THE DOCTRINE OF NECESSITY

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Adam Young nineteen fifty five. Okay, make three, boid Camp
and Grand Week for a co I believe it was
called My Camera one. Welcome back, everybody. They're gonna be
looking at the necessity doctrine. It's generally considered to be
a considerate a justification, although it contains elements of excuse

(00:30):
as well. Necessity is sometimes referred to as the choice
of lesser evils because it involves choosing conduct that is
technically unlawful in order to avoid some greater harm. This
is what makes it a justification. Conduct that avoids a
great harm is desirable from a societal perspective. Some call
it the choice of evils because individuals were confronted with

(00:51):
the unhappy choice between committing a crime or experiencing a
harmful event. You might remember the Deadly Stevens case. We
talked about the Queen versus Deadly Stevens. You can look
at it when our former podcasts It talks about this
when they confront the most challenging, intriguing necessity case in history.
It's actually one of the first cases he usually listen
to in law school. But first let's go back to

(01:12):
the Doctor of Necessities. We're not going to go over deadly,
and Stevens you can find that on their own. There's
five elements that you're that are needed for the defense
under the common law. Number One, there must be a
threat of eminent harm, right, somebody's gonna have to be
getting ready to harm ye at that moment. Two the
harm must be directed toward either a person or to property.

(01:33):
Three the defendant must have no reasonable legal or alternative
to avoiding the threat. Four the defendant must come to
the situation with clean hands. In other words, they shouldn't
have caused the problem that they're in. In five, the
haunt of the defendant seeks to avoid must be more
serious than the harm caused by the defendant's conduct. Here's
a couple of cases we'll quickly look at. Humphrey versus Commonwealth.

(01:56):
The Virginia of Court Appeals recognize the defendant, the convicted felon,
was justified in violating a gun possession statute in an
effort to protect himself from an armed attack. The court
stress that the appellant was without fault in provoking the altercation.
The defendant also must not have been substantially a fallen
creating the emergency, and State versus SS. Squires rode to

(02:17):
a bar with his nephew because he was drunk when leaving,
asked his seventeen year old nephew to drive him home.
His nephew was unfamiliar with the car, installed the vehicle
on a well traveled highway. While backing out of the
parking lot, Squires took control of the automobile and was
stop by the police. He was determined to have a
blood alcohol level a point twenty four and was arrested
for operating a vehicle. The Gramont Supreme Court held of

(02:38):
the defendant was not entitled to the necessity defense because
the record establishes the defendant's own conduct created the emergency.
So we got to see both sides of the coin
there and when it would apply and when it wouldn't apply.
So that was the doctrine of necessity. Hopefully you learned
a little bit of something there and enjoyed it. Thank
you very much listening