The Jailbreak

During the summer of 1976, conditions inside the District of Columbia Jail were, by the acknowledgment of the United States Supreme Court itself, atrocious. Inmates and on occasion guards in one cell block set fire to trash, bedding, and other objects thrown from the cells; the guards allowed the fires to burn until they went out. Inmates received threats and beatings. The Defendant and two fellow inmates were held in the facility and described these conditions in their subsequent legal proceedings. On an early morning, the Defendant, the two others, and a first inmate crawled through a window from which a bar had been removed, slid down a knotted bedsheet, and escaped from custody. Each was recaptured after varying periods at large — some within weeks, others after months. All four were charged with violating 18 U.S.C. § 751(a), which makes it a felony to escape from federal custody. At their separate trials, each attempted to present evidence of the jail's conditions as a Defence of duress or necessity. The trial Court refused to admit this evidence and instructed the juries to disregard what little had been mentioned.