The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law
Chapter 14: Do or Die
Duress pg 15: Clear and Present Danger
It’s a serious threat, and Millie takes it seriously. When she takes the stand, she lies under oath.
Millie testifying
MILLIE
Golden Horde? Never heard of ’em.
Needless to say, the prosecutor was displeased. Millie is now being charged with perjury.
Millie panicking
MILLIE
But I did it under Duress!
Unfortunately for Millie, in most states that threat wasn’t enough to make it Duress.
Man looking at his watch while holding a gun on the viewer
In most jurisdictions, you have to be afraid of being hurt immediately, not at some point in the future.
That’s hilarious. How immediate is immediate, anyway? Just because a gun’s pointed at Millie doesn’t mean she in peril.
She won’t be at risk for harm until the bullet arrives! xD It’ll take it like .08 of a second to arrive.
That’s an eternity at the speed of a light particle. xP
Also, even if she was going to die when she stepped out of the court room, that could be HOURS later. Definitely not immediate.
Furthermore, one ability which humans share with few other animals is the ability to calculate the future. Only a total drooling idiot would NOT take that threat seriously. The THREAT is immediate, even if the denouement isn’t for many sleepless nerve-wracking months.
But does she have other options. It the state thinks her testimony can take down the horde, then perhaps she can put up with living in protective custody throughout the trial, enter the witness protection program, get a new name, social security number, and a job on the other side of the country.
If the state can’t do that for her then, “Horde? what’s a horde?”
And she can then spend the rest of her new life wondering if someone will figure out where she went. That sounds like fun!
So the question is, which is worse: The kidnapping, murdering intellectuals escape scot-free? Or the drug smuggler spends the rest of her life in paranoia and misery?
When you’re the drug smuggler, it definitely seems like the latter is worse, which is the problem. The law is expecting people to work against their best interests even when trying to gain their cooperation for the greater good. It’s not so much that the policy is necessarily a case of the law being immoral, but it is certainly a case of the law being ineffective.
“Threatened men live long lives”. The threat is made by a mortal, and thus always carries a chance of failure. So even an immediate threat may not be enough, and the more distant and/or vague the threat, the more reason to say Millie could survive the threat, and the less she can claim duress.
We can note that the number of witnesses threatened is way larger than the number hurt and Millie in fact has a very large chance to talk and walk.