Maryland’s Love Affair with the “Heat of Passion” Defense

The Death of Kimberly Nalls

In 1995, Maryland residents debated the law. Did an angry husband have the right to kill his wife if he thought she was committing adultery? Of course not. Yet the law was slow to catch up.

According to Maryland law at the time, adultery was a “legally recognized provocation.” This meant that a man could get charged with manslaughter instead of murder if he caught his wife in bed with another man. This law dated back to the times when you could put “Fatti maschii, parole femine”…