In Florida, the defense of necessity may be available for a defendant charged with a variety of criminal charges. When using this defense, a defendant is basically saying that he/she did commit the crime, but did so because it was necessary due to some urgent circumstances. The necessity defense has a few conditions that must be met: 1) the defendant reasonably believed the criminal act was necessary to avoid imminent death or serious injury to him/herself or others, 2) the defendant did not intentionally put him/herself in the position that resulted in the need to take action, 3) the criminal act was the only adequate method to avoid the problem, 4) the harm to be avoided was more serious than the criminal conduct, and 5) the defendant ceased the criminal conduct as soon as the threat dissipated.
There are situations where a necessity defense would be a valid defense. If a person needed to drive while impaired or with a suspended license to get a person with a serious and emergent health problem to the hospital, that might qualify. However, this defense often fails with conditions one and three.
For example, in a recent case near Jacksonville, Florida, two guys went out to a bar. One of them got too drunk to drive, and the defendant had a suspended driver’s license. The defendant decided to drive home. He was stopped by police and arrested for driving with a suspended license. His criminal defense attorney tried the necessity defense to defend the case. It failed. The problem with condition number one was that being drunk is not a threat that involves the risk of imminent death or serious bodily injury. If the friend was so drunk that he was getting seriously ill, this condition might have been satisfied. However, just being too drunk to drive did not qualify. The problem with condition number three was that there were other reasonable and adequate alternatives, such as walking, calling a friend for a ride or calling a taxi. Because this defendant’s necessity defense did not come close to satisfying those two conditions, the defendant was convicted of driving with a suspended license. Likewise, if the drunk guy drove because the defendant’s license was suspended and he got arrested for DUI, his necessity defense would have failed for similar reasons.