Winkler case update

Any bets on the male:female ratio of the jury? I say 4:8 myself.

Perhaps it took them a year to come up with a reason other than "she's a murderer and should be punished". The creative process can be a long one.

I'm listening to America's Newsroom, with Bill Hemmer and Megan Kelly on FOX cable as I write this. They just did a report on Mary Winkler, the woman who killed her Pastor husband with a shotgun blast to the back. They discussed different angles of the case, and eventually brought up "battered woman syndrome." One guest pundit, Dr. Sari Locker, Psychologist, discussed symptoms of BWS and added that there are 4,000,000 battered women in America every year. Is that fact or myth? Is there any refutation to that number? I did a google and found lots of citations of that number.

It appears jury selection in Mary Winkler's trial is beginning today, or at least court proceedings leading to her trial are beginning.

Bill Hemmer listed his email as
Hemmer@foxnews.com

Both Hemmer and Kelly did not succumb to the usual news room tripe about battered women syndrome and in fact, Megan Kelly, an attorney, pointed out areas where battered woman syndrome was questionable in this case, such as Mary Winkler having access to funds, and telling her husband she loved him before he died, and denying she was battered when first interrogated by police. Dr. Sari Locker, Psychologist attempted to defend (rationalize) BWS women who say such things.

Isn't it kind of funny (weird) how there is never any mention of BHS (battered husband syndrome) in this or any other legal case I've ever heard of?

...and so it begins.

What really annoys me about her is that she has been out of jail for sometime now and has a job, though a menial one, but hasn't by any news I have read that she has paid any child support! She has 3 daughters all under the age of 10 and they have been living with their paternal grandparents since the murder.
All at the expense of the middle aged grandparents.

She has also been photographed by cell phone boozing it up in a bar and smoking cigarettes. So she does have discretionary disposable income.

Yes, if she were a man her paycheck would be garnished by the state to pay child support! It would also probably be part of her bond agreement to pay child support or go back to jail. But since she is a female she gets a waiver evidently.

The "battered women" stat of 4 million in the US should be considered along with other facts. Women shove, slap and physically abuse their male partners at least as frequently as the reverse. And women are more likely to use weapons and to commit the most physically severe violence. The problem is that male victims don't speak up, and society is more concerned with injured women than with injured men. Incidentally, less than 1000 women are murdered each year by the man they married -- out of 54 million married women in the US. And it's pretty certain that male victims of spousal homicide are undercounted by law enforcement authorities.

Matthew Winkler is not around to defend himself. From reading the news articles about the case, it appears that many people are just assuming that he was probably abusive toward his wife, and she couldn't take it anymore. The public's tendency to be sympathetic toward Mary and to think of her as a victim of abuse who snapped highlights the nature of the anti-male bias that pervades our society. Matthew Winkler would never have been given this kind of sympathetic and lenient treatment had he murdered his wife in similar circumstances.

I hope I'm proven wrong, but I suspect that Mary will receive a relatively light prison sentence compared to what a wife-murdering male offender would have gotten. And the message to women will be that female-on-male violence is considered far more acceptable than the male-on-female version.

"She has also been photographed by cell phone boozing it up in a bar and smoking cigarettes."

I thought people out on bond aren't allowed to use alcohol.

If that's the case, it's a violation of bail, and you know what that means.

She's a she, remember? The judge will do nothing.

Matthew Winkler is not around to defend himself.

Exactly. Same thing with the Todd Sommer Marine case. His evil murdering b*tch "wife" can sit and cry for the camera while his ashes remain scattered to the winds.

the only standard condition in most places is to 'be of good behavior and keep the peace' every other condition is the judges discretion

Usually the judge will only impose condition of restraining from drugs and alcohol if those were factors in the crime the person is accused of.

Lawyers will argue if the condition is not related to the crime then it is a violation of their clients rights and is a form of punishment before trial. The purpose of bonds are not to punish (innocent until proven guilty) they are only to ensure that the person shows up for court dates and does not flee.