Court Opinion

ID: 9583402
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:38:14.783143+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:39:00.101523
License: Public Domain

Springer, J.,
dissenting:
I agree with the trial court. I do not see how the bailed1 prisoner could be said to have “escaped” when he was voluntarily released by his jailers. If the prisoner did not escape, Stull could not be guilty of “aid[ing] or assisting] a prisoner in escaping.”
It may be that Stull was guilty of some kind of criminal misconduct, but it was not assisting an “escape.” Stull bailed out of jail a body called “Wilson.” It happened that the body was really named “Stull.” Whatever the name of the body, it got out of jail by virtue of lawful process and not by escape. A jailer’s negligent release of the wrong person from custody can never, in my view, fall into the category of “escape.”

The verb “bail” means to “set at liberty a person arrested or imprisoned.” See Black’s Law Dictionary 127 (5th ed. 1979). There was no need here for the prisoner to escape — he was “set at liberty” by the authorities.