Homeless man did not break law by fleeing cold: Massachusetts' top court

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

World | Thu Jun 23, 2016 2:58pm EDT

Homeless man did not break law by fleeing cold: Massachusetts' top court

BOSTON | BY SCOTT MALONE

Massachusetts' top court on Thursday overturned the conviction of a homeless man who had been found guilty of criminal trespassing for sleeping in a mixed-use building during the winter of 2014, ruling he had a legal right to argue that there was no safer alternative.

David Magadini, a 67-year-old homeless man, was repeatedly arrested by police in Great Barrington, in the state's hilly west, for sleeping in the mixed-use commercial building to escape frigid cold.

He was eventually convicted of trespassing after a trial in which a judge overruled his lawyers' request that the jury be informed of the "necessity defense," which can excuse a person for a reasonable violation of a law to preserve his or her life.

"The judge erred in denying the defendant's request for an instruction on the defense of necessity," Geraldine Hines, associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, wrote in Thursday's unanimous decision.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-massachusetts-homelessness-idUSKCN0Z9296

[lostnfound]

1. What's the alternative? Do we as a society want to say, "we'd rather you just died"?

It's a good legal principle, I was unaware of it.