The case between Angelique Lavallee and Her Majesty the Queen is one of the most famous court cases in Canadian history. I will be examining the events that led to this case, the controversial appeal of the legal recognition of battered woman syndrome, the final judgements on the case and what St Thomas Aquinas would have said about the judgements in this case.
Angelique Lavallee and her common-law husband Kevin Rust had been living together for some time and had a well-known history of being in a volatile relationship, most of the violence happening to Lavallee. Through their 3 year relationship she was the victim of multiple bruises, contusions, black eyes and even on one occasion, a fractured nose. The abusive relationship was known by
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The obvious route that Lavallee was going to take to defend herself in this trial was claiming self defense against Rust. When claiming self defense there are three conditions that you need to follow, the first being that you were under unlawful attack at the time, the second being that they were posing a similarly threat to you and the third being necessity of defensive action. To the layperson it would seem right away that Lavallee was acting out of self defense after hearing the story of her unfortunate night, but the prosecutors believed that Lavallee’s situation wasn’t grounds for self defense. For the defense of self defense all three conditions need to have happened for it to work. The first being that Lavallee was not under unlawful attack due to the fact that she stated Rust had his back to her at the time of the shooting, meaning that he was not in a position to be assaulting her. An issue found in the second condition was that there was no threat uttered to Lavallee that put her in immediate danger, the threat uttered to you cannot be a future threat and Rust stated to Lavallee that he was going to kill her that night and not that moment. The third condition stated that Lavallee must have an alternate defensive action