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62 St. Louis U. L.J. 739 (2017-2018)
The Voluntary Act Requirement in Prison Contraband Cases

handle is hein.journals/stlulj62 and id is 789 raw text is: THE VOLUNTARY ACT REQUIREMENT IN PRISON CONTRABAND CASES INTRODUCTION When has one committed the crime of introducing prison contraband? This is an important question when one is visiting a prison, voluntarily or otherwise, and a question which can be surprisingly difficult to answer. Most state statutes punishing the introduction of prison contraband look much like California's statute: Except when otherwise authorized by law ... any person, who knowingly brings or sends into, or knowingly assists in bringing into, or sending into, any state prison ... or within the grounds belonging to the institution, any controlled substance, . . . any device, contrivance, instrument, or paraphernalia intended to be used for unlawfully injecting or consuming a controlled substance, is guilty of a felony ... . These statutes are straightforward, containing a mens rea, usually knowingly,2 an actus reus, usually introducing, possessing, conveying, etc.,3 and then a list of prohibited objects. Moreover, the prototypical prison-contraband cases, such as baking a gun into a cake and mailing it to prison,4 or mailing a friend drugs in a package designated as legal mail,5 are equally straightforward violations of introducing-contraband statutes. However, in a subset of prison-contraband cases, where the defendant is arrested with the contraband already on his or her person, loaded into the back of a police car, and taken to the county jail, the violation is not so clear. These cases are complicated by the defendants' simple defense that they did not want to bring their contraband to jail; rather, their arrest forced them to bring it into the facility. Usually, these cases play out like the case of People v. Gastello, where the defendant was arrested for being under the influence of a controlled substance 1. CAL. PENAL CODE § 4573(a) (2011). 2. ARiz. REV. STAT. ANN. § 13-2505(A)(1) (2016); PENAL § 4573(a); COLO. REV. STAT. ANN. § 18-8-203(1)(a) (2012); OHIO REV. CODE ANN. § 2921.36(A) (2013). 3. ARIz. REV. STAT. § 13-2505(A)(2) (2016); COLO. REV. STAT. ANN. § 18-8-203(1)(a) (2012); MO. REV. STAT. § 221.111 (2017); OHIO REV. CODE ANN. § 2921.36(A) (2013). 4. Jesse Rhodes, The File Inside the Cake: True Tales ofPrison Escapes, SMrrHsONLAN.cOM (June 14, 2011), http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-file-inside-the-cake-true-tales- of-prison-escapes-15653967/ [https://perma.cc/WTR3-BLH2]. 5. Wilson v. Haney, 430 S.W.3d 254, 256 (Ky. Ct. App. 2014). 739