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Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-16-605

Escape

Applied in 10 court decisions — leading case United States v. Goodman (2008)

Most recently applied in David CANTRELL v. Joe EASTERLING, Warden (August 2011)

Acts 1989, ch. 591, § 1; 1990, ch. 980, § 15; 2007, ch. 46, §§ 1, 2; 2009, ch. 241, § 1.

How often courts cite this section

199420002010201120
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 offense for any lawfully confined person arrested for, charged with, or found guilty of a civil or criminal offense to escape from a penal institution, as defined in § 39-16-601.

(2) A person commits the offense of escape who is in the lawful custody of a law enforcement officer and knowingly escapes the officer's custody.

(3) As used in subdivision (b)(1), “lawful custody” means a person has been taken, seized or detained by a law enforcement officer either by handcuffing, restraining or any other method by which a reasonable person would believe places the person in custody and that otherwise deprives the person's freedom of action in a significant way.

(4) A violation of subsection (a) is: A Class A misdemeanor if the person was being held for a misdemeanor or civil offense; and

(5) A Class E felony if the person was being held for a felony.

(6) A violation of subsection (b) is a Class A misdemeanor.

(7) Any sentence received for a violation of this section shall be ordered to be served consecutively to the sentence being served or sentence received for the charge for which the person was being held at the time of the escape.

Current official text: Tennessee Code (LexisNexis). Digitized from the UniCourt Code Improvement Commission public-domain capture. Reproduced from public-domain Tennessee statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.