Definition
To advise, counsel, or persuade a person against taking a particular action. In criminal law, dissuade carries a specific and serious meaning: to deter a witness, victim, or other participant in legal proceedings from giving evidence, making a report, or cooperating with the prosecution. The act of dissuading a witness from giving evidence against an indicted person is an indictable offense at common law. The attempt need not succeed — the effort itself is criminal.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To convince not to try or do.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To advise or exhort against; to try to persuade one from a course. Webster's flagged the term as obsolescent in ordinary speech by 1913.
The everyday meaning is morally neutral — one friend dissuading another from a poor investment, for example. The legal meaning is not neutral. In a criminal law context, dissuade implies an interference with the justice system: the target is a witness or participant in proceedings, and the act is an attempt to corrupt or suppress evidence. A researcher who reads "dissuade" in a historical legal source and imports the ordinary meaning will miss the criminality built into the term's legal usage.
Common Confusion
DISSUADE vs. SUBORN: Suborning involves inducing a person to commit perjury — to lie under oath. Dissuading targets the act of testifying at all, pushing the witness away from the proceedings rather than corrupting the content of testimony. Both are offenses against the administration of justice, but they operate at different points: suborn corrupts testimony that occurs; dissuade prevents testimony from occurring. Historical sources sometimes treat both under the broad heading of obstruction without clearly distinguishing the two.
DISSUADE vs. INTIMIDATE: Intimidation involves threats or coercion. Dissuasion operates through advice, counsel, or persuasion. The means are different, though both can constitute criminal interference with witnesses. Modern statutes, particularly in American criminal law, often fold both into broader witness-tampering or obstruction provisions and may not preserve the distinction that common law recognized.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears deceptively simple but carries hidden jurisdictional and historical complexity. Several research traps apply:
The common law baseline is narrow: Historical authorities — Hawkins's Pleas of the Crown being the primary reference — define the offense around witnesses in indicted cases. Researchers working with pre-19th-century materials should not assume the offense extended to all proceedings or all participants. The indictment requirement is significant and narrows the historical scope considerably.
Modern statutes have displaced and expanded the common law term. American jurisdictions now codify witness dissuasion under statutes variously titled obstruction of justice, witness tampering, or intimidating a witness. California, for instance, has a specific "dissuading a witness" statute. The statutory elements often differ from the common law formulation, and the word "dissuade" may appear as a defined statutory term with its own operative meaning. A researcher who relies on common law dictionary definitions when reading a modern statute may misread the scope of the offense.
Attempt is sufficient at common law: Bouvier's entry makes explicit what Black's leaves implicit — the mere attempt to stifle evidence is criminal even if the persuasion does not succeed. This is an important research point. Unsuccessful dissuasion is still actionable. This principle, grounded in the common law of incitement, predates modern attempt doctrine and is a consistent feature across the historical dictionary sources.
Corpus connections: Because historical sources often treat dissuasion under obstruction of justice headings rather than as a stand-alone entry, researchers may need to look under witness tampering, obstruction, embracery, and maintenance to trace the full lineage of the concept. The Rapalje & Lawrence source retrieved for this entry is off-topic (it covers disseisin), which itself signals that historical indexing of "dissuade" as a standalone legal term was thin — the concept more often appeared as an illustrative example within broader obstruction entries.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's converge precisely: both define dissuade as advising and procuring a person not to act, both anchor the criminal offense in the witness-tampering context, and both cite Hawkins's Pleas of the Crown, Book 1, Chapter 21, Section 15, as the authoritative common law source. This unanimity signals that the historical legal definition was settled and not contested among the major treatise compilers.
Bouvier's adds the more complete statement of the doctrine by including the attempt principle — that the mere effort to stifle evidence is criminal whether or not it succeeds. Black's is more spare. Anderson's provides no independent analysis.
What the historical dictionaries miss: None of the sources address the transition from common law indictable offense to statutory codification, which had begun in earnest in American jurisdictions by the time Black's second edition appeared. Researchers using these sources alone will find authoritative statements of common law doctrine but no guidance on how that doctrine was absorbed, modified, or displaced by statute.
Jurisdictional Note
At common law, dissuading a witness was uniformly recognized as an indictable offense across English and American common law jurisdictions. Modern American jurisdictions have largely codified the offense, but the elements, penalties, and reach of those statutes vary significantly — some require the defendant to have known of pending proceedings, others extend the offense to potential proceedings not yet commenced. English law developed separately through statutory reform. Common law definitions should not be applied to modern statutory offenses without verifying the applicable statute's own definitions.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Obstruction of Justice
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Witness Tampering