Court Opinion

ID: 9861566
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 00:10:15.164476+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:28:40.622521
License: Public Domain

McCORMICK, Justice
(dissenting).
The defense defined by the court today is unduly rigid. The holding is contrary to the better reasoned authorities recognizing the necessity defense; it has the effect of enlarging the crime of escape; and it is inconsistent with the defense of compulsion in the present Code.
I. Rigidity of the defense. The necessity defense is available to a farmer who kills a deer foraging in his corn, and it is available to a prisoner who flees prison to save his life. However, under the court’s holding today the prisoner does not have the defense unless he turns himself in immediately after his escape, so far as he knows to be returned to the very danger from which he was presumably justified in fleeing. Requiring the prisoner to turn himself in once he is over the wall, on the possibility that conditions in the prison will be different when he is back inside, demands a measure of faith and sophistication of reasoning on his part which are neither realistic nor warranted.
If the jury believed defendant, as it would have a right to do, it could find he escaped three days after having his life threatened and being assaulted and sodomized at knifepoint by an imprisoned murderer. Defendant testified as follows:
Q. Can you tell the jury why you left, Michael? A. I was afraid it was going to happen again. I didn’t want it to happen again so I left.
Q. Did you make any efforts after you had left to contact institutional officials? A. I thought about getting an attorney and seeing what I could work out so that I wouldn’t have to be on escape, but I wasn’t out long enough to contact anyone before I was recaptured.
Q. Can you tell the jury, Michael, a little bit about what you did and what you observed . . . having left the penitentiary? ... A. Ran and hid. I just hid. Didn’t do anything else. I hid in a barn for about twenty-four hours trying to stay warm and get dry.
From the testimony of prison officials the jury could find the prison was understaffed, many prisoners possessed deadly weapons, and violence among inmates could be prevented only by locking them in isolation. From defendant’s testimony the jury could also find he had informed staff members of his problem on three occasions but received no help.
I believe the jury should have had the right to acquit defendant of escape if it found this evidence to be true.
II. Persuasive authority. Two lines of cases define the necessity defense in prison escape cases. Under the one adopted by this court today the defense is not available unless five conditions exist. The leading case for this view is People v. Lovercamp, 43 Cal.App.3d 823, 118 Cal.Rptr. 110 (1974).
The other line of cases defines the defense in traditional terms, recognizing the Lovercamp conditions as factors affecting the weight and credibility of the defendant’s testimony rather than as elements which must exist for the defense to be available. Cases supporting this view include People v. Unger, 66 Ill.2d 333, 5 Ill.Dec. 848, 362 N.E.2d 319 (1977); People v. Luther, 394 Mich. 619, 232 N.W.2d 184 (1975), and Esquibei v. State, 91 N.M. 498, 576 P.2d 1129 (1978). Other cases which define the necessity defense in traditional terms include Bavero v. State, 347 So.2d 781 *869(Fla.App.1977); Lewis v. State, 318 So.2d 529 (Fla.App.1975); Hill v. State, 135 Ga.App. 766, 219 S.E.2d 18 (1975); Syck v. State, 130 Ga.App. 50,202 S.E.2d 464 (1973), and Pittman v. Commonwealth, 512 S.W.2d 488 (Ky.1974).
The Illinois statute involved in People v. Unger is a codification of the common law necessity defense. It provides:
“Conduct which would otherwise be an offense is justifiable by reason of necessity if the accused was without blame in occasioning or developing the situation and reasonably believed such conduct was necessary to avoid a public or private injury greater than the injury which might reasonably result from his own conduct.” Id., 66 Ill.2d at 314, 5 Ill.Dec. at 851,362 N.E.2d at 322, quoting Ill.Rev. Stat.1971, ch. 38, par. 7-13.
This is the rule applied in State v. Ward, 170 Iowa 185, 189, 152 N.W. 501, 502 (1915) (“If in this case it was reasonably necessary for the defendant to kill the deer in question in order to prevent substantial injury to his property, such fact, we have no doubt, would afford justification for the killing.”).
In Michigan the defense is called “duress” instead of “necessity”. The elements are those of the common law necessity defense:
A) The threatening conduct was sufficient to create in the mind of a reasonable person the fear of death or serious bodily harm;
B) The conduct in fact caused such fear of death or serious bodily harm in the mind of the defendant;
C) The fear or duress was operating up on the mind of the defendant at the time of the alleged act; and
D) The defendant committed the act to avoid the threatened harm. People v. Luther, supra, 394 Mich. at 623, 232 N.W.2d at 187.
I believe we should define the necessity defense in traditional terms in prison escape cases and recognize the Lovercamp conditions as factors affecting the defendant’s credibility but not as conditions precedent. We should do so upon the reasoning employed by the Illinois court in Unger in facts analogous to those in the present case. There the defendant was apprehended in a motel room two days after his escape. The court said:
The preconditions set forth in Lover-camp are, in our view, matters which go to the weight and credibility of the defendant’s testimony. The rule is well settled that a court will not weigh the evidence where the question is whether an instruction is justified. . . . The absence of one or more of the elements listed in Lovercamp would not necessarily mandate a finding that the defendant could not assert the defense of necessity.
By way of example, in the present case defendant did not report to the authorities immediately after securing his safety. In fact, defendant never voluntarily turned himself in to the proper officials. However, defendant testified that he intended to return to the prison upon obtaining legal advice from an attorney and claimed that he was attempting to get money from friends to pay for such counsel. Regardless of our opinion as to the believability of defendant’s tale, this testimony, if accepted by the jury, would have negated any negative inference which would arise from defendant’s failure to report to proper authorities after the escape. The absence of one of the Lovercamp preconditions does not alone disprove the claim of necessity and should not, therefore, automatically preclude an instruction on the defense. We therefore reject the contention that the availability of the necessity defense be expressly conditioned upon the elements set forth in Lovercamp. 66 Ill.2d at 342-343, 5 Ill.Dec. at 852, 362 N.E.2d at 323.
The difference between the Lovercamp rule and the Unger rule is one of degree. Apart from whether the defense is to be meaningful, the issue is whether juries can be trusted to find the facts. The Unger rule is meaningful and is based upon trust in the ability of juries to apply it. Our system depends on society’s trust in juries, and history proves this trust is justified. *870See Bearbower v. Merry, 266 N.W.2d 128, 134 (Iowa 1978).
Like the majority of the Court of Appeals, I would use the traditional definition of the necessity defense in escape cases as exemplified in the Unger line of authorities.
III. Enlargement of the offense. In addition to its rigidity the Lovercamp rule has the effect of enlarging the crime of escape. Under § 745.1, The Code, 1977, the gravamen of the offense is unauthorized departure from custody. State v. Horstman, 218 N.W.2d 604 (Iowa 1974). The offense is complete when the unauthorized departure occurs.
Thus, under the facts here the defendant’s guilt depends on whether his unauthorized departure was justified by necessity. If it was reasonably necessary for him to flee the prison to save himself from sexual assault, serious injury or death, the offense of escape cannot be established.
The Lovercamp rule adds to the crime by taking away the defense if the prisoner remains at large after his justified but unauthorized departure. We have just held that § 745.1 does not reach unauthorized failure to return to prison. State v. Davis, 271 N.W.2d 693 (Iowa 1978). Permitting the crime to be proved based on conduct after the departure makes unauthorized failure to return a crime although the statute involved here does not do so.
A separate provision in the present Code conceivably will cover an unauthorized failure to return. See § 719.4(3) 1977 Code Supp.; State v. Davis, supra. However, a necessity defense should be available against the more serious escape charge of § 719.4(1), the analogue of former § 745.1.
The court’s holding in this case makes the applicability of § 745.1 depend on conduct we have held the statute does not reach.
IV. Inconsistency with the compulsion defense. Another provision in the present Code illustrates the inconsistency of the court’s holding. The defense of compulsion is provided in § 704.10, 1977 Code Supp., as follows:
No act, other than an act by which one intentionally or recklessly causes physical injury to another, is a public offense if the person so acting is compelled to do so by another’s threat or menace of serious injury, provided that the person reasonably believes that such injury is imminent and can be averted only by his or her doing such act.
Whether this provision encompasses the traditional necessity defense as well as the common law compulsion defense remains to be decided. Cf. People v. Unger, supra, 66 Ill.2d at 339-340, 5 Ill.Dec. at 851, 362 N.E.2d at 322.
If § 704.10 does embrace the necessity defense, it does so by defining it in traditional terms rather than by adopting the Lovercamp conditions. In that event the present holding is inconsistent and can apply only to prosecutions under the former statute.
If the new statute does not incorporate the necessity defense, today’s holding is still inconsistent because it requires more than the legislature does for what is at least an equivalent defense.
I would sustain the holding of the Court of Appeals.
LARSON, J., joins in this dissent.