The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law
Chapter 13: I Had No Choice!
Necessity pg 2: Excuse Recap
If you had other options then it’s an “excuse” defense, such as
extreme provocation…
Angry man punching the screen so it splinters
MAN
Fondle my kid, will you?!
Worried/confused woman split by the refraction of the splinters
legal insanity…
Police officer pushing Average Joe backwards into a bear trap
…or entrapment.
I have a question on extreme provocation, prompted by the example above.
I recently saw a tv show, where a con artist misrepresented himself as a baseball coach, and took a large sum of money in exchange for his services teaching 8 or so kids (about 4 grand total).
Instead of coaching them. He removed them from the premises without their parents knowledge or consent, took them to a separate location, and during a disagreement with a third party, incited the children to damage the third parties property with baseball bats, telling them that it was for training purposes.
The parents of one of the children arrived and busted the con artist, who then managed to drive off in the confusion after a shouting match.
My reaction was essentially that I probably would have started beating the con artist with the bat, if in that situation. He had just abducted children and used them as accessories in a crime. My wife figured I would get in more trouble than he did, for the assault.
Would this offer a valid provocation defence? How about if he were trying to flee the scene, and violent force was used to prevent that?
I get that this would likely depend on the jury, but curious as to your impression. Just how far does someone have to go, messing with a kid, before a parent has a reasonable defence for putting them in the hospital?
The provocation defense only applies to homicide. Unless you killed the con artist, then the provocation defense would not apply.
If provocation only applies to homocide, why is the example above of indecent liberties with a child
He means homicide of the target – i.e. if Bob killed Joe for fondling his kid he’d have an excuse defense, but if Bob only beat seven shades of crap out of Joe for fondling his kid he wouldn’t have that excuse.
Which sounds a little odd, but keep in mind that in the latter case Bob wouldn’t be tried for the very serious crime of homicide but the lesser crime of assault instead, and thus it isn’t as critical to establish that he had a valid excuse.
I love the illustration for entrapment.
Thanks!