Choice of Evils

Choice of evils is a defense that requires a defendant to show that he committed the crime because it was the best alternative in a situation that would have had a worse outcome. It other words, it is a defense based on a claim that a defendant was faced with a choice of evils. For example, when a man has been drinking (drunk driving) and drives his unconscious and dying wife to the emergency room and he is charged with a DUI (Driving Under the Influence), he will argue that driving drunk was the better of the two evils (drunk driving vs. his wife dying). The choice of evils defense is also known as the “necessity defense” or the “lesser-evils defense.”