definition of duress

See below JJ:

-In criminal law, duress is a defense to a crime if the defendant was compelled or coerced to commit the crime by some human agency, prior to a safe avenue of escape being available, under a threat of serious imminent harm to the defendant or others, and the crime is of a lesser magnitude than the harm threatened. Duress consists of threatening conduct which produced the following three elements in the accused:

a reasonable fear;
the fear must be of an immediate [imminent] harm; and,
that harm must be death or serious bodily harm.
Duress is a also a defense asserted against enforcement of a contract. It is an illegal actual or a threatened violence or restraint of someone, to compel him to enter into a contract, or to excuse performance of a contract. A legal constraint, or the threats only of doing that which the party using them had a right to do, does not invalidate the contract.

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