§710-1013 Compounding. (1) A person commits the offense of compounding if the person intentionally accepts or agrees to accept any pecuniary benefit as consideration for:
(a) Refraining from seeking prosecution of an offense; or
(b) Refraining from reporting to law-enforcement authorities the commission or suspected commission of any offense or information relating to the offense.
(2) It is an affirmative defense to a prosecution under subsection (1) that the pecuniary benefit did not exceed an amount which the defendant believed to be due as restitution or indemnification for harm caused by the offense.
(3) Compounding is a misdemeanor. [L 1972, c 9, pt of §1; gen ch 1993]
COMMENTARY ON §710-1013
The harm in allowing the reporting or prosecution of any offense to be "bought off" need hardly be developed at length. The very functioning of any effective system for penalizing criminal behavior depends upon the unhampered reporting and prosecution of offenses. The traditional question is whether the offense of "compounding" shall apply to one who receives no pecuniary benefit, but nonetheless refrains from reporting an offense. When the offense was a felony, the common law recognized the crime of misprision of a felony, even if no pecuniary benefit was conferred. Most jurisdictions which have codified their penal law have rejected the crime of misprision,[1] as have most modern attempts at penal law revision.[2]
Subsection (2) excludes cases where the consideration accepted is believed to be due as restitution or indemnification, and it does not require judicial approval. The commentary to the Model Penal Code, from which this section is derived, states the reason for the exception as follows:
Our society does not, in general, impose penal sanctions to compel persons to inform authorities of crime. A person who refrains from reporting a crime of which he was the victim, because his loss has been made good, is no more derelict in his social duty than one who, out of indifference or friendship to the offender, fails to report a known offense. The threat of prosecution for compounding is, in any event, ineffective to promote reporting of offenses by victims who are willing to "settle" with the offender, since compounding laws can easily be evaded by accepting restitution or indemnification without explicit "agreement" to drop prosecution. Finally, compounding laws impugn the widespread practice of prosecutors, who are frequently content to drop prosecution when restitution has been made by the offender.[3]
Previous Hawaii law was in accord with the great majority of jurisdictions in rejecting the offense of misprision of a felony. The law penalized compounding of an offense carrying a life sentence with roughly the same dispositions as the Code makes available for any case of compounding.[4] When the compounding was of a lesser offense, the offense was a misdemeanor.5 The Code authorizes a uniform and, therefore, in some cases, more severe penalty than that authorized by present law.
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§710-1013 Commentary:
1. M.P.C., Tentative Draft No. 9, comments at 207 (1959).
2. M.P.C. §242.5; N.Y.R.P.L. §215.45; Prop. Del. Cr. Code §§736, 737; Prop. Mich. Rev. Cr. Code §4530; Prop. Pa. Cr. Code §2209.
3. M.P.C., Tentative Draft No. 9, comments at 203 (1959).
4. H.R.S. §725-5.
5. Id.