Defensive homicide reforms
1. Provocation was a defence in which the accused argued that the victim had provoked (for example, upset or angered) them and that this had caused the killing. Victorian Parliament abolished it as a defence for homicide as it was frequently used in cases where a man had killed his wife or partner, or had killed a homosexual man, and it was used to blame the victim.
2. Defensive homicidewas intended to operate as a kind of ‘excessiveself-defence’, where the offender argued self-defence, but did not havereasonable grounds for it. This would include, for instance, situations inwhich someone killed in response to a long history of family or domesticviolence, but did not kill in the exact moment they were being assaultedor threatened.
3. Since 2005 defensive homicide was mainly used as a lesser alternative to murder bymen who have killed. 18 of the 22 trials had been where a male offenderkilled a male victim, most in the context of a one-off confrontation, ofteninvolving alcohol and the use of weapons; plus, one where a male killedhis female partner.The government reviewed the crime of defensive homicide in response to cases such as Luke Middendorp who killed his girlfriend, Jade Bownds.
4. In 2014 the Victorian attorney-general introduced a bill to repeal defensive homicide. The bill removed it, redefined self defence, and included provisions to try to exclude evidence that would “unnecessarily demean the deceased” – in other words, to stop ‘victim-blaming’evidence being used to shift attention away from the perpetrator. The bill passed inNovember 2014. This made Victoria the firstAustralian jurisdiction to legislate against victim-blaming evidence.