THE line ''she was asking for it'' is alive and well in murder trials in Victorian courts, despite 2005 legislation banning provocation as a defence.

An examination of nine murder trial transcripts, and supporting evidence from 100 cases from other jurisdictions, by Monash University criminologist Danielle Tyson found defence lawyers still peddled the idea that slain females provoked their own killing, and that some judges continued to have some sympathy for provocation-style defences.

Dr Tyson's research, published as the book Sex, Culpability and the Defence of Provocation, is the first to analyse and document the debates about provocation cases involving intimate-partner homicide. She said that in such cases the defendant attempted to shift part of the blame onto the victim by relying on a variety of stock stories, ''such as the nagging woman, the unfaithful or departing wife, or a woman who impugns his masculinity''.

The latter claim was made by James Ramage, who in 2003 bashed and strangled his wife of 23 years, Julie Ramage. His lawyers successfully argued he was provoked into killing her because she had taunted him about loving someone else, and how sex with him had repulsed her. Ramage was convicted of manslaughter, not murder, and spent seven years in jail.

In November 2004, the Law Reform Commission, in a report commissioned by the then attorney-general, Rob Hulls, recommended abolishing the provocation defence. The state government adopted that recommendation in 2005.