## Facts

- Several hundred demonstrators blocked the roadway to the east entrance of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Jefferson County on August 9, 1987.
- The protest aimed to stop plutonium trigger production by preventing workers and materials from entering the facility and to pressure closure and conversion of the plant.
- Thomas Andrews and numerous other protesters obstructed traffic and refused officers’ orders to move.
- Defendants were charged with obstructing a roadway without legal privilege and disobeying a peace officer’s request to move, under Colo. Rev. Stat. § 18-9-107(1)(a) and (b).
- Defendants gave notice they would rely on the statutory “choice of evils” defense, Colo. Rev. Stat. § 18-1-702.
- Their offer of proof consisted of fifteen expert affidavits describing alleged dangers of plutonium production, risks of nuclear conflict, asserted international-law violations, and potential health and environmental harms.
- The county court ruled the offer of proof was legally insufficient to establish the statutory foundation for the defense and refused to submit the defense to the jury; defendants were convicted.
- The district court affirmed on appeal.

## Issues

1. Whether defendants’ offer of proof was legally sufficient to establish the statutory predicates for the choice-of-evils defense under Colo. Rev. Stat. § 18-1-702.
2. Whether the trial court properly refused to instruct the jury on the choice-of-evils defense.

## Decision

- The Colorado Supreme Court affirmed the district court and the convictions.
- The court held the offer of proof did not satisfy § 18-1-702’s requirements.
- The trial court properly excluded the choice-of-evils defense as a matter of law and did not err in refusing to submit it to the jury.

## Legal Principles

- The choice-of-evils defense in § 18-1-702 is a statutory justification, not constitutional in character, and is limited to the statute’s stated conditions.
- The defense requires a reasonable belief that the illegal conduct is necessary as an emergency measure to avoid an imminent public or private injury; speculative, generalized, or long-range harms do not satisfy imminence.
- The proffer must show a sufficiently direct relationship between the unlawful act and avoidance of the imminent injury; conduct that is not reasonably calculated to abate the threatened harm fails the statutory foundation.
- The presence of reasonable legal alternatives to the unlawful conduct weighs against a claim that the conduct was “necessary” as an emergency measure.
- Trial courts may screen the defense at the offer-of-proof stage and refuse to instruct the jury when the proffered evidence, even if accepted as true, cannot satisfy the statute’s elements.

## Conclusion

The court upheld convictions for roadway obstruction and refusing to move because the protesters’ evidentiary proffer did not show an imminent injury, an emergency necessity, or a direct causal link between briefly blocking access to the facility and preventing the asserted harms, and lawful alternatives to civil disobedience remained available.


Andrews v. People, 800 P.2d 607 (Colo. 1990)