Compassionate Causation in the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act
This Comment evaluates the implementation of the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act (DVSJA), a New York law passed in 2019 to provide shortened sentencing ranges for domestic violence survivors convicted of crimes. It identifies an inconsistency in sentencing courts’ application of the law’s causation standard, which requires that a petitioner’s experience of domestic violence be a “significant contributing factor” to their criminal conduct. Some courts interpret the prong narrowly, while others apply a broad causation standard. This Comment argues that courts should opt for the latter approach and consider causation in the DVSJA satisfied if domestic violence was “sufficiently significant to have likely helped bring about the criminal conduct.”
The argument proceeds in three parts. First, the text of the DVSJA stipulates that courts may not hold petitioners to the same standards required by traditional affirmative defenses in criminal law. Courts that have narrowly interpreted the causation requirement have disregarded this statutory directive. Second, the legislative history of the DVSJA, frequently cited by courts on both sides of the debate, supports a broad reading of the standard. And finally, the Comment draws upon causation standards in other areas of law to identify the role of policy considerations in causation analyses and to ultimately argue that such policy considerations support the proposed standard.