“She cheated on me” is no longer a reasonable defense for husbands and boyfriends who are accused of murdering their wives and girlfriends in the Bay State, according to a recent ruling from the Supreme Judicial Court.
The top court in Massachusetts rejected its precedent for this argument in certain cases, as justices ruled that the murder defense based on cheating has a “shaky, misogynistic foundation and has no place in our modern jurisprudence.”
The SJC was ruling on an appeal involving a man who was convicted of first-degree murder for killing his 9-months pregnant girlfriend in Salem after she had told him he was not the father of her baby. Peter Ronchi in May 2009 repeatedly stabbed his girlfriend, Yuliya Galperina, killing her and her viable fetus.
During the trial, there was no question that Ronchi had stabbed Galperina. Ronchi had argued that the murder charge should be reduced to manslaughter, blaming his girlfriend’s infidelity for the homicide.
A Superior Court jury ended up convicting Ronchi of two counts of first-degree murder.
“In this appeal, the defendant argues that the evidence was insufficient to support his convictions of murder in the first degree, on the ground that no rational juror could have found that the stabbings were not the result of a heat of passion upon reasonable provocation,” the SJC wrote about the appeal this week.
Ronchi was asking the SJC to reduce the verdicts to manslaughter. The SJC upheld the murder convictions, and also rejected its precedent for these cases.
“We also take this opportunity to disavow our precedent on reasonable provocation based on sudden oral revelations of infidelity, and, relatedly, lack of paternity,” the SJC wrote.
“The exception rests upon a shaky, misogynistic foundation and has no place in our modern jurisprudence,” the top court later added. “Going forward, we no longer will recognize that an oral discovery of infidelity satisfies the objective element of something that would provoke a reasonable person to kill his or her spouse.”
Associate Justice Elspeth Cypher in a concurring opinion noted that U.S. women are more likely to be killed by homicide during pregnancy or soon after childbirth than to die from the three leading obstetric causes of maternal mortality (hypertensive disorders, hemorrhage or sepsis).
“It is important to emphasize that the brutal facts of this case are not an anomaly,” Cypher wrote. “The disconcerting frequency of lethal violence against pregnant women warrants concomitant response from our justice system. This court’s acknowledgement that oral revelations, on their own, cannot induce a reasonable person to kill their pregnant partner is a laudable first step.”
She added, “I would take it one step further and reject the principle that discovery of infidelity, whether oral or through personal observation, can amount to adequate provocation to kill a partner, standing alone.”
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