Violence against women is a major social problem and human rights violation, and femicides are the most severe form of it. According to the UN statistics, a third of all femicide victims globally (34%) are murdered by their intimate partners (UNODC 2019).Previous studies reveal that judges tend to perceive violence between partners as more acceptable than other types of violence. This results in lenient sentences in comparison with violence outside intimaterelationships (Black 1976; Dawson 2004, 2006). There are different explanations of this pattern; most of them are rooted in theories of focal concerns and bounded rationality. These theories posit that judges take into account three key issues: offender culpability, public protection, and the practical constraints of the court (Steffensmeier et al. 1998). But in conditions of limited time and information, they rely on stereotypes to make their decisions about these issues (Albonetti 1991). In the case of intimate partner homicides, one of the stereotypes is that such crimes imply some degree of victim involvement, mitigating the defendant’s culpability (Dawson 2006; Dawson & Sutton 2017).Current empirical studies show that perceptions of the victim’s lifestyle and behavior may vary for male and female observers, but the direction of these differences is still under discussion. While manystudies show that it is more common for men than for women to blame female victims (Bongiorno et al. 2020; Bryant & Spencer 2003; Davies et al. 2009; Grubb & Harrower 2009; Schult & Schneider 1991; Ulybina 2020; Witte et al. 2006; Yamawaki et al. 2009), some research identifies no association between the observers’ gender and perception of victim’s behavior (Abrams et al. 2003; Girard & Senn 2008; Hillier & Foddy 1993; Kern et al. 2007; Krahe 1988; Landström et al. 2016; Persson et al. 2018; Qiet al. 2016). Using the example of the victim’s history of alcohol abuse, this paper aims at contributing to this field of research by answering the following questions: RQ1: Does the victim’s abuse of alcohol affect sentencing in intimate partner femicides? RQ2: Does the effect of the victim’s abuse of alcohol differ for male and female judges in its direction?We focus exclusively on cases of female victims, as the perception of alcohol abuse by women is more strongly associated with a violation of traditional gender norms (Iwamoto et al. 2018). In many societies, including Russia, women’s alcohol consumption is viewed as deviant and inappropriate, which makes it a more potent trigger for victim-blaming attitudes (Sims et al. 2007). Therefore, the social meaning and evaluative load of alcohol abuse are not symmetrical across genders, justifying our decision to limit the analysis to female victims.