Court Opinion

ID: 9748029
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 15:49:28.628877+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:30.771007
License: Public Domain

JOHNSON, Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. The majority would permit Appellants to introduce evidence concerning their defense of justification when, as a matter of law, they were not entitled to the defense.
The salient facts are not in dispute. Appellants knowingly trespassed on the property of the Shippingport Nuclear Power Plant as part of a sit-in demonstration.1 They were subsequently arrested and charged with criminal trespass. The trial court determined that Appellants were not entitled to introduce evidence in support of the justification defense, despite Appellants’ submission of an offer of proof and memorandum in support thereof. Appellants were convicted of trespass and this appeal followed.
The majority would reverse and remand for a new trial, holding that Appellants were improperly denied the opportunity to prove their justification defense. I disagree.
Even while conceding that the defense of justification may be applicable in certain cases, I am concerned by the majority’s rather generous reliance on self-serving assertions contained in a pre-trial memorandum of points and authorities to support its conclusions. It is clear from the transcript that defense counsel, on Thursday, November 29, 1979, towards the close of the first day’s trial, stated on the record his intention to make a formal offer of proof to *100preserve his position on appeal. R. Rex Downie, counsel for defendants, stated to the court:
MR. DOWNIE: Your Honor, just so that the matters might be preserved to some degree of specificity, I would like to make five offers of proof and have the Court rule on them separately. If, indeed, we take the matter up on appeal, I can conceive of an Appellate Court asking us what we intended to prove, and that’s not in the record.
THE COURT: Why don’t you submit those offers of proof in writing to the Court?
MR. DOWNIE: Well, if we could recess until morning, I would be able to do that.
THE COURT: Why don’t you do that? We can have the matter of Record.
(N.T. 77).
The next morning, following the court’s dismissal of the conspiracy counts and its ruling that the third and fourth criminal trespass counts merged with the second count (thereby leaving only the second count of criminal trespass at issue in the case), Mr. Downie presented to the trial judge his formal offer of proof, in writing, as reflected in the following colloquy:
MR. DOWNIE: Now, your Honor, to this point in the proceedings, none of the offers of proof which we have discussed have been made with what I presume to be sufficient specificity on the issue of self-defense and justification. Consequently, I have prepared and furnished to the Court a two-page summary of the first nine points being evidentiary areas on which we would present both lay and expert testimony to prove points 1 through 9 which we feel bear very strongly on the question of reasonable fear by the Defendants for personal safety of themselves and other persons. Then the second body of data on the second page under five headings summarizes certain government documents and reports, official reports, which reveal hazards of nuclear plant operation that again we feel would give warrant to a charge under *101Section 501 and following of the Penal Code that would allow the Defendants to argue a defense of justification. THE COURT: The Defendants [sic] offers of proof are refused. An exception is noted to the Defendants. (N.T. 80-81).
Shortly following this in-chambers submission on November 30, 1979, the parties returned to open court and Mr. Downie immediately was granted permission for counsel to approach the bench. The following transpired:
AT SIDE BAR
MR. DOWNIE: I would like to have the offers that I made in chambers marked as an offered exhibit and then refused.
(Whereupon, Defendants’ Exhibit A was marked for identification.)
MR. DOWNIE: Your Honor, the offers that we’ve made are marked as Exhibit A.
THE COURT: All right. They will be admitted into the Record for the purpose for which it was offered. Of course, the ruling that we have made in chambers still stands.
MR. WYNN: In other words, this is admitted just to be made a part of the Record?
THE COURT: Just to show that such an offer was made; it’s not allowed to go to the jury.
MR. DOWNIE: I understand.
(Whereupon, the side bar discussion was concluded, • •■)
(N.T. 82-83).
There can be no doubt but that the Defendants’ Offers of Proof which were formally referred to as part of the trial record should form the basis of any appellate review of the issue presented on this appeal. However, since the document was never made a part of the certified record forwarded to this court for purposes of appeal, and since the pre-trial memorandum upon which the majority so heavily *102relies, and which was filed some ten days before trial, cannot be viewed as a substitute for an official record of what occurred at trial, the better course would be to refuse to consider Appellants’ primary issue.
The document entitled Defendants’ Offers of Proof appeared as an appendix to the Brief for Appellant filed with this court prior to oral argument on October 27, 1981. The xerox copy of the document attached to that Brief had written in the margin (as part of the xerox copy) the handwritten query: “was this entered into record?” When the same Brief was submitted to this court for oral argument before the court en banc on May 10, 1983, a copy of the same document was included as part of the reproduced record except that an attempt had been made to obliterate or erase the marginal query. Immediately following the document in the appendix is a cover page titled “Appellants’ Correction to Reproduced Record” which is then followed by the identical document which has seemingly undergone xerographic reduction but upon which the attempted erasure is still evident.
The original papers and exhibits filed in the lower court, the transcript of proceedings, if any, and a certified copy of the docket entries shall constitute the record on appeal in all cases. Pa.R.A.P. 1921. Although the reproduced record attached to Appellants’ brief contains the document styled “Appellants’ Correction to Reproduced Record”, there is no evidence that compliance was either had or attempted with Pa.R.A.P. 1926, which sets forth the procedure for correcting or modifying the record.
An offer of proof must be judged exclusively by its specific contents and the party advancing the offer is bound by the purpose stated. The ruling of the trial court must be evaluated by the contents of the offer at the time the offer was made. Commonwealth v. Cain, 471 Pa. 140, 149, 369 A.2d 1234, 1238 (1977) (opinion in support of affirmance, Eagen, J., with two justices concurring); Commonwealth v. Gibson, 264 Pa.Super. 548, 551, 400 A.2d 221, 222 (1979); cf. *103Commonwealth v. Harper, 479 Pa. 42, 47 n. 1, 387 A.2d 824, 827 n. 1 (1978).
As Justice Roberts announced in Commonwealth v. Young, 456 Pa. 102, 114-15, 317 A.2d 258, 264 (1974):
“Appellate review has become such an integral part of our criminal procedure that it may properly be viewed as an extension of the trial itself.” ... The fundamental tool for appellate review is the official record of what occurred at trial. Only the facts that appear in this record may be considered by a court____“ [A]n appellate court cannot consider anything which is not a part of the record in the case.” (citations omitted).
Because the disposition of this appeal on the merits should depend upon precisely what was contained in the offer of proof before the trial judge at trial, because the analysis made by the majority emphasizes the assertions contained in a pre-trial memorandum rather than the document upon which the trial judge made his mid-trial ruling, and because such emphasis runs contrary to the express intention of Appellants’ counsel as reflected in the record, I must dissent.
Were I to assume, arguendo, that the offer of proof is properly before this court, my examination of that document leads me to a conclusion directly opposite to that of the majority. The document which Appellants’ tendered to the trial court immediately prior to the ruling here under review sets forth in its entirety:
DEFENDANTS’ OFFERS OF PROOF
Now come your defendants’ as captioned, and offer to present evidence as follows in support of their defense of justification:
1. Hydrogen bubble generation in Pressurized Water Reactor creates danger of radiation on release from containment vessel and consequent radiation damage to life in this area.
*1042. That low level radiation poses to defendants, an immediate and continuing likelihood of cancerous illness to themselves and their families.
3. That low level radiation poses to defendants and others an immediate and' continuing risk of birth defects and genetic deformities.
4. That the absence of an evacuation plan for Beaver County to meet Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations, places handicapped and disabled persons in unavoidable danger.
5. That efforts before public boards and agencies are ineffective and have been exhausted with regard to the operating nuclear power plants at Shippingport.
6. That storage and transportation of nuclear wastes in and through this jurisdiction places your defendants and the public in immediate danger of irradiation.
7. That the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has ordered a freeze on nuclear plant construction and operating licenses.
8. That design defects common to all Pressurized Water Reactors present an immediate threat to your defendants of deadly and irreparable harm from radiation release.
9. That protests as engaged in by your defendants have been and are effective in reducing the hazards of nuclear plants.
Defendants offer the following documents and reports for the same purpose:
1. As to hazards of “normal” plant operation:
A report transmitted by the subcommittee on energy and the environment:
PROCEEDINGS OF A CONGRESSIONAL SEMINAR ON LOW LEVEL IONIZING RADIATION.
2. As to hazards of “abnormal” plant operation: KEMENY REPORT: PRESIDENTS COMMISSION
ON THE ACCIDENT AT THREE MILE ISLAND AND STAFF REPORTS.
A history of federal nuclear safety assessments: from WASH 740 through the reactor safety study.
*105MUREG — 0578-
Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
3. As to the ineffectiveness of institutional measures to mitigate above hazards before regulatory and legislative bodies:
A HISTORY OF FEDERAL NUCLEAR SAFETY ASSESSMENTS, SUPRA.
4. Inadequacy and risks of current evacuation “plans”: BEAVER COUNTY OFFICE OF CIVIL DEFENSE-
STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURES RADIATION INCIDENTS — BEAVER VALLEY NUCLEAR POWER PLANT. .
OP. CIT. KEMENY REPORT
5. A recent Nuclear Regulatory Commission order for freeze on nuclear plant construction and operation.
s/ Rex Downie Rex Downie, Jr.
In deciding whether the distinguished trial judge committed error in refusing this offer of proof, the central issue must be whether any of the above offers, if proven, would assist the trier of fact in determining the existence of a reasonable belief on the part of the six people who crawled under the fence that their conduct, in sitting down, holding hands and refusing to leave private property was “necessary to avoid harm or evil to himself or to another.”
I believe it prudent at this juncture to analyze the majority’s interpretation of the statutory provision regarding justification, 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 503.
The section of the Crimes Code under scrutiny in this appeal sets forth in pertinent part:
§ 503. Justification generally
(a) General rule. — Conduct which the actor believes to be necessary to avoid harm or evil to himself or to another is justifiable if:
*106(1) the harm or evil sought to be avoided by such conduct is greater than that sought to be prevented by the law defining the offense charged;
(2) neither this law nor the law defining the offense provides exceptions or defenses dealing with the specific situation involved; and
(3) a legislative purpose to exclude the justification claimed does not otherwise plainly appear.
Although the majority sets forth a persuasive argument in favor of permitting Appellants to present their evidence in support of this defense, I disagree with the majority’s analysis of that portion of section (a)(1) of the statute which requires that the actor reasonably believe that his conduct is necessary to avoid a harm or evil greater than the harm or evil incident to their criminal conduct.
In my view, before evidence in support of a justification defense may be presented, the facts presented must satisfy an initial burden; whether the defense is available to the actor as a matter of law. In order to meet this burden, the trial court must determine that the actor’s conduct was such that he could reasonably believe that his conduct was necessary to avoid the greater threatened harm.
I fail to see how the peaceful sit-in demonstration in the instant case could reasonably have been believed to have been necessary to avoid the threat of radiation exposure. Appellants’ conduct in the instant case neither terminated nor reduced the harm which they desired to prove was emanating from the plant, nor could their conduct have done so. I would hold that in order to be entitled to a defense of justification, an actor’s criminal conduct must support an inference that the criminal conduct would either directly avoid or alleviate the impending harm. See People v. Hubbard, 115 Mich.App. 73, 80, 320 N.W.2d 294, 298 (1982). In other words, the actor must reasonably anticipate a direct causal relationship or nexus between the actor’s present criminal conduct and the contemporaneous avoidance of the perceived harm. See Commonwealth v. *107Averill, 12 Mass.App. 260, 423 N.E.2d 6 (1981). See also, U.S. v. Cassidy, 616 F.2d 101 (4th Cir.1979); U.S. v. Simpson, 460 F.2d 515 (9th Cir.1972); U.S. v. Best, 476 F.Supp. 34 (D.Colo.1979).
Appellants’ criminal trespass was a pre-planned, deliberate and calculated choice, not an action urgently necessary to avoid a danger. Their ultimate goal was the permanent closing of the plant. From my review of the record, it appears that Appellants’ short term goal, to be used in reaching their ultimate goal, was to change public sentiment towards the continued operation of the plant. The trespass was merely a means of publicizing Appellants’ beliefs concerning the alleged dangers inherent in the plant’s operation. However, the record is clear that the plant was not operating at the time of the trespass.
I therefore conclude that the direct causal relationship needed to initiate a claim of justification cannot be established between the criminal trespass here under review and the contemporaneous avoidance of any perceived harm. Appellants were not so much concerned with their actions in committing the trespass, but rather with their subsequent arrests and the publicity which they hoped would be attendant thereto.
Nowhere in the record is there any indication that the criminal trespass could or would directly result in the immediate and contemporaneous stoppage of the emanation of low-level radiation or the immediate elimination of the alleged imminent threat or chance of a serious radiological accident.2 Since no nexus can be shown from the record, clearly no inference of avoidance or alleviation could arise. People v. Hubbard, supra.
I cannot deny that the notoriety surrounding this incident may ultimately assist Appellants’ cause at some future time, however, “... publicity designed to marshal public *108opinion could not extinguish an immediate peril, if there was one.” Commonwealth v. Averill, id at —, 423 N.E.2d at 7-8.
I therefore conclude that Appellants’ criminal trespass alone could not reasonably be presumed to have any immediate effect in eliminating the dangers alleged to be caused by the plant. There exists no nexus between Appellants’ criminal conduct and the immediate elimination of the alleged harm in the instant case.
The majority argues that section 503(a)(1) does not require that a defendant pleading justification prove that a direct causal relationship between the actor’s conduct and the avoidance of anticipated harm exists. However, my reading of the statute makes plain this requirement by the inclusion of the term “avoid” in the statute. The majority’s interpretation would make the legislature’s inclusion of this word meaningless. Therefore, although it is clear that penal statutes are to be strictly construed in favor of the defendant, Commonwealth v. Darush, 256 Pa.Super. 344, 389 A.2d 1156 (1978), so too are we constrained to give effect to the obvious meaning of clear and unambiguous statutory language. 1 Pa.C.S.A. § 1921(b); Commonwealth v. Patchett, 284 Pa.Super. 252, 425 A.2d 798 (1981).
Also, footnote two of the majority opinion sets forth an analysis of why this defense should not be available to a defendant who has, e.g., destroyed a plant, citing to a statement that “if at any time the accused went beyond the limits of necessity, ... criminal responsibility would attach ...”. If such is true, then it stands to reason that the accused whose actions fail to reach a degree where his actions are capable of avoiding the threatened harm must also remain criminally responsible for his actions. I also fail to understand the majority’s statements in footnote two that the defense of justification should not be available to a defendant who has destroyed a plant in light of their determination that no nexus exists as part of the statute. I assume that the majority is saying that a legal determination is thus made prior to the admission of the defendant’s *109evidence of justification. Otherwise, the fact finder is exposed to a myriad of unnecessary evidence at trial. If such is true, that this decision is made prior to admission, then, in effect, the majority is saying what it later disavows — that a nexus analysis must be made to determine whether the defense is available as a matter of law.
The majority seems to place undue emphasis on the requirement that a jury be permitted to consider whether the beliefs of the defendants were “reasonable” without any analysis of the relationship between “reasonable belief” and “justification”. Thus, the majority argues:
By rejecting appellants’ offer of the expert testimony and documentary evidence summarized in their offer of proof, the trial court precluded appellants from proving that their beliefs did have a basis in fact. Thus the court precluded appellants from proving that their beliefs were reasonable. The result was to force appellants into the position of maintaining to the jury that their trespass was justified by their private, unsupported judgment. (Page 73).
The majority goes on to acknowledge:
To be sure, perhaps appellants would not have been able to prove justification anyway. The jury might have rejected their experts’ testimony, and might have interpreted the documentary evidence differently than appellants do. But appellants were entitled to have the jury hear their evidence. (Page 73).
If the jury had heard, and accepted, their evidence, it might have found justification. For “[t]he balancing of evils” would have disclosed, on the one side, a brief, peaceful, physically harmless trespass, and on the other, a continuing risk of catastrophic accident and the continuing infliction by low-level radiation of grave injuries. It was therefore error for the trial court to reject appellants’ offer of proof, thereby precluding them from proving justification. (Page 73-74) (footnote omitted).
What I find missing in the majority’s analysis is any guidance as to how the jury’s conclusion as to the existence *110of a reasonable belief as to a continuing risk of catastrophic accident is in any way helpful in deciding whether specific conduct is necessary to avoid a greater harm. If the advancement of a theory of jury nullification were the issue before us, I then would understand that the jury should be permitted to compare a “brief, peaceful, physically harmless trespass” against the “continuing infliction by low-level radiation of grave injuries”. Were it that simple, I would have no difficulty in concluding, either as a juror or as a judge, that a defendant should permit his or her peers to decide which harm is greater.
However, that is not the issue. Even before it might be determined that the belief as to a particular danger or harm is reasonable, there remains the necessity for someone to decide whether there is any rational connection between the specific conduct and the avoidance of the identified harm. I remain unconvinced that one avoids low-level radiation by journeying from Pittsburgh, New Castle, Ambridge or Beaver Falls to the Borough of Shippingport with the express intention of situating oneself on private premises where nuclear reactors are located. I therefore believe that the trial court was right in excluding the testimony here under review.
The trial court’s reliance on United States v. Bailey, 444 U.S. 394, 100 S.Ct. 624, 62 L.Ed.2d 575 (1980) is not, in my judgment, misplaced. In that case, the United States Supreme Court had to consider whether the defense of necessity or duress was available to three prisoners being tried on a charge of escape from federal custody. The prisoners sought to justify their escape by adducing evidence as to the jail’s physical condition and the conduct of the guards. In holding that the availability of the duress or necessity defense depended on there being some bona fide effort to surrender or return, Mr. Justice Rehnquist stated:
In reversing the judgments of the Court of Appeals, we believe that we are at least as faithful as the majority of that court to its expressed policy of “allowing the jury to perform its accustomed role” as the arbiter of factual
*111disputes. [U.S. v. Bailey ] 190 US App DC [142] at 151, 585 F2d [1087], at 1096. The requirement of a threshold showing on the part of those who assert an affirmative defense to a crime is by no means a derogation of the importance of the jury as a judge of credibility. Nor is it based on any distrust of the jury’s ability to separate fact from fiction. On the contrary, it is a testament to the importance of trial by jury and the need to husband the resources necessary for that process by limiting evidence in a trial to that directed at the elements of the crime or at affirmative defenses. If, as we here hold, an affirmative defense consists of several elements and testimony supporting one element is insufficient to sustain it even if believed, the trial court and jury need not be burdened with testimony supporting other elements of the defense.
This case presents a good example of the potential for wasting valuable trial resources. In general, trials for violations of § 751(a) should be simple affairs. The key elements are capable of objective demonstration; the mens rea, as discussed above; will usually depend upon reasonable inferences from those objective facts. Here, however, the jury in the trial of Bailey, Cooley, and Walker heard five days of testimony. It was presented with evidence of every unpleasant aspect of prison life from the amount of garbage on the cellblock floor, to the meal schedule, to the number of times the inmates were allowed to shower. Unfortunately, all this evidence was presented in a case where the defense’s reach hopelessly exceeded its grasp. Were we to hold, as respondents suggest, that the jury should be subjected to this potpourri even though a critical element of the proffered defenses was concededly absent, we undoubtedly would convert every trial under § 751(a) into a hearing on the current state of the federal penal system.
Because the juries below were properly instructed on the mens rea required by § 751(a), and because the respondents failed to introduce evidence sufficient to submit their defenses of duress and necessity to the juries, we reverse the judgments of the Court of Appeals. *112Id. at 416-17, 100 S.Ct. at 637-38, 62 L.Ed.2d at 594-95. See also Sigma Reproductive Health Center v. Maryland, 297 Md. 660, 467 A.2d 483 (1983) (necessity defense unavailable to trespasser at abortion clinic).
In the instant case, the majority suggests that the defendants were prepared to offer testimony and documentary evidence detailing the many and varied activities aimed at shutting down the Shippingport Nuclear Power Plant. It is clear from the trial transcript that each of the defendants was given the broadest latitude as to their testimony concerning both their beliefs and their own conduct. None of them testified to having participated in any approach to any regulatory agency involved with the Shippingport operation. Of equal importance, the Defendants’ Offers of Proof, which was prepared by counsel and submitted for the express purpose of preserving specific issues on this appeal, cannot be read as offering to show that any of these defendants had made efforts before public boards or agencies.
The majority’s insistence that this is not a case of civil disobedience strikes this writer as odd, inasmuch as counsel for the Appellants believed that this was exactly what this case was about. In reviewing the proposed voir dire questions submitted by counsel on the morning of jury selection and trial, this exchange is found in the trial record:
THE COURT: Let’s proceed with the selection of the jury. Now, on these questions we have here—
MR. WYNN: I have not seen Mr. Downie’s questions.
THE COURT: Now, I will not allow the question: “Do you believe that an act of civil disobedience is never justifiable?” I will never allow that. That’s inappropriate. It would not be relevant.
MR. DOWNIE: If the jury is convinced that no demonstration is legal, I think that would be relevant. It would show bias. They see television. They see people demonstrating. These people are demonstrators. Therefore, they would adjudge them guilty.
*113THE COURT: Demonstration isn’t an act of civil disobedience.
MR. DOWNIE: Under certain circumstances, it is. Here it’s criminal trespass. They went on somebody else’s property.
THE COURT: Well, that’s a different question than a demonstration. Demonstration under the First Amendment rights is perfectly legal and proper if they don’t commit other crimes.
MR. DOWNIE: All I meant to get at by that, your Honor, is: This is civil disobedience. We agree with that. My clients know that the law forbad their doing what they did.
(N.T. 9-10). (Emphasis supplied).
This position of counsel is borne out by the defendants’ own testimony. Stephen Anderson testified:
We broke the law with both eyes open because when the law is allowing the possibility and the concordization [sic] of a nuclear power plant that is spewing out radioactive substances into the Ohio River — ... I would just say, also, that I did this out of a biblical motivation to see justice done and to have peace and believe in the sanctity of human life and not in the trodding over of it. (N.T. 84, 85).
Vincent Scotti, another defendant,3- testified:
The reason why we went under the fence was not in any way to attempt to take over the nuclear power station, but it was a nonviolent counterpresence to the violent presence of the nuclear power plant. All we simply hoped to accomplish by going under the fence was to draw attention to the issue of nuclear power. (N.T. 98, emphasis added).
In the same vein, Sue Heilman testified:
I decided to go under the fence that day at Shippingport because I felt it was time to lay my life on the line for something I believed in very strongly which is that that plant should be shut down. (N.T. 100).
*114Edward Wagner gave as his reason for going under the fence:
In my own words, first off, was for my family, my parents, my younger brothers and sisters, for they drink the water from the Service Creek Reservoir which is better known as the Ambridge Reservoir ... Shipping-port has released radiation in excess of government regulations subjecting my family to radiation in their water. That was the first reason and the main reason.
The majority seeks to distinguish the civil disobedience cases by defining civil disobedience as breaking a law on the grounds that the law is immoral. The majority argues that in a typical civil disobedience case the actor recognizes, and perhaps expects, that the court may uphold the law, and if that occurs, the actor is willing, perhaps eager, to accept the punishment prescribed. On my review of the trial transcript (as opposed to the majority’s preoccupation with the pre-trial memorandum) I find that the testimony of the Appellants fits into even the majority’s understanding of civil disobedience.
Since I find that no nexus exists between the actual conduct of the Appellants and the avoidance of any alleged greater harm, I view it as unnecessary to consider the preemption doctrine which the majority analyzes and finds inapplicable.
At oral argument, all parties requested that this court provide guidance for future cases involving demonstrations at nuclear sites. I find little guidance, and less solace, in the majority’s observation relegated to footnote 2 (p. 468) that “the defense of justification should not be available to a defendant who has destroyed a plant.” To suggest to our trial courts that they are free to exclude expert testimony in cases where plants have been destroyed while furnishing no guidance as to the minimal averments required to sustain an offer of proof in other cases is, in my judgment, less than helpful. If I understand the interpretation which the majority would place on Section 503 of the Crimes Code, our *115trial courts must now be prepared to receive testimony in numerous cases which challenge the operation of our various systems. If “reasonable belief” is the touchstone, should not a defendant charged , with obstructing administration of law or other governmental function have the right to present “expert testimony” on the weaknesses and failures of our system of judicial administration if he is arrested for entering a conference of our court’s judges without permission and refusing to leave? Does City Hall have to be blown up before a citizen is precluded from introducing testimony on the evils and corruption of a governmental agency which might, to a jury, support a “reasonable belief” that invasion of private conferences of a court is the only remaining avenue to seek redress? May a person now defend against a charge of larceny by presenting the testimony of economists and social psychologists that the peaceful, physically harmless act of stealing produce or meat from a grocery chain store is more than “balanced”, to use the majority’s term, by the pressures and inequities of our present socioeconomic system?
Until this court is able to provide more precise parameters as to the availability of the justification defense, I am prepared to continue my dissent.
HESTER and WIEAND, JJ., join in this opinion.

. The trial transcript indicates that a co-defendant, Vincent J. P. Scotti, whose appeal is not before us, was offered the use of the plant’s parking lot for use as a legal demonstration site by the plant’s Superintendent of Personnel. The Superintendent testified that Mr. Scotti understood the offer, "but it did not meet the intent of their demonstration.” (N.T. p. 55).

. My conclusion is supported in part by Appellants’ proposed offer which included the presentation of evidence that repeated demonstrations of this kind have been and are effective in reducing the hazards of nuclear plants.

. See footnote 1.