In the absence of defensive homicide, Victoria`s law is fundamentally limited in its ability to determine criminal culpability based on the degree of impairment and violence. This question of degree is important because it adequately reflects the situation of the offender and the crime. In 2005, a complete package of “forward-looking feminists. Reforms” was introduced in Victoria, including a new defensive murder offence. In 2014, Victoria abolished the offence of defensive murder after “widely acknowledging that he had been abused by violent men.” Read more: Legitimizing deadly male violence: why defensive homicides must be abolished For practitioners who worked in this area of law in 2018, the self-defense provision of the law is now that “conduct is an appropriate response in circumstances as the person perceives it” (§ 322K (2) (b)), and when it comes to domestic violence, the harm does not need to be “immediate” (§ 322M (1) (a)). Whether this adequately addresses the objections of the community and women`s groups opposed to the abolition of defensive murder is an open question. This narrative was born despite the fact that Middendorp was the first and only man to be convicted of defensive murder for killing an intimate partner, and despite many advocates of violence against women and family who desperately campaigned to perpetuate the crime. They did so because it was found to offer a “safety net” option to women who killed in response to domestic violence. Despite the abolition, defensive murder appeared in the headlines in 2016 and 2017 in the case of Bonnie Sawyer-Thompson. In 2017, Sawyer-Thompson sought leave to appeal a case that Justice Croucher had previously noted “will likely be the last time a person will be prosecuted for defensive murder.” In 2016, Ms. Sawyer-Thompson was sentenced to 10 years in prison without parole for the defensive murder of Mr. Nankervis. In a submission to the Victorian Department of Justice, the Law Institute of Victoria argued that the fact that more men than women were convicted of defensive murder did not diminish the “usefulness” of the crime and opposed its abolition.

The decision to abolish defensive murder fit well into the rigorous agenda of the Liberal government of the day. Mainstream voices in the debate claimed that the crime was being used and “abused” by “violent thugs.” In 2013, the Victorian Department of Justice noted in its consultation paper that “there is no clear evidence that defensive homicides work in the way that is supposed to support women who kill in response to domestic violence.” Despite opposition from the Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria, the Federation of Community Legal Centres, the Victorian Women`s Trust and the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, the Crimes Amendment (Abolition of Defensive Homicides) Bill was passed and enacted in 2014. Defensive murder occurred when a person believed that his or her conduct was necessary to defend himself or another person against death or injury (then section 9AC of the Act), but did so when he or she had no reasonable grounds to believe that he or she was doing so (then section 9AD of the Act). Despite the controversy surrounding defensive killings, protective measures have been put in place to prevent abuse. And crime has rarely been used – the majority of mentally disabled offenders being within the scope of general law. The defensive killings did not deny the legal responsibility of the accused, nor did they mean that they escaped punishment. On the contrary, it provided the law with the opportunity to determine the extent to which the author was morally responsible for his conduct. Because of the disproportionate rates of mental illness in homicides, it is important that there are appropriate legal means to respond to these types of offenders in a way that takes into account their legal culpability while recognizing reduced moral culpability. Defensive murder succeeded in this. Sitting between murder and manslaughter in terms of legal and moral culpability, a person could be convicted of defensive murder rather than murder if they killed with the sincere but unreasonable belief that they were acting in self-defense.