Angelina Napolitano (March 12, 1882 – September 4, 1932)[1] was an immigrant to Canada who murdered her abusive husband in 1911, igniting a public debate about domestic violence and the death penalty.

[4] Napolitano was found guilty, and although the jury recommended clemency, she was sentenced to death, which led to a flood of petitions asking to have her life spared.

[2] In November 1910, he attacked her with a pocket knife, stabbing her nine times in the face, neck, shoulder, chest and arms and wounding her badly.

[2] As the winter of 1910–1911 continued, Pietro, who worked on and off as a labourer, began to pressure Angelina to earn money (to build the family a house) by prostitution.

[2] That afternoon, as Pietro slept in their top-floor apartment on James Street,[4] Angelina took an axe and hit him four times in the neck and head, killing him.

[6] McFadden's case rested on what was essentially the battered woman defense; he argued that Pietro's abuse had forced a desperate Angelina to murder, and cited the November stabbing.

[2] Britton, however, ruled the incident inadmissible evidence, arguing that "if anybody injured six months ago could give that as justification or excuse for slaying a person, it would be anarchy complete".

[2][3][5] Though some of the coverage was negative, arguing from racist stereotypes that Napolitano, as an Italian, was a "hot-blooded foreigner" and deserved to pay the penalty for her crime,[2] most of it revolved around those sympathetic to the abuse she had suffered, and agitating for her sentence to be commuted to jail time or even a pardon.

[2] The federal minister of justice, Sir Allen Bristol Aylesworth, received many letters from individuals (including McFadden),[2] as well as petitions organized by groups in Sault Ste Marie, Toronto, New York City, Chicago, England, Austria, and Poland.

[2] These early feminists argued that Pietro's beatings meant the murder was in self-defense, and that Britton was being sexist when he threw out the evidence of abuse.

[2] The British suffragette journal Common Cause excoriated not only the law that had condemned Angelina, but also the justice system that upheld it as "both bad, for they are exclusively masculine".

[5] As of October 2008[update], the film DVD sells packaged with a 114-page companion book, Child Abuse Prevention and Intervention, written by Toronto community agency BOOST.