Analysis
by Barbara Kirwin, Ph.D.

Calif. v. Broderick

Betty Broderick admitted to shooting her ex-husband and his new young wife as they slept in their bedroom. Her tearful testimony at her first trial portrayed her husband as a psychologically abusive cad who drove her to the edge of madness. She claimed she had intended to shoot herself, but as a last resort, decided to try and talk to her husband about returning custody of their children to her. Nearly hysterical on the stand, Broderick stated that she only remembered the gun going off once -- even though she emptied it into the couple. Then she ripped the phone out of the wall and fled in panic. A barrage of psychiatric experts corroborated the defense theory of a fragile, emotionally pathetic woman suffering from profound situational depression induced by her husband’s cruelty during a bitter and protracted divorce.

Although Broderick’s courtroom confession contained no hint of remorse for the effect of the slayings on her children or the families of the victims, it engendered sufficient sympathy in the jurors to preclude them from reaching a unanimous verdict.

When Broderick was retried in 1994, her plea for pity had worn thin. She was convicted of 2^nd degree murder and sentenced to two consecutive terms of 15 years.

Broderick was indeed a sad and empty woman who, despite her position of privilege, was for the most part used to being taken lightly. She perhaps expected that her girlish display of tears would earn her an outright acquittal, or at the very least a lenient sentence. Her dramatic confession seems carefully calculated to arouse sympathy, blame her victims, and exonerate her from any responsibility. After all, wouldn’t any woman who had been so cruelly abused and abandoned by her husband, deprived of her children and means of support, depressed and at the end of her rope, snap, and do the unthinkable? The now middle-aged Betty asked to be forgiven without any gesture of contrition. Instead of an emotionally tortured woman who killed in a suicidal frenzy, she appeared to be a self-centered prima donna trying to get away with murder.

Her courtroom confession can best be described as a Sympathy/Pity Plea, a conscious, calculated strategy to convince a jury that her actions were understandable and even justified given the cruelty she allegedly suffered at the hands of her ex-husband.

Broderick’s confession embodies the attitude of narcissistic entitlement. She was dependent upon her husband not only for her comfortable lifestyle but also for her very identity and emotional center. Bitterness and rage consumed her because her husband had not kept up his part of the bargain — to take care of her for life. Throughout the confession there is a sense of outrage that she had no one to turn to and had "exhausted all her resources." She does not present as someone who was clinically depressed and contemplating suicide. She is instead very angry and spiteful. Truly depressed people do not suddenly change their minds about suicide and muster the energy to go confront a spouse with a loaded gun.

Nevertheless, Broderick’s courtroom confession was not totally ineffective as a plea for sympathy and pity. Her first trial resulted in a hung jury and her re-trial brought her a conviction for 2^nd degree murder with a firearms charge. She is serving 30 years to life and will be eligible for parole in 2011. Without that courtroom performance, Broderick might have been found guilty of premeditated murder and been sentenced to life with no hope of parole.