, at 755.
459. Id.
460. See 2 FOLK LAW, supra note 301, at 751.
allowed, say, in cases of honor killings, this could unfairly impact

fundamental rights of women who are victims in these cases. The
defense would appear to sanction such behavior among men who
subscribe to the custom. The cultural defense would in effect allow the
jury to condone and perpetuate violence against women. If the
defendant is exonerated or given a lenient sentence, this would be a
referendum of sorts on the social standing and worth of the victim. A
failure to punish indicates perhaps indifference or even disdain
towards the victim, and an enhanced social status for the perpetrator.
A fundamental dilemma with the cultural defense is whether it
should be extended in all criminal matters where the defendant wishes
to introduce cultural evidence in support of the defense, or whether it
should be rejected in crimes that shock the conscience, such as honor
killings. It has been suggested that the line be drawn by limiting the
defense to:
[A]cts that have embedded within them the interests of the social
group rather than those of the individual person. A sustainable
dividing line could conceivably be drawn . . . between those acts
performed for the purpose of cultivating and preserving socially
valued relationships, versus those which are merely attempts at self-
enrichment and personal advantage. Accordingly, crimes involving
theft, armed or unarmed robbery, and other presumptively self-
beneficial economic crimes would fall outside the scope of a
properly delimited culture defense, as compared to crimes
involving domestic relations.462
Honor killings would presumably fall under the category “involving

domestic relations,” and thus the cultural defense would be available.
In the end, it seems to be reasonable for the cultural defense to be
invoked in homicide cases where a central question is the defendant’s
mens rea. The cultural defense in such instances can help the jury
apply a reasonable person standard from the standpoint of the
defendant’s culture, to help explain “how an individual reacts in a
given situation.”463
While honor killings are a rarity in Western society, when they are
reported they “may so shock moral sensibilities as to make the
462. Donovan & Garth, supra note 303, at 133.

463. DePalma, supra note 300, at 18.
majority insist that the defendant’s culture immediately abandon such

practices regardless of how little impact isolated incidents of such acts
have on social order.”464 It should be kept in mind that the “values that
the criminal law seeks to impose on all ethnic groups may reflect
fundamental aspects of a society’s dominant moral code.”465 The law
serves a “moralizing, educative function” in society.466
In convincing other cultures that they should change what
Westerners may regard as barbaric practices, such as honor killings, it
is important for Westerners to have a firm grasp on the rationale of
those within other cultures. One wants to provide convincing
arguments to arrive at a solution, rather than simply seeking to impose
Western beliefs on other cultures.
Social movements of one form or another may be helpful in
providing various communities with greater knowledge to help shift
attitudes. But to successfully transform attitudes that lead to harmful
practices against women, it is important to enlist support from
“religious leaders, scholars, activists, and health care providers who
are dedicated to the development of human rights, women’s rights,
and child development.”467
It is important for Muslim leaders who preach from the pulpit to
affirm that this kind of violence is unacceptable, and to help people
reinterpret traditions that seem to endorse honor killings. They need to
refrain from allowing religious texts to be used to justify honor
killings and other acts of domestic violence. Muslim organizations
have a moral obligation to speak out against those who commit such
crimes. Reforming these long-standing practices may be futile if the
efforts are limited to passing new laws for corruption, bribery, lax
investigation, fear of reporting cases and the lack of interest on the
part of judges and prosecutors in domestic violence cases, in Pakistan
and Jordan for instance, militate against that.468 It may take a long
time, or at least a new generation of police and investigators, before
the cultural acceptance of bribery and corruption may turn the tide.
465. Id.
466. Charles Nesson, The Evidence or the Event? On Judicial Proof and the
Acceptability of Verdicts, 98 HARV. L. REV. 1357, 1359-60 (1985).
467. Cassman, supra note 108, at 147.
468
See discussion supra Part IV.
Some might argue for a compromise position that may allow the
cultural defense in the sentencing phase of criminal cases, but not as a
substantive defense in the case in chief.
It is difficult for proponents to argue that the cultural defense
should be allowed in some cases but not others where a reasonable
person of the defendant’s culture would excuse or justify the conduct
in question. The cultural defense is still in a tentative stage, and
appears to be a growing component in jurisprudence.
View publication stats

Honor Killings by Cohan

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Honor Killings by Cohan

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Honor Killings by Cohan

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

Honor Killings and the Cultural Defense

Article in California Western international law journal · January 2010

John Alan Cohan

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

HONOR KILLINGS AND THE CULTURAL DEFENSE

102 CALIFORNIA WESTERN INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 40

3. The Cultural Defense May Erode Women’s Rights. .........

Anyone who immigrates to a new country is faced with the choice

1. See County of Yakima v. Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakima

2010] HONOR KILLINGS AND THE CULTURAL DEFENSE 103

the context of criminal law. An increasing number of criminal

104 CALIFORNIA WESTERN INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 40

cases in the West. In fact, there have been a number of instances of

I. THE NATURE OF HONOR

Stereotyped roles for men and women seem to be a universal

2010] HONOR KILLINGS AND THE CULTURAL DEFENSE 105

phenomenon across cultures and historical eras. In some instances

A. The Importance of and Need to Safeguard Honor

Honor is an important though somewhat intangible and elusive

11. Hooma Shah, Comment, Brutality by Acid: Utilizing Bangladesh as a

106 CALIFORNIA WESTERN INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 40

by others, is held to have an excellent reputation, and is considered

15. IMMANUEL KANT, FOUNDATIONS OF THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS 53-54

2010] HONOR KILLINGS AND THE CULTURAL DEFENSE 107

It is to be observed that it is reputation, not character, which the law

In other words, character is the real person while reputation is the

108 CALIFORNIA WESTERN INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 40

to others in the family, despite their innocence of any wrongdoing.

2010] HONOR KILLINGS AND THE CULTURAL DEFENSE 109

B. The Nature of Honor in Arab Cultures

In Arab cultures, a distinct honor code, known as purda, calls for

As the embodiment of her family’s honor, women must guard their

In these cultures there is often hostility with respect to “women’s

25. Castetter, supra note 20, at 550-51.

110 CALIFORNIA WESTERN INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 40

In traditional Arab culture a distinction is made between two

Women serve their male guardians and families as vessels of honor;

Modesty in women’s behavior is emphasized.38 Women must

2010] HONOR KILLINGS AND THE CULTURAL DEFENSE 111

40. See Richard T. Antoun, On the Modesty of Women in Arab Muslim

112 CALIFORNIA WESTERN INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 40

concerning Pakistan: “Significant numbers of women were subjected

C. The Nature of Honor in the West

In the West there exists an entirely different culture of honor. An

[T]he good opinion of others founded in the assumption that the

50. U.S. DEP’T OF STATE, BUREAU OF DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND

2010] HONOR KILLINGS AND THE CULTURAL DEFENSE 113

a disparaging gesture, a contemptuous sneer, a defamatory comment,

55. See generally JACK K. WILLIAMS, DUELING IN THE OLD SOUTH:

114 CALIFORNIA WESTERN INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 40

sentiment made it rare to convict a man of killing another in a duel

2010] HONOR KILLINGS AND THE CULTURAL DEFENSE 115

II. THE PREVALENCE OF HONOR KILLINGS

A. Honor Killings Defined

Honor killings are a longstanding cultural practice in which

116 CALIFORNIA WESTERN INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 40

concentrated in certain regions, the following illustrates the worldwide

2010] HONOR KILLINGS AND THE CULTURAL DEFENSE 117