The Arizona Supreme Court, in State v. Mott, No. CR-95-0274-PR (Ariz. Sup. Ct. 1/16/97), reached the opposite conclusion. Shelly Mott had left her two-year-old daughter Sheena alone with Mott's boyfriend. When Mott returned, the boyfriend said that Shelley had fallen off a toilet seat and hit her head. Mott refused to send Sheena to the hospital, despite the urging of friends, including a former paramedic. Finally, another friend called 911, and Sheena was admitted to a hospital, where she died of injuries that physicians said could not have been caused by falling off a toilet seat. Her body bore the scars of repeated abuse. Mott was convicted of first degree murder and two counts of child abuse.
The trial judge rejected Mott's proffer of a battered woman syndrome expert, who would have testified that Mott was unable to form the mental state of knowingly or intentionally harming the child. The trial court considered the proffer to go to a diminished capacity defense, which is prohibited by Arizona law.
The Arizona Supreme Court agreed. Arizona's legislature, in adopting the Model Penal Code, specifically excluded the provision on diminished capacity. That exclusion, held the court, evidenced an intention to reject the use of psychological testimony to challenge the mens rea element of a crime.
Moreover, held the Court, such exclusion does not violate due process. The court relied on Fisher v. U.S., 328 U.S. 463 (1946), which the Arizona court read as permitting states freedom to decide when to permit evidence of psychological defenses. The Arizona court also relied on more recent federal cases holding that a state is not constitutionally compelled to recognize a diminished capacity defense.
The concurring and dissenting opinions stressed the majority's conflating of a mens rea failure of proof defense with diminished capacity. The expert's testimony would have been quite relevant, said the dissent, to address whether Mott acted knowingly or intentionally or merely recklessly. Moreover, the majority misread or misunderstood many of the due process cases on which it relied.