Opinion ID: 288980
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: evidence of escape.

Text: 27 The record shows that while they were incarcerated in the Lafayette County jail in Oxford, Mississippi awaiting trial on the charges of robbing a federally insured bank, both Bryan and Ballard escaped from custody. The District Court permitted evidence of the escape to be introduced to show a consciousness of guilt on the part of Bryan and Ballard. Although both Bryan and Ballard contended this was error, we see no reason for departing from the universally accepted rule that evidence of flight is admissible to prove a consciousness of guilt. As stated in Wigmore, Evidence, 276 (3d ed. 1940), 'it is today universally conceded that the fact of an accused's flight, escape from custody, resistance to arrest, concealment, assumption of a false name, and related conduct, are admissible as evidence of consciousness of guilt, and thus of guilt itself.   ' The District Judge was not in error in admitting such evidence of escape. 28