Native Roots Radio

In 1973, a Spokane County jury convicted Yvonne Wanrow of second-degree murder for shooting a man she had already reported to police. That man, William Wesler, had molested her seven-year-old son. Two days after she made that report, he walked drunk into her babysitter's house. She shot him. The police had declined to arrest him before any of that happened.

The conviction went to the Washington Supreme Court. In 1977, the court overturned it. The ruling held that a smaller person facing a larger attacker cannot be judged against a physical-equality standard, and that juries must weigh the defendant's own perception of threat. That standard has since been cited in roughly fifty state and federal decisions.

The doctrine carries her name. It is taught in American law schools. It changed the instructions given to juries in self-defense cases across the country.

Wanrow pleaded guilty to reduced manslaughter in 1979 and received probation. She went home to the Colville Confederated Tribes reservation and spent four decades as a Native American rights advocate and a founding board member of Women of All Red Nations. She died in March 2023 at seventy-five.

The man she reported for molesting her son was never arrested. The woman who acted after the police did not is the one whose name is now in the casebooks.

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