Official Code of Georgia Annotated

Title 16. CRIMES AND OFFENSES · Chapter 3. DEFENSES TO CRIMINAL PROSECUTIONS · Article 2. JUSTIFICATION AND EXCUSE

16-3-26. Coercion.

Active

Current through: Including Acts of the 2025 Regular Session of the General Assembly.

A person is not guilty of a crime, except for the offense of murder provided for in subsection (a) of Code Section 16-5-1, if the act upon which the supposed criminal liability is based is performed under such coercion that he or she reasonably believes that performing the act is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily injury to himself or herself or a third person.

The notes below are printed with the section but are not enacted law (O.C.G.A. § 1-1-1(c)). They are shown apart from the text.

History

Laws 1833, Cobb’s 1851 Digest, p. 780.; Code 1863, § 4202; Code 1868, § 4238; Code 1873, § 4303; Code 1882, § 4303; Penal Code 1895, § 41; Penal Code 1910, § 41; Code 1933, § 26-402; Code 1933, § 26-906, enacted by Ga. L. 1968, p. 1249, § 1; Ga. L. 2025, p. 497, § 3/HB 582, effective July 1, 2025.

Amendments

The 2025 amendment, effective July 1, 2025, rewrote this Code section.

Editor's notes

Ga. L. 2025, p. 497, § 1/HB 582, not codified by the General Assembly, provides: “This Act shall be known and may be cited as the ‘Georgia Survivor Justice Act.’”

Read the official page (the state's PDF, opened at the page this text was read from).

Current through: Including Acts of the 2025 Regular Session of the General Assembly.

Text read from t16-ch1-6-(v14)-pdf.pdf, Volume V14, 2019 edition, 2025 supplement, pages 50 to 51; merge action: replaced; file SHA-256 575f9121d25f.