United States — Maine Act or statute

United States — Maine legislation

Maine Revised Statutes, Title 17-A, § 103-A: Duress, 1981

This section makes duress a defense when a person commits conduct because of imminent death, serious bodily injury, or force.

Professional statute overview

Enactment structure, operative effect and source provenance

Official source

01

Purpose and legislative effect

“This section makes duress a defense when a person commits conduct because of imminent death, serious bodily injury, or force.”

Use this record to locate individual provisions, understand the instrument’s recorded structure, and move from a research summary to the exact source text.

02

How the instrument operates

  1. 01

    Start with the recorded version

    Enacted 1981 · Source version 1 Oct 2025. The date shown identifies this source expression and should not be treated as proof that no later change exists.

  2. 02

    Locate the controlling provision

    Use the provision map, part headings and full-text filter to move from the broad subject to the exact legal language.

  3. 03

    Read conditions and exceptions together

    Keep subsections, definitions, provisos and cross-references in context before drawing a legal conclusion.

  4. 04

    Verify currency and official wording

    Confirm later legislation, commencement notices and corrections with the official publisher before advice, filing or reliance.

03

Research entry points

Selected provisions across the instrument. Open any row to continue with the exact stored text.

Duress

This section makes duress a defense when a person commits conduct because of imminent death, serious bodily injury, or force.

Section 103-A

04

Source and current-law status

Source record view

Source record from legislature.maine.gov · Enacted 1981 · Source version 1 Oct 2025

Verify current force

The source record does not state a definitive current-law status. Check the official publisher and later amendments before relying on this text.

Source-indexed provision map

Sections and provisions

Search by section, heading, part or exact legal wording. Every result remains linked to the stored source record.

Showing 1 of 1 provisions

Provision
§ 103-ADuressProvision

This section makes duress a defense when a person commits conduct because of imminent death, serious bodily injury, or force.

1. It is a defense that, when a person engages in conduct that would otherwise constitute a crime, the person is compelled to do so by threat of imminent death or serious bodily injury to that person or another person or because that person was compelled to do so by force. [PL 2007, c. 173, §19 (AMD).] 2. For purposes of this section, compulsion exists only if the force, threat or circumstances are such as would have prevented a reasonable person in the defendant's situation from resisting the pressure. [PL 1981, c. 324, §26 (NEW).] 3. The defense set forth in this section is not available: A. To a person who intentionally or knowingly committed the homicide for which the person is being tried; [PL 2007, c. 173, §19 (AMD).] B. To a person who recklessly placed that person in a situation in which it was reasonably probable that the person would be subjected to duress; or [PL 2007, c. 173, §19 (AMD).] C. To a person who with criminal negligence placed that person in a situation in which it was reasonably probable that the person would be subjected to duress, whenever criminal negligence suffices to establish culpability for the offense charged. [PL 2007, c. 173, §19 (AMD).] [PL 2007, c. 173, §19 (AMD).]
Section 103-AVerify source

Legislative relationships

0 referenced instruments

Names are derived from the stored provision headings and citation-enrichment layer. Treat this as a research index and verify each relationship against the source text.

No structured legislative relationships were detected

The statute remains fully searchable by provision. Consult the source text for amendments and cross-references that have not yet been indexed.

Recorded versions and source checkpoint

1 version available in this collection

Current-law checkpoint
  • 1 Oct 2025 · currentEnglish

Source-linked research

Ask AI about this statute

The overview, provisions, and source records above are public. Continue in a separate conversation with this statute’s jurisdiction and source version attached.

About this LexChat collection

Statute information is organised from identified legislative sources for professional research. Corrections can be reported to hello@esheria.ai.