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In criminal law, a duress defense is similar to a plea of guilty, admitting partial culpability, so that if the defense is not accepted then the criminal act is admitted. Duress or coercion can also be raised in an allegation of rape or other sexual assault to negate a defense of consent on the part of the person making the allegation.
Duress in English law is a complete common law defence, operating in favour of those who commit crimes because they are forced or compelled to do so by the circumstances, or the threats of another. The doctrine arises not only in criminal law but also in civil law, where it is relevant to contract law and trusts law .
R v Ruzic, [2001] 1 SCR 687 is a leading decision of the Supreme Court of Canada on the common law defence of duress and constitutionality of the defence under section 17 of the Criminal Code.
A notable difference between the two defences is that whereas the common law defence of duress will be available to any charge, the statutory defence, as described in section 17 of the Criminal Code, contains a list of excluded offences, including murder. Apart from this, the decision in Ryan brought the statutory and common law versions of the ...
Per minas, in English Common Law, is to engage in behaviour "by means of menaces or threats". The term comes from Latin. Per minas has been used as a defence of duress to certain crimes, as affecting the element of mens rea. William Blackstone, the often-cited judge and legal scholar, addressed the use of "duress per minas " under the category of self-defense as a means of securing the "right ...
(vii) defence is unavailable to murder, attempted murder or treason. The defendant was sentenced to 9 years of imprisonment. The defendant lost the benefit of a defence based on duress as it was deemed right that a person voluntarily associating with known criminals ought reasonably to have foreseen the risk of future coercion.
R v Hibbert, [1995] 2 SCR 973, is a Supreme Court of Canada decision on aiding and abetting and the defence of duress in criminal law.The court held that duress is capable of negating the mens rea for some offences, but not for aiding the commission of an offence under s. 21(1)(b) of the Criminal Code.
Assuming that a defense of duress is available to the statutory crimes at issue, then, we must determine what that defense would look like as Congress 'may have contemplated' it." The general practice at the time the statute was written (1968) was to use the common law rule giving the defendant the burden of proof by a preponderance of the ...