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Mo. Rev. Stat. § 562.071

Duress

Applied in 5 court decisions — leading case State v. Hunter (1987)

Most recently applied in State v. Proctor (September 1998)

Effective: 01 Jan 2017, 2 histories, see footnote; (L. 1977 S.B. 60, A.L. 2014 S.B. 491)

How often courts cite this section

19871990199810
citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

1. It is an affirmative defense that the defendant engaged in the conduct charged to constitute an offense because he or she was coerced to do so, by the use of, or threatened imminent use of, unlawful physical force upon him or her or a third person, which force or threatened force a person of reasonable firmness in his situation would have been unable to resist.

2. The defense of "duress" as defined in subsection 1 is not available:

(1) As to the crime of murder;

(2) As to any offense when the defendant recklessly places himself or herself in a situation in which it is probable that he or she will be subjected to the force or threatened force described in subsection 1 of this section.

Official source: Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Reproduced from public-domain Missouri statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.