State v. Tuttle

730 P.2d 630 (1986)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

D was incarcerated serving a life sentence for capital homicide. D and another inmate, Eugene Brady, were assigned to repair lights in the medium-security visiting room. According to Brady, he was informed by an unidentified inmate while he was in the restroom and separated from D that he and D would be killed by other inmates if they returned to the main corridor. Brady immediately returned to D and told him, 'We've got big problems.' D and Brady immediately made their escape, joined by another inmate, Walter Wood. Because the three were dressed as maintenance personnel and had already passed several security checkpoints as part of their work assignment, they had little trouble walking out of the prison unnoticed. D and Brady immediately made their escape, joined by another inmate, Walter Wood. Because the three were dressed as maintenance personnel and had already passed several security checkpoints as part of their work assignment, they had little trouble walking out of the prison unnoticed. Brady and Wood were apprehended later that day, but D remained at large until he was found in Las Vegas in February of 1985. He was charged with escaping from official custody in violation of section 76-8-309. D asserted that he had been forced to escape under duress and offered a jury instruction setting forth nearly verbatim the statutory compulsion defense in section 76-2-302(1) (1) A person is not guilty of an offense when he engaged in the proscribed conduct because he was coerced to do so by the use or threatened imminent use of unlawful physical force upon him or a third person, which force or threatened force a person of reasonable firmness in his situation would not have resisted. The trial court refused and instructed that D could avail himself of the defense only if the jury found (i) that D was faced with a specific threat of death or substantial bodily injury, (ii) that there was no time for complaint to the authorities or there was a history of futile complaints, and (iii) that D immediately reported to authorities after escape. D was convicted of escape and appealed.