Juries also have acquitted some abused women who killed or attacked their husbands, such as Francine Hughes, leading to a wider recognition of what’s known as battered woman syndrome.

“Juries recognized that before the law did,” Conrad said. “The law is slow to change. Sometimes society changes much more quickly than the law, and that is when jury nullification should come in … We don’t need to have 18th-century law governing 21st-century behavior, and the jury can say so.”

New phrase added to the American lexicon in 2025 - battered patient syndrome.