This section contains the nature of the case and procedural background.

D met Aaron Stanley in Madison, Wisconsin while she was in treatment for alcohol abuse. Stanley, out of recovery himself, was a volunteer van driver at the treatment center. The two began a relationship. After D relapsed, she was barred from the treatment center. D and her daughter lived in a rented room for a few weeks but moved out after she woke up one night to find the landlord sitting on her bed. They next stayed at a homeless shelter, but some nights the shelter had no space and they had to sleep on the floor of a friend's home. Stanley asked D to stay with him, but that lasted only a week because D became concerned by the way Stanley was treating her. But after another week back at the homeless shelter, D and her daughter again moved in with Stanley. Stanley then began using crack cocaine. Slowly he became emotionally and then physically abusive to D. Stanley's beatings escalated from hitting and strangling, to dragging D down the stairs, breaking her nose, and boxing her ear. Stanley would beat D, then apologize profusely, and things would then return to 'normal' for a while until Stanley would fly into a rage again. Stanley bought a gun. The beatings and controlling behavior got worse. One night, Stanley shot the gun into the mattress on the side where D slept. Stanley began walking around the house, holding the gun. He frequently looked through Ds phone, certain that she was cheating on him. He took her food stamp card, making it difficult for D to buy food. D wanted to leave, but she felt that she had no other options. Stanley began robbing stores to get money for drugs. When he felt that he was 'hot' and had run out of money, he started telling D that she owed him money. After unsuccessfully begging her parents for money, D stalled by lying to Stanley, insisting that there were problems with routing the money from her parents. Stanley grew frustrated and pistol-whipped her. On January 6, 2019, Stanley drove D to a Stop-N-Go gas station near Madison. He told D to put on a sweatshirt backward, said it was her 'turn,' and put his gun in her hand. D walked in, showed the clerk she had a gun, 'asked' for money, took approximately $80 cash from the clerk, and ran out. Stanley did not hit her that night. Stanley harangued her the entire next day, reminding her that she still owed him money. D committed the second robbery while Stanley was still at work: she took the gun to a boutique store, pointed it at the clerk on the counter, and demanded money. D did not tell Stanley that she got the money from a robbery; she told him it was from her mother. That night, Stanley was 'nice to [her]' but demanded degrading sex. On January 8, 2019, Stanley called D from work, yelling and demanding the rest of the money. He told D that Mobil would be a good gas station to 'hit.' That afternoon, D entered a Mobil gas station, revealed her pistol grip, demanded money, and left after the clerk complied. The next morning, Stanley strangled D and punched her in the face. D later texted Stanley asking him to 'please try to be nice to me. I'm so sore from this morning,' and 'I've never been hit so hard in all my life.' Police arrested D a few days later. D filed a pretrial motion in limine seeking a ruling on evidence she planned to offer about battering and its effects to support a duress defense. Dr. Darald Hanusa, Ph.D., LSAC, of the Midwest Domestic Violence Resource Center. Dr. Hanusa spent a full day with D, evaluating D's mental state through over a dozen standardized measures applying questionnaires and checklists. He diagnosed D with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Battered Woman Syndrome as a victim of what he described as 'an extraordinarily extreme case of relationship abuse.' Dr. Hanusa stated as a mechanism related to 'learned helplessness[,]' she will take whatever action that has the highest predictability of stopping the violence against her, even if - in the long run - it is detrimental to her own wellbeing. The only thing that would predictably stop Aaron's abuse of her was to do exactly what he said, even committing robbery. Dr. Hanusa concluded that D 'was at extreme risk of being killed in this relationship.' Dr. Hanusa concluded based on the data presented in this case, it is reasonable to conclude that D was not in a position to question Aaron's demands to commit robbery let alone act against them, even though she knew that these activities were illegal. The court concluded that the duress requirements of imminence and no legal alternatives could not be satisfied. D entered conditional pleas under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(a)(2), pleading guilty to three counts of Hobbs Act robbery and one of the § 924(c) firearm counts, but reserving her right to appeal the denial of her motion in limine.

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