Since battery is a criminal offence[1], the police can arrest Mrs. Nordegren without a warrant.

*1-Black's Law Dictionary, Garner, p. 162

Whilst Tiger Woods may not want to prosecute his wife due to love and other noble reasons; society holds no such feelings. To take a golf club to someone’s head is a vicious and savage attack. A person who is capable of harming another human in such a way should be reprimanded. We should not accept this behaviour, regardless of whether the victim wants to press charges or not. Tiger Woods may be the one in immediate danger, so he may feel he should have the choice as to whether to prosecute or not. But society at large is also at danger when one of its members has a violent streak in them. It is for the safety of society that we need to punish Tiger Woods’ wife.

If this were the other way around, if Tiger Woods pummeled his wife’s head with a golf club there would be a media outcry to have him put behind bars. The crime is heinous enough without taking into account the fact that it has been inflicted by one spouse to another. In these situations the gender of the victim should not be a factor. We should treat this as we would with the genders reversed, Elin Nordegren should be punished for her appalling behaviour regardless of whether Tiger Woods wants to prosecute or not. There is a much larger issue at stake; gender equality.

This highly publicized marriage could be the way for the law to show its full force to those who commit domestic violence. It needs to be shown that even if the spouse does not wish to prosecute, the law will take care of the matter itself. This takes away the potential of abuse from the domestic violence perpetrator. They will get the message that threatening the spouse not to prosecute will not save their behinds from the cold dark cell floor. This will prevent men, and women, being able to get away with domestic violence by scaring their spouse into submission. The law is unaffected by threatening behaviour and so should prosecute regardless of whether the affected spouse says they want to or not.