State v. White
Utah Court of Appeals
206 P.3d 646 (2009)
Brenda White (defendant), after an acrimonious divorce from Jon White, drove her car into her ex-husband's workplace and ran him down after seeing him speaking on a cell phone he had previously claimed not to own, which she said caused years of built-up marital and financial stress to boil over. Charged with attempted murder, Brenda sought a jury instruction on extreme emotional distress, but the trial court denied it, holding the defense requires a contemporaneous, highly provocative trigger rather than an accumulation of past stress; Brenda appealed.
Whether the affirmative defense of extreme emotional distress is available where the claimed triggering event is an accumulation of past or prior stressors rather than a contemporaneous provocation.