■What is defensive homicide?

Defensive homicide was an offence that sat between self-defence and murder. It's a form of murder where the killer truly believed their life was in danger, when in fact the circumstances of the killing did not support that belief. People convicted of defensive homicide, which carried a maximum prison term of 20 years, receive a lesser sentence than if they had been convicted of murder. They were not entitled to a full acquittal, as with self-defence.

■Why was it introduced?

It was part of a 2005 two-pronged initiative by the Brumby government to get justice for female victims of domestic violence. On the one hand, the government abolished the partial defence of provocation, which was generally deployed by men who had killed their intimate partners in rage. ''She pushed me, I snapped.'' There was a great deal of lobbying and public outrage on this issue after James Ramage in 2004 was convicted of manslaughter, instead of murder, after strangling his wife Jane and burying her in a shallow grave. He served eight years of an 11-year sentence.

On the other hand, defensive homicide was introduced as a protection for women who had killed their intimate partners after long-term exposure to family violence. It was implemented by the government on the basis that victims of domestic violence are generally disempowered, isolated from support and ruled by fear. So when a woman in this context kills her partner, no matter her life may not have been at risk at the time of killing, and no matter the killing may be premeditated, it was understood - by the government, the domestic violence sector, feminist academics - that she was less culpable, and deserving of a lesser sentence.

■Why does the government claim it hasn't worked?

Since 2005, 20 men have successfully claimed defensive homicide after killing other men. Only four battered women, for whom the law was designed, have been convicted of the offence - the fourth being convicted on Friday.

Criminologists began talking about the law not being applied in the way it was meant to - some began agitating for the law to be abolished, others felt it should be retained. The family violence sector worried that male offenders had hijacked the law.

Concern erupted into scandal in May 2010, when Luke John Middendorp became the first man to be convicted of defensive homicide against a woman, for stabbing his partner, Jade Bownds, in the back four times. After the stabbing, Middendorp was heard to say, ''You filthy slut, you got what you deserved.'' Victims-of-crime groups were outraged - and a campaign to ditch the law was quickly in train.

■Are battered women who kill their abusive partners better off now the law has been abolished?

No, they're not. They'll have to take their chances with an articulate lawyer and a judge educated in the complexities of domestic violence - and legally that won't be enough.

■But didn't the family violence sector seek to have the law abolished?

In August 2010, following the Middendorp case, the Victorian Justice Department began a review of defensive homicide, but this stalled when the Baillieu government took power. In September last year, the Department of Justice published its consultation paper with a view to legislative reform.

The Women's Domestic Violence Crisis Service - in a joint submission with the Federation of Community Legal Centres, the Victorian Women's Trust, Dr Debbie Kirkwood from the Domestic Violence Resource Centre, criminologist Dr Danielle Tyson from Monash University, and Associate Professor Bronwyn Naylor from Monash's faculty of law - argued that defensive homicide should not be abolished, but rather specialised family violence training and cultural awareness education be made ''essential for legal professionals including prosecutors, defence counsel and judges. Such training should include the relevance of family violence evidence to elements of self-defence and defensive homicide legislation.''

We now have the weird and convoluted situation where the government has not listened to the people who work at the coalface with battered women - on the basis that it is doing the right thing by those same women. So who was the government listening to?

Says Dr Kirkwood: ''Other changes could have been made. However, abolishing defensive homicide sits within a law-and-order agenda … because more men who kill other men will go to jail for longer - that's their intention and primary agenda.''

In other words, the sound and fury of the talkback tyrants has once again overwhelmed reason.

■Was the law doomed by a failure of drafting, or an underlying philosophical error?

It was always tricky and dangerous implementing and promoting a law with a gender bias in mind. Because the law itself - Section 9AFD of the Crimes Act 1958 - made no distinction. It was for everybody. ''A person who, by his or her conduct, kills another person …''

In truth, some or all of the men convicted of defensive homicide in Victoria may well have acted from an unreasonable fear of being killed themselves. Justice may well have been done, regardless of the attendant social politics. However, most of those convictions followed plea bargaining deals where murder was taken off the table - and this further clouded the issue.

The problem, from a political and social policy perspective, was that defensive homicide was meant to be a law providing mitigation for battered women, not drunken men caught up in an escalating pissing contest that went very wrong.

In its submission to the Justice Department's consultation paper, the Law Institute of Victoria argued: ''In the absence of the former partial defence of provocation, [defensive homicide] allows the criminal law to recognise that there are differing levels of culpability in relation to homicide offences. The criminal law recognises human fallibility, and defensive homicide addresses this issue whilst at the same time indicating that killing another person, in the absence of reasonable grounds for the belief that it is necessary to do so, is a very serious offence.''

That nuance is gone, for everybody.