## Facts

- Brenda White and her husband, Jon White, divorced after an unstable 11-year marriage.
- Brenda believed Jon had an affair, was addicted to pornography, and frequently suggested threesomes; she reported feeling angry, agitated, and anxious during the marriage.
- After the divorce, Brenda’s financial stress increased when Jon stopped paying child support and canceled her medical insurance, leaving her unable to afford medication for anxiety and depression.
- Brenda attempted to refinance the former marital home but could not do so without Jon’s cooperation and signatures, which he hesitated to provide.
- On April 26, 2006, Brenda went to Jon’s office to discuss refinancing; the discussion became heated, and she left.
- Later that afternoon, Brenda returned and saw Jon outside the building talking on a cell phone.
- Brenda claimed she was overcome with anger, grief, and agitation; she drove toward Jon and chased him at high speed.
- Jon ran into the office building; Brenda drove through the building’s doors and struck Jon twice with her car.
- Jon was injured, and the State charged Brenda with attempted murder.
- Before trial, Brenda requested a jury instruction on the affirmative defense of extreme emotional distress; the trial court denied the request.
- Brenda was convicted, and she appealed the denial of the requested instruction.

## Issues

1. Whether the trial court erred by refusing to instruct the jury on the affirmative defense of extreme emotional distress in an attempted-murder prosecution.
2. Whether evidence of marital turmoil, financial pressure, and seeing the victim talking on a cell phone constituted a sufficient triggering event and temporal connection to require the instruction.

## Decision

- The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed.
- The court held that the evidence did not provide a legally adequate basis for an extreme-emotional-distress instruction.
- The court concluded that Brenda’s longer-term stresses related to the marriage, divorce, and finances were not sufficiently tied in time to the charged conduct to qualify as the type of provoking event required for the defense.
- The court also concluded that seeing Jon talking on a cell phone was not the kind of highly provocative, contemporaneous event that would support the defense.

## Legal Principles

- A defendant is entitled to a requested theory-of-defense instruction only when there is evidence from which a reasonable jury could find the elements of the defense.
- The extreme-emotional-distress defense requires more than anger, jealousy, or accumulated resentment; it requires an extreme mental or emotional disturbance connected to an event that triggers the loss of self-control.
- The triggering circumstance must be sufficiently contemporaneous with the charged act; stressors occurring over time, without an immediate provoking event, generally do not support the instruction.
- Ordinary or ambiguous conduct by the victim, without more, is not enough to require an extreme-emotional-distress instruction.
- When the record lacks evidence of a qualifying trigger and temporal connection, the trial court may refuse the instruction without committing reversible error.

## Conclusion

In *State v. White*, 251 P.3d 820 (2011), the Utah Court of Appeals upheld Brenda White’s attempted-murder conviction and ruled that the trial court properly refused to instruct the jury on extreme emotional distress because the evidence showed ongoing marital and financial stress rather than a sufficiently provocative, contemporaneous triggering event at the time of the attack.


State v. White, 251 P.3d 820 (2011)