Court Opinion

ID: 9712649
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:57:52.59813+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:13.167024
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE UNDERWOOD, dissenting: My disagreement with my colleagues stems from an uneasy feeling that their unconditional recognition of necessity as a defense to the charge of escape carries with it the seeds of future troubles. Unless narrowly circumscribed, the availability of that defense could encourage potential escapees, disrupt prison discipline, and could even result in injury to prison guards, police or private citizens. (People v. Whipple (1929), 100 Cal. App. 261, 279 P. 1008.) For these reasons courts have been quite reluctant to honor the defenses of duress, necessity or compulsion in prison escapes, and, until recent years, they were uniformly held insufficient to justify escapes. As Mr. Justice Stengel noted in his dissenting opinion in the appellate court: “ ‘Until (People v. Lovercamp, 43 Cal. App. 3d 823, 118 Cal. Rptr. 110 (1974)], no reviewing court had ever upheld a defense of necessity in ordinary adverse situations such as threats from fellow inmates.’ 1975 U. Ill. L.F. 271, 275.” 33 Ill. App. 3d 770, 777. Lovercamp, however, imposed well-defined conditions which must be met before a defendant is entitled to have the defense of necessity submitted to the jury: “*** (1) The prisoner is faced with a specific threat of death, forcible sexual attack or substantial bodily injury in the immediate future; (2) There is no time for a complaint to the authorities or there exists a history of futile complaints which make any result from such complaints illusory; (3) There is no time or opportunity to resort to the courts; (4) There is no evidence of force or violence used towards prison personnel or other ‘innocent’ persons in the escape; and (5) The prisoner immediately reports to the proper authorities when he has attained a position of safety from the immediate threat.” 43 Cal. App. 3d 823, 831-32, 118 Cal. Rptr. 110, 115. I am not totally insensitive to the sometimes brutal and unwholesome problems faced by prison inmates, and the frequency of sexually motivated assaults. Prisoner complaints to unconcerned or understaffed prison administrations may produce little real help to a prisoner or may actually increase the hazard from fellow inmates of whose conduct complaint has been made. Consequently, and until adequate prison personnel and facilities are realities, I agree that a necessity defense should be recognized. The interests of society are better served, however, if the use of that defense in prison-escape cases is confined within well-defined boundaries such as those in Lover camp. In that form it will be available, but with limitations precluding its wholesale use. It is undisputed that defendant here did not meet those conditions. He did not complain to the authorities on this occasion even though, following an earlier threat and demand by a fellow inmate that defendant submit to homosexual activity,- defendant had requested and been granted a transfer to the minimum security honor farm. Nor did he immediately report to the authorities when he had reached a place of safety. Rather, he stole a truck some nine hours after his escape, drove to Chicago, and later drove to St. Charles, using the telephone to call friends in Canada. This conduct, coupled with his admitted intent to leave in order to gain publicity for what he considered an unfair sentence, severely strain the credibility of his testimony regarding his intention to return to the prison. Since defendant’s conduct does not comply with conditions such as those in Lovercamp which, in my judgment, should be required before a necessity defense may be considered by a jury, I believe the trial court did not err in its instructions. I would accordingly reverse the appellate court and affirm the judgment of the trial court.