The urban survival syndrome, in United States jurisprudence, can be used either as a defense of justification or of excuse. The first case using, unsuccessfully, the defense of "urban survival syndrome" is the 1994 Fort Worth, Texas murder trial of Daimion Osby.
The use of the urban survival syndrome as a defense to criminal charges followed the success of the battered woman syndrome defense in State v. Kelly (1984), which was based on the acceptance that the presence of such a syndrome may cause the defendant, a victim of domestic violence, to reasonably believe she was in peril and was therefore justified in using deadly force, given the circumstances.
Defense
As an excuse defense, the urban survival syndrome is presented as a version of the abuse defense. Here an individual experiencing the daily life of racial segregation and violence common in many inner cities in the United States causes a subjective state equivalent to that caused by survival in a violent battleground of war. As such it leads to a condition similar to a syndrome already recognized in both psychological and psychiatric practices, that is, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
As a justification defense, the urban survival syndrome is offered to bolster self-defense claims in which a defendant argues that he or she should not be held criminally responsible for actions which broke the law, as the defendant was objectively reasonable in believing his or her lethal actions were necessary for survival. In this case, the act would be termed justifiable homicide. A defense of justification is a codification of the common law defense of necessity.
Osby trial
State v. Kelly (1984), by allowing testimony on battered woman syndrome, opened the door to considering the subjective state of the perpetrator as a pathological syndrome caused by environmental factors and allowing a defense on those grounds. Osby claimed that for the past year the two men had repeatedly harassed and threatened him and his family over the payment of a gambling debt. Evidence was also presented that the two men had a gun in their car.
The battered woman syndrome has been criticized on similar grounds: that it encourages the societal stereotype of women as helpless and incapacitated. While the court testimony can support the woman's actions as reasonable under the circumstances as self-defense, the courts seem to focus on testimony that portray the battered woman as "dysfunctional". Further problems arise with this defense when an analogous syndrome, the "battered child syndrome" is used as a defense, as the unique susceptibility of a woman to domestic violence can seem to be undercut.