Dr Lynsey Black, Assistant Professor in the School of Law and Criminology, who researches in the areas of gender and punishment, the death penalty, historical and postcolonial criminology, and borders. Published an article on RTE Brainstorm on the 11th of March entitled, Women who kill: 'the female poisoner has been particularly reviled'.
“Women who kill shatter society's ideas of what it is to be a woman. When such women appear before the criminal courts, they are often judged by the standards of aspirational womanhood. How they measure up plays a role in how they are perceived by the public and may influence the punishment they receive.”
The Brainstorm piece explores the cases of six women, tried for the murder of their husbands by poisoning from the 1920s through the 1940s, all of whom were found not guilty despite evidence to the contrary. Was the evidence lacking, or was there something else at play?
Read the article in full here