United States v. Nwoye (judgment)

Authors

Mary D. Fan, University of Washington School of LawFollow

Editor(s)

Bennett Capers, Sarah Deer and Corey Rayburn Yung

Files

Description

The case represents one of the few instances where an appellate court considered whether an affirmative defense of duress should be allowed to incorporate evidence of battered person syndrome. The defendant, convicted of conspiring with her boyfriend to extort money from a doctor, testified that her boyfriend coerced her participation through his physically and emotionally abusive behavior. He also pretended to be an FBI agent which allowed the defendant to argue she did not feel reasonably safe in reporting the extortion scheme. Also of note, the case had an unusual procedure history wherein a three-judge panel reversed its prior judgment and the final split opinion was authored by Judge (now Justice) Brett Kavanaugh.

Title of Book

Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Criminal Law Opinions

ISBN

9781009091978

Publication Date

12-2022

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

City

Cambridge

Keywords

Coercion, Criminal law, Duress, Evidence, Feminist jurisprudence

Disciplines

Criminal Law | Evidence | Judges | Law and Gender | Public Law and Legal Theory

Recommended Citation

Mary D. Fan, United States v. Nwoye (judgment), in Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Criminal Law Opinions (Bennett Capers, Sarah Deer and Corey Rayburn Yung eds., 2022).
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/faculty-chapters/39