My son is facing assault charges because of his father. Jerry, Jr. idolizes his father, but he shouldn’t. His father’s a bad man, who’s been in and out of jail for theft and assault. To try to impress his father, Jerry went to a man who owed his father money and told the man to pay or he’d beat him up. When the man didn’t pay, Jerry assaulted him. Jerry’s 16, so I’m worried they won’t try him as a juvee. I heard one time about something called “undue influence,” like when a bad nurse gets some rich old guy to name the nurse in the will. Since a father has so much influence over a boy, can we use this as a defense? Please help Jerry.
Answer: (1)
My heart goes out to you, but unfortunately, you cannot use undue influence as a defense in a criminal case. It is a civil defense, and as you correctly point out, it is often used in cases when a will or a trust is challenged on the grounds that a person with substantial influence over another has caused the trust or will to be created to benefit the influencer, not the people who would normally benefit or inherit. It’s used to challenge a transaction as improper, not as a defense.
In criminal law, people are generally held to be responsible for their own actions. They are not allowed to defend themselves on the grounds that someone else “influenced” them to commit a crime—they have to resist that bad influence.
There is a somewhat similar defense to a crime called “duress.” However, duress is about actual threat, not just influence or persuasion. The stereotypical examples of duress would be putting a gun to someone’s head or strapping a bomb to their chest in order to force them to commit a crime, such as taking a valuable from their employer or robbing a bank. What distinguishes duress from undue influence is that there is an immediate physical threat—the person using the defense has to credibly and reasonably believe that they are in a “do this or die” situation. From what you wrote, that does not seem to be the case for Jerry.
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Posted by Steven Sweig on 10 Feb 2010