Free Blood Royal by Harold Robbins

present, over ninety percent of the violent crimes committed each year are done by men. Women represent half the population but commit only a fraction of the violent crimes. Because men have always dominated the courtroom—until recently almost all judges and lawyers were men and nine out of ten defendants were men— the law developed based upon the emotional response of men, not women. ”
    Lord Finfall slammed his palm on the table—hard. “Poppycock! The law is applied equally to the sexes. I can guarantee that your ideas will be thrown out of the courtroom before they ever reach a jury. There are no judicial opinions in this country or yours supporting your position.”
    Ah, an admission they had researched her. “There are many judges who would agree with you, but my theory is a question of fact for a jury, not one of law for a judge. There aren’t appellate decisions on the slow-trigger concept because a prosecutor can’t appeal a not-guilty verdict. And I’ve had seven juries not find it to be poppycock. Talking to jurors afterwards, what impressed them most was that it appealed to their common sense. And while I have been in your country for less than two hours, I suspect that this case is a hot political potato besides being a criminal case. If your judges plan to arbitrarily take away a jury’s right to decide a case on its facts, it’s not going to play well with the public.”
    Trent said, “His lordship is simply giving you a practical consideration. We would not permit the judicial system to deny the princess her right to a fair trial by jury. Can you elaborate a bit on how you deal with the differences between men and women?”
    “When it’s pointed out to them, juries readily accept and understand that the two sexes have a different emotional base. The fact that men and women are sexually aroused at different speeds is probably the best-known example. The use of physical violence is another. When women get angry, they’re less likely to resort to physical violence. Men are more aggressive, perhaps because of their traditional role as the hunter, women instinctively more gentle, perhaps because of their role as the caregiver. But the law of manslaughter, the sudden reaction to provocation, is based upon how a man would react, not a woman. Two men bump shoulders on a street, an argument erupts, one hits the other, the victim falls down and hits his head. That’s typical male heat of passion, a physical reaction to provocation. But for most women, you would have to provoke them for a much greater time before they would react physically, months or even years.
    “And because they are physically weaker than the male, they may have to plan out their reaction in order to obtain a weapon, rather than just striking back at the moment of provocation.”
    “So that is the basis of your slow-trigger defense, that jurors are to judge a woman’s response differently than a man’s?” Trent asked.
    “In a nutshell, yes. Men have a different reaction to provocation than women. Women react slower. But the law is based upon the male reaction.”
    “Perhaps you can give us an example of how you’ve been successful with your theory. You had a recent case in Savannah, didn’t you?”
    “The Savannah wife had suffered years of mental abuse by a husband who played the most vicious kind of tricks on her. He never hit her, but he humiliated her and degraded her in front of their children and friends for years. He was the physically and financially dominant spouse. The wife was a frightened submissive person who tried to protect their two children.”
    “I sometimes find myself lacking sympathy toward women who have more than one child in an abusive relationship,” Helen Catters, the family-law lawyer, said. “I give them the benefit of the doubt for the first one, but the second child? And so often you hear about a third and fourth child in a bad marriage.”
    “I agree,” Marlowe said, “but if these women