## Facts

- In November 2013, two of Sophia Richter’s teenage daughters escaped their bedroom through a window and ran to a neighbor, reporting their stepfather broke down their door and threatened them with a knife.
- Responding officers found Sophia and her husband at the home and discovered a third daughter locked in another bedroom.
- Officers observed conditions consistent with confinement and monitoring, including a kicked-in bedroom door, video cameras, covered air vents, an internal alarm system, and food conditions suggesting deprivation.
- The daughters reported they were confined to rooms, monitored, underfed, denied hygiene, required to request bathroom access, and sometimes prevented from using it in time; they also described physical assaults with objects.
- Sophia was charged with multiple counts of kidnapping and child abuse as to each of three daughters for conduct alleged between September 1, 2013 and November 26, 2013.
- Sophia noticed a duress defense under A.R.S. § 13-412(A), asserting she acted because her husband’s ongoing abuse, monitoring, and threats created an immediate danger to her and the children if she disobeyed.
- Sophia sought to introduce psychologist testimony on effects of long-term domestic abuse to support duress.

## Issues

1. Whether ongoing threats over an approximately 86-day period can satisfy A.R.S. § 13-412(A)’s requirement of a “threat or use of immediate physical force,” allowing a duress instruction.
2. Whether expert testimony on psychological effects of long-term abuse is admissible as “observation evidence” or is barred psychological (diminished-capacity-type) evidence under State v. Mott and Clark v. Arizona.

## Decision

- The Arizona Supreme Court reversed Sophia’s convictions and sentences and remanded for a new trial.
- The court held that, in a domestic-abuse context, evidence of continuing threats over a multi-month period can satisfy the statute’s “immediate physical force” requirement if a reasonable person in the defendant’s situation would perceive an immediate threat at the time of the charged conduct.
- The court held that, on the limited proffer, the psychologist’s testimony was not admissible “observation evidence” and was properly excluded as psychological evidence under Mott/Clark principles.
- The court vacated the court of appeals’ opinion in part; a partial dissent would have taken a narrower view of the majority’s approach.

## Legal Principles

- A.R.S. § 13-412(A) duress may be submitted to the jury when the defendant produces some evidence that unlawful physical force was threatened or used in a manner a reasonable person in the defendant’s situation could not resist; disputes about immediacy and reasonableness are typically jury questions.
- “Immediate” or “imminent” force under the duress statute is not limited to a strictly temporal snap-shot; in coercive domestic-abuse circumstances, ongoing threats may be experienced as immediate at the moment of compliance.
- Arizona does not permit diminished-capacity evidence to negate mens rea (State v. Mott); expert psychological testimony that explains a defendant’s mental state or capacity, rather than observable behavior, is generally inadmissible for that purpose.
- Under Clark v. Arizona, “observation evidence” may be admissible in limited settings, but a proffer must show the expert is describing observable behavior rather than offering psychological explanations of subjective mental functioning; on this record, the proffer did not meet that standard.

## Conclusion

The court required a new trial because the defendant’s proffered duress evidence, if credited, could satisfy the statutory requirement of immediate threatened force despite the extended period of coercion, leaving the duress determination to the jury; however, the court limited use of expert abuse-psychology testimony where it functioned as barred psychological evidence rather than permissible observation evidence.


State v. Richter, 424 P.3d 402 (Ariz. 2018)