Girouard v. State

Steven Girouard, a member of the U.S. Army, and his wife Joyce had been married for approximately two months. During an argument, Joyce told Steven that she did not love him, that she had married him for the military benefits, that she wanted a divorce, and that she had filed charges against him for prior physical abuse. She taunted him repeatedly and told him she would get everything he had. In response, Steven stabbed Joyce nineteen times with a kitchen knife, killing her.

The court surveyed the common law categories of legally adequate provocation, which historically included: (1) a serious battery upon the defendant, (2) mutual combat, (3) the defendant's illegal arrest, (4) injury or abuse of a close relative, and (5) the sudden discovery of spousal adultery. Words alone had never been recognized as a sufficient category. The court declined to abandon the categorical approach in favor of a broader reasonableness test, reasoning that the established categories provided clear guidance and reflected sound policy judgments about which provocations are so extreme as to partially excuse a killing. The court acknowledged the severity of the words but held that expanding the provocation doctrine to include words alone would undermine the sanctity of human life by providing too easy a path to mitigation.

Girouard is the leading modern case maintaining the traditional common law rule that words alone are insufficient provocation. It is frequently contrasted with jurisdictions that have adopted the MPC's broader extreme emotional disturbance defense, which does not categorically exclude verbal provocation. The case is central to debates about whether provocation should be measured by fixed categories or by a reasonable-person standard.