Flight is Not an Implied Admission of Guilt

By EBY Traders

Flight is indicative of guilt, but its converse is not necessarily true. Culprits behave
differently and even erratically in externalizing and manifesting their guilt. Some may
escape or flee a circumstance strongly illustrative of guilt while others may remain in
the same vicinity so as to create a semblance of regularity, thereby avoiding suspicion
from other members of the community ( People v. Mores, G.R. No. 189846, June 26,
2013 citing People v. Asilan, G.R. No. 188322, April 11, 2012, 669 SCRA 405, 419).

Flight per se is not synonymous with guilt and must not always be attributed to ones
consciousness of guilt (Valdez v. People, G.R. No. 170180, November 23, 2007;
People v. Lopez, 371 Phil. 852, 862 (1999); People v. Bawar, 262 SCRA 325) Of
persuasion was the Michigan Supreme Court when it ruled in People v. Shabaz,
424 Mich. 42, 378 N.W.2d 451 (1985) that flight alone is not a reliable indicator of guilt
without other circumstances because flight alone is inherently ambiguous. Alone, and
under the circumstances of this case, petitioners flight lends itself just as easily to an
innocent explanation as it does to a nefarious one.

A person may flee or hide for some other motive and may do so even though innocent.
Whether the evidence of flight or concealment in this case should be looked at as
tending to prove guilt, depends upon the facts and circumstances of this case and
especially upon motives which may have prompted the flight or concealment. You may
not find [appellant] guilty solely on the basis of evidence of flight or concealment
(Commonwealth v. Bruce, August 26, 1998, Superior Court of Pennsylvania).

[I]t is a matter of common knowledge that men who are entirely innocent do sometimes
fly from the scene of a crime through fear of being apprehended as the guilty parties, or
from an unwillingness to appear as witnesses. Nor is it true as an accepted axiom of
criminal law that "the wicked flee when no man pursueth; but the righteous are bold as a
lion." Innocent men sometimes hesitate to confront a jury, --not necessarily because
they fear that the jury will not protect them, but because they do not wish their names to
appear in connection with criminal acts, are humiliated at being obliged to incur the
popular odium of an arrest and trial, or because they do not wish to be put to the
annoyance or expense of defending themselves (Alberty v. United States, 162 U.S. 499,
511, 16 S.Ct. 864, 868, 40 L.Ed. 1051, 1056 (1896). Earlier that term in Hickory v.
United States, 160 U.S. 408, 16 S.Ct. 327, 40 L.Ed. 474, (1896), the Court also found
error in the giving of a flight instruction, finding that it was misleading because it
presented the inculpatory inferences but "omitted or obscured the converse aspect."