Poisoning case could still raise questions of culture

Earlier this week, a Chinese-born chemist who worked for the pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb here in the US was convicted of murdering her husband by poison in 2011 and sentenced to life in prison.

The tumultuous 10-year union between Tianle Li, the accused, and her husband Xiaoye Wang, a computer software engineer, had resulted in multiple police visits to their home in New Jersey for "more than five" domestic disturbances, according to police. The victim's father also reported that the woman had brandished a knife and threatened to poison her husband before he filed for divorce in 2010.

Li, who came to the US from Beijing in the 1990s, obtained the highly radioactive metal thallium through her work with the pharmaceutical giant that had employed her for 10 years. Thallium is often called the "poisoner's poison" because it is odorless, tasteless and colorless. Its presence is hard to detect, because its symptoms are often suggestive of other illnesses. Indeed, after Wang checked himself into the hospital for "virus-like" symptoms, doctors did not identify his condition until hours before his death 12 days later. A snowstorm prevented an antidote from arriving in time.

Li continues to deny her involvement in Wang's death, and at sentencing this week expressed her intention to appeal. However, her lawyer Steve Altman employed a form of cultural defense during the case in justifying the couple's numerous domestic disturbance incidences.

"Immigrants always need to assimilate, and you saw the conflicts that exist coming from an Eastern culture trying to get comfortable with Western culture," Steve Altman told the judge in court before sentencing. "I think that's what brought us here today."

He described a home environment in which Wang's Chinese parents, who lived with the couple for one year, put pressure on the "Westernized" Li and created cultural clashes. "There was a mix of issues and facts and cultures that gradually deteriorated and brings us here," Altman said.

Li pleaded not guilty, so while this is not a traditional "cultural defense" case, the issue of introducing cultural differences in court has legal precedents.

The most famous case involved a Chinese immigrant named Dong Lu Chen, who in 1987 murdered his wife Jian Wan Chen with a claw hammer after he discovered evidence of an extramarital affair. Burton Pasternak, a professor from Hunter College in New York, testified that Dong's reaction was justifiable in the context of Chinese culture. Dong was sentenced only to five years' probation, based on factors including his cultural heritage and his "meek behavior" while in prison waiting for trial.

In 1990, a Macau-born Chinese woman murdered her son Sidney, after his father refused to marry her. Her defense attorneys argued that she murdered the child and then attempted to kill herself in hopes of being able to care for the child in the afterlife, a belief rooted in her Chinese heritage. The judge denied requested defense instructions on how her cultural background might have affected her state of mind and she was convicted, but the Court of Appeal later reversed the ruling.

"Raising cultural factors in court has a long-term detrimental effect on the Asian American community," said Stewart Chang, a professor of law at Whittier Law School and former staff attorney of the Asian American Legal Center. "This kind of defense reinforces stereotypical ideas of China as a misogynistic and backwards culture. Juxtaposing Chinese culture against a supposedly neutral US culture creates a framework in which America is presented as reasonable, with Chinese people being exempt from that argument for being the product of a backwards culture."

A study featured in the Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health reported that Asian American victims of domestic violence were at least four times less likely to seek help or utilize mental health services after an incident, creating an environment in which far greater harm can occur without intervention.

Contact the writer at kdawson@chinadailyusa.com