18-2406. DEFENSES. (1) It is no defense to a charge of theft of property that the offender has an interest therein, when the owner also has an interest to which the offender is not entitled.

(2) Where the property involved is that of the offender’s spouse, no prosecution for theft may be maintained unless the parties were not living together as man and wife and were living in separate abodes at the time of the alleged theft.

(3) In any prosecution for theft committed by trespassory taking or the offense previously known as embezzlement, it is an affirmative defense that the property was appropriated openly and avowedly, and under a claim of right made in good faith. It is not a defense to a theft committed by such conduct that the accused intended to restore the property taken, but may be considered by the court to mitigate punishment if the property is voluntarily and actually restored (or tendered) prior to the filing of any complaint or indictment relating thereto, and this provision does not excuse the unlawful retention of the property of another to offset or pay demands held against such other person.

(4) In any prosecution for theft by extortion committed by instilling in the victim a fear that he or another person would be charged with a crime, it is an affirmative defense that the defendant reasonably believed the threatened charge to be true and that his sole purpose was to compel or induce the victim to take reasonable action to make good the wrong which was the subject of such threatened charge.

(5) It is no defense to a prosecution for theft under a provision of this chapter that the defendant, by reason of the same conduct, also committed an act specified as a crime in another chapter of title 18, or another title of the Idaho Code.

History:

[18-2406, added 1981, ch. 183, sec. 2, p. 324; am. 2008, ch. 23, sec. 1, p. 36.]