International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, Vol. 22, Nos. 3–4, pp. 199–212, 1999 Copyright © 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 0160-2527/99 $–see front matter PII S0160-2527(99)00005-9 199 The Role of State-Dependent Memory in “Red-Outs” Gayla Swihart,* John Yuille,† and Stephen Porter‡ Introduction Domestic assault is an all-too-frequent occurrence in our society. It has been estimated that violence of some sort occurs in 19 to 28% of all marriages in the United States and Canada, and severe violence in 8 to 12% of all marriages (Dutton, 1995b). The Correctional Service of Canada, Research Division (1995) reports that: During 1994, one in six solved homicides was a spousal homicide, with women accounting for three-quarters of the victims. Spousal killings are likely to occur between legally married couples, at all stages of the relationship and across all social and economic bound- aries. . . . While alcohol is often consumed at the time of spousal kill- ings, research on domestic homicide suggests that fatal attacks on spouses occur irrespective of sobriety or level of intoxication. (p. 4) It has also been observed that husbands do not always remember assaulting their wives. Estimates of the frequency of the occurrence of amnesia for crime vary from study to study. Examples include 26% of criminal offenders (Taylor & Kopelman, 1984), 22% of a group of accused murderers (Parwatikar, Hol- comb, Menninger, 1985), 40% of a group of murderers (O’Connell, 1960), 60% of a group of murderers (Bradford & Smith,1979). However, none of these studies looked specifically at amnesia for the assault of a spouse, al- *Doctoral Candidate, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. †Professor of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. ‡Assistant Professor of Psychology, Dalhousie Univeristy, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The preparation of this article was supported, in part, by a grant to the third author from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Address correspondence and reprint requests to Prof. John Yuille, Department of Psychology, 2136 West Mall, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, V6T 1Z4.