About a decade ago, I was criticized for performing a murder ballad, Little Sadie or Banks Of The Ohio or something like that. I was told that the song seemed to promote, or at least accept spousal abuse. Even though I love those old murder ballads, I stopped singing them for a while in order not to offend anyone. I really missed them and have put them back into my repertoire. Even though many of these songs are first person and don't give much of an excuse for the murders, most end with the narrator either rotting in jail or hanging from a white oak tree. I have noticed that most of the ballads where the woman murders the man like Miss Otis Regrets or Frankie & Albert or Monongahela Sal are sung in the third person AND the women have a much better excuse for committing their crime (better, but not adequate). Also, the men are not very likable characters.
In other murder ballads, not involving failed romance, the killer is sympathetic and the victim unlikeable: "We left his damned old bones to bleach on the range of the buffalo."   
Quite often the singer speaks in a voice of a character who is not sympathetic: "I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die."