On the face of it, the murder trial of Christine English in 2019 was nothing unique. Christine, a 42-year-old registered nurse stood in the dock at the Old Bailey Criminal Court in London, her face sallow and pinched in disbelief. She stood accused of the stabbing death of her long-time companion, David English, in their home in Surrey, England.
Statistics worldwide tell us that approximately one-third of all murders are at the hands of somebody that the victim knew, a spouse, a friend, or a family member. As to that aspect of the crime, Christine was just one of thousands of cases of murder that occur each year around the world.
What set the media afire, however, was her unique defense.
Her lawyers argued that Christine suffered from a severe form of PMS (Pre-menstrual Syndrome) called PMDD (Pre-menstrual Polydisphoric Disorder). The lawyers brought in several experts to back up their claim that PMDD was a real, although statistically rare disorder.
PMS suffers as the victim of many false beliefs. And it has been the butt of many jokes and misguided stories too numerous to legitimize.
But what is PMS?
Studies have minutely detailed the events in a woman’s monthly menstrual cycle. Science tells us that a woman’s mood will ebb and flow, much like the ocean tide held in the grip of the Moon’s gravitational pull, depending on where she is in her cycle.
The trouble for most women comes in the form of two hormones, estrogen and progesterone. When she is at her figurative ‘high tide’, these hormones soothe, calm, and dampen her stress. It is in the fourth week of her cycle, when these hormones have bottomed-out, that she starts to feel irritated and uncomfortable. To continue with the tide metaphor, we then can see the rocky bottom in her mood.
Medical science has now successfully argued that women are at the mercy of their monthly cycle, a hapless victim to a raging set of hormones. In the case of Christine English, the judge agreed with the medical verdict that Christine was the victim, in this case of a rare imbalance in her hormones. She received a sentence that was reduced from premeditated murder to manslaughter due to ‘diminished capacity,’ which is a fancy way of saying that Christine English was ‘temporarily insane,’ and could not be held accountable for her crime.