Woman Scorned: A Proper Sentence for Betty Broderick Term Paper

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Betty Broderick: A Woman Scorned

On November 5, 1989, Betty Broderick killed her ex-husband, attorney Dan Broderick, and his new wife, Linda Kolenka Broderick, at the couple's home in San Diego, California. At the time, Betty and Dan Broderick had been divorced since January 1989, but the divorce had been particularly rancorous, with Dan often baiting Betty, and using his legal expertise to take advantage of her. As a consequence, and perhaps because of her own mental instability, Betty had been unable, at the time of the double murder, to move on from her divorce from Dan. She had also threatened to kill the new couple several times, had smashed her car into the front doorway of their new home, and vandalized their property in various ways.

The double murder committed by Betty was the culmination of a bitter divorce and custody battle (Betty and Dan had four children), that had raged since the mid-1980's. Betty Broderick's first murder trial, in 1990, resulted in a hung jury. Her second trial resulted in a conviction of second-degree murder.

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For the murders, Betty Broderick received "two consecutive fifteen-years-to-life sentences" ("Betty Broderick: Divorce, Desperation, Death"), and will first be eligible for parole in 2011. As "Betty Broderick: Divorce, Desperation, Death" also points out, of this case:

a naive woman is ruthlessly mistreated, encumbered and driven to a bedlam of instability by a one-sided law and a conceited, conniving villain who avails every puppet-string of that law. Dan Broderick, no doubt a brilliant lawyer, saw to it that all loopholes of a law his layman wife didn't understand were used in his behalf against her. Whenever she flipped out, he was there to hand her a shovel to let her dig her grave deeper.

The case is a complicated one, however, because, although Betty clearly premeditated and committed the murders, her ex-husband Dan had a hand in bringing his ex-wife's emotional instability to the point where she would actually do so. He took advantage of her to the point where she received an unjust divorce settlement and was denied custody of their….....

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