To my knowledge, escaping from prison is a crime entirely separate from the crimes that might put you in prison to begin with. So, when Harrison Ford booked it from Tommy Lee Jones*, it seems like he committed a felony he’d have to be held accountable for, even though he proved his innocence by film’s end.
So would he be headed back to jail after the credits rolled? Escaped criminals that I’ve seen on the news have had 10-40 years added to their sentence. Is Dr. Kimble up for the same?
*The TV show was before my time. I’m a wee babe at 29.
I wondered the same thing about the movie “Double Jeopardy”. Of course, the entire premise of that movie was dismissed as Urban Legend. But it’s still an interesting question.
Just curious…did you watch the fugitive just to see the janitor from “Scrubs”?
IANAL, but it would seem that if Kimble could prove his innocence, meaning he shouldn’t have been in prison to begin with, he wouldn’t be held accountable for anything he did that was illegal solely because he was a wanted felon. I don’t remember the film well enough to know if he did anything that was illegal in and of itself, though I’m sure that a someone from the Department of Water and Power will want to talk to him about that dam stunt.
And he’d probably have to be in jail until his retrial, as the argument could be made that he’s a flight risk.
Escaping from prison is a crime, whether you were guilty of the original offense or not. Unless Kimble were pardoned for that act, back to the pokey he would go.
Even if he could prove his innocence, he’d still have to get a new trial, and in most (but not all!) states, he’d immediately be charged for busting out of jail anyway.
The New York state penal code has a whole article on escape-related crimes. Here’s the most important sections:
You’ll notice it clearly says “charge with or convicted of” - nothing about being actually guilty of any crime. So even if you can later show that you were innocent of the crime you were imprisoned for, all the state has to do is show you had been convicted of that crime at the time you escaped.
I’ll assume most other states follow the same pattern as New York.
Not at all a legal answer, but I saw this recently on an episode of Law and Order: SVU. A man escaped from prison to head back to New York to try to prove that he did not rape his son years before.
In the end, he was able to prove his innocence (after taking a sniper shot to the shoulder), and though his original sentence was nullified as he was proven innocent, the ADA decided not to prosecute for the prison break because any time he got for doing so would have already been considered as time served for the original crime.
As in, let’s say he’d already spent 10 years locked up for the rape. He breaks out, proves his innocence, he is no longer required to finish his term for the rape. The DA figures that if convicted on the jailbreak charge, he’d get 10 years or less. So the 10 years he already spent locked up as an innocent man would be time served for any prison break conviction.
IANAL, but I figure that’s probably a good enough argument for a jury anywhere, as long as no one was hurt in the initial prison break.
While a judge may choose not to sentence someone to prison time based on the circumstances we’re discussing, I’m pretty sure that he or she wouldn’t decide “time served” for time spent in prison before the crime occurred.
I can’t imagine a jury convicting under these circumstances, or a DA bothering to prosecute. It’d be bad press for the DA and even if by a miracle he could convince the jury to convict, the judge is likely to give a suspended sentence.
Most likely, the DA would come with a plea bargain agreement for time served in exchange for the person not suing the state.
I agree with Chuck about the probably behavior of the DA.
I seem to recall that, following the OJ Simpson slow speed chase a reporter asked a ‘guest expert’ about whether the state would attempt to prosecute the driver of the white Ford Bronco, Al Cowlings for his participation. The response was something along the order of ‘only if the prosecuting attorney felt a need to get Cowlings found innocent for some reason’.
I think the same would hold true. Public opinion, and likely the sympathy of most of the state prosecutors (who now have the opportunity to prosecute Devlon-MacGregor as a gift) would get him off the hook whether he was technically guilty or not.
In one of the great Book of Lists series by Irving Wallace, his son David Wallechinsky, and daughter Amy Wallace, there is a list of great miscarriages of justice. My favourite was a guy who was wrongly convicted for his involvement in some crime. While in prison he found out who the real accomplice was, broke out, tracked him down, took him to the police, to whom he confessed. The actual crim was then convicted and sentenced but the hero of the story remained in prison because even though someone else had been found guilty of the same crime, his conviction still stood.
I don’t know about the movie remake but in the original show wasn’t Kimble on his way to death row when he escaped? Any prosecutor who tried to punish someone innocent for not meekly going to their death would be the subject of a recall vote.
In interviews I’ve heard with people who get folks wrongly convicted freed, it’s not a simple matter of just showing up with exculpatory evidence. States aren’t really equipped to deal with such things and even getting the person released is difficult. Then, once they’re out, they have to get their record expunged, it’s not an automatic process.