Word: hanoukai
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...quiet of suburban Los Angeles, Moosa Hanoukai picked up a pipe wrench and bludgeoned his wife Manijeh to death. When the businessman did not contest the facts, prosecutors assumed they had an easy second-degree murder conviction. But Hanoukai's attorney James Blatt mounted this defense: his client was a victim of husband battering and 25 years of abuse. Furthermore, because of the stringencies of an Iranian-Jewish culture, Hanoukai felt trapped: he killed Manijeh because he was not allowed to divorce her. The jury empathized and found Hanoukai guilty only of voluntary manslaughter. Instead of 15 years to life...
...Hanoukai verdict provoked little of of the turmoil attending the acquittals of Lorena and John Bobbitt and the hung juries of the Menendez brothers. But critics charge that all these legal proceedings illustrate the same trend: juries are increasingly willing to make allowances for mitigating circumstances once considered largely irrelevant -- abused spouses who kill, violated children who murder incestuous parents, victims of posttraumatic stress syndrome driven to violence by disturbing flashbacks...
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