The point of this blog is to capture my own class notes during my tenure as a law student. Everything on here is my own work and reflects the knowledge and understanding of the law I possessed at the time. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License. Please do not rely on this blog for legal advice. Consult an attorney for proper legal counseling.

April 23, 2007

Duress and Necessity
Related Articles:

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DURESS

  • Exclusions:
    • Under common law, intentional murder excluded from duress (but maybe not felony murder).
    • Voluntary exposure to situation also not duress.
  • Duress must be imminent.

NECESSITY
The Queen v. Dudley & Stephens
  • Killed and ate the cabin boy(!) to stay alive.
  • Mostly cannot excuse killing by necessity.
  • But MPC says can be, depending on weighing the circumstances.
    • 5 lives might be better to save than 1.
    • But no real cases that sustain that, just some dicta.
United States v. Kabat
  • Broke into missile silos
  • Not an imminent threat, plus some political choice likely being made.
  • But might well apply if you new something was going wrong, and stopped it in time.
  • But attacking military/political offices as a protest, usually the courts do not find necessity.
Basically: can commit one crime to prevent another crime, must be reasonably perceived to be that way (Reasonable Mistake OK). Political choices iffy. Closely causal and imminent threat.