So Did Tiger Woods Avoid The Police To Protect His Wife

After twenty years of practicing criminal law and handling hundreds of domestic violence cases, there is one misconception that has been observed. Law enforcement always get their man, when sometimes, they should get their woman. Don’t get me wrong, I personally think Ms. Woods should have used Tiger’s driver when she attacked his SUV. However, here is just a couple of examples of actual cases where it was shown later that the woman was in fact the aggressor not the male.
Husband comes back from Iraq after two tours of duty to find his wife is having an affair. They go into counseling, but it doesn’t work. Husband, goes over to his old apartment where his soon to be ex-wife is  living, to get his personal belongings. When he has his back turned gathering his property, wife smacks him on the back with a rolling pin. He grabs his stuff and stumbles to the door where she won’t let him pass.  He takes her by the shoulders and moves her away from the door. As he is retrieving the rest of his things in the garage, she throws a wrench at him, barely missing his head. She picks up another wrench, ready to throw when he pulls it out of her hand and leaves. She calls the police. There were no record of injuries other then her statements’. Police find husband and arrest him for domestic violence. These charges could ruin his military career.
Another husband, also in the military, get into a verbal argument with wife. Wife, same size as husband, comes from behind and attempts to stab her husband with an ice pick. He grabs her right arm that is holding the ice pick. He is left handed. There is a struggle and she ends up stabbing herself. Husband calls the police. They arrest him.
There appears to be a standard believe that the male is always the aggressor. So, the male is usually the one to be sitting in jail or paying for bail that will never be reimbursed to them. Not every man is the aggressor. This article doesn’t assume the female is the major offender in domestic violence, but that law enforcement doesn’t take the time to review domestic violence situations that need a closer look.  I have litigated several cases like the above examples.
Domestic violence /Spousal abuse is defined in California in part as willfully inflicting corporal injury, resulting in a traumatic condition, upon a spouse or former spouse, former cohabitant or parent of the offenders child.
Traumatic is defined as a condition of the body, such as a wound or external or internal injury, whether of a minor or serious nature that is caused by a physical force
Conventional belief is that physical domestic violence is mainly perpetrated by men against women, so the knee jerk reaction is to arrest the man. The problem is some men get arrested and put in jail without any physical evidence of any injury.
Is women’s violence towards men best understood as self-defense? Conventional standards might say yes. But, reflecting on US studies, Straus, M. 1993. “Physical assault by wives, a major social problem” in R.Gelles & D.Loseke (eds) Current Controversies on Family Violence. Newbury Park: Sage Publications concludes that “research on who hit first does not support the hypothesis that assaults by wives are primarily acts of self-defense or retaliation”. The results relating to women being as violent as men are in line with some recent American research.
Of course it takes more than a study or two to overturn conventional believes. However, It is fair to ask law enforcement to look at both sides of a event, in cases where no injuries are shown, to reevaluate the situation.
In the first example, the wife admitted later to the city attorney, that she was the aggressor. Charges were never filed nor were charges filed against her.
In the second example, the case had to go to trial and through expert witnesses and fingerprint evidence we were able to show the wife was the aggressor. The jury came back not guilty within a couple of hours. Wife was never charged.