Definition
In criminal law, flight is the voluntary withdrawal or evasion by a person accused of a crime in order to avoid arrest, prosecution, or punishment. The term covers deliberate acts of concealment or escape — running from police, absconding after charges are filed, fleeing the jurisdiction — that go beyond mere absence. Flight is treated as circumstantial evidence of consciousness of guilt and is admissible in criminal proceedings on that theory.
In immigration law, flight risk is a related but distinct concept: the likelihood that a non-citizen subject to removal proceedings will fail to appear for hearings or comply with a removal order. It operates as a factor in bond determinations and detention decisions, not as substantive evidence of any underlying wrongdoing.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Flight most commonly means the act of flying through the air, or a scheduled trip by aircraft between two points.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's captures both the aerial sense and the fleeing sense — "the act of running away, to escape or expected evil; hasty departure" — treating the two as parallel, unremarkable meanings.
Editorial note: The legal meaning latches onto the fleeing sense and narrows it significantly. Not every hasty departure is legally cognizable flight. The legal concept requires voluntariness, awareness of accusation or imminent arrest, and purposeful evasion — elements absent from the ordinary sense of someone fleeing a storm or an argument.
Common Confusion
Flight is sometimes conflated with absence or failure to appear. A defendant who misses a court date due to confusion, illness, or lack of notice has not necessarily engaged in legal flight. The distinction matters because flight, properly established, supports an inference of guilt; mere non-appearance does not carry that same inference without additional facts showing deliberate evasion. Researchers working with older cases should also distinguish flight from forfeiture-triggering escape, which historically had separate procedural consequences.
Why It Matters in Research
The evidentiary use of flight is a persistent thread across centuries of criminal law and requires careful attention to context when researching historical sources.
First, the forfeiture consequence. Bouvier notes that under earlier English law, a jury finding of flight — even in acquittals — triggered forfeiture of goods and chattels. This consequence was abolished in American practice, but researchers reading pre-20th century sources or English common law materials may encounter flight discussed as a procedural-forfeiture concept entirely distinct from its modern evidentiary use. Do not import that framework into contemporary analysis.
Second, the presumption versus inference problem. Older sources, including both Black's editions reproduced here, describe flight as "presumptive evidence of guilt." Modern criminal law treats this more carefully: flight creates a permissible inference of guilt, not a legal presumption. The distinction is constitutionally significant. Researchers citing historical dictionary language on this point should update the framing — the word "presumption" in 19th-century legal writing often meant what we now call a permissible inference, but the terminology has since sharpened.
Third, the immigration context is largely invisible in the historical dictionaries. Flight risk as a detention and bond standard is a creature of modern immigration statutory and regulatory law and developed independently of the criminal evidentiary doctrine. Researchers moving between criminal and immigration sources on this term should treat them as parallel but separate bodies of law. The Law Mind Immigration Encyclopedia entry on bond hearings addresses the immigration usage directly.
Fourth, corpus connections: flight evidence in criminal cases typically connects to discussions of mens rea, circumstantial evidence doctrine, jury instructions, and consciousness of guilt. In immigration research, flight risk connects to detention authority, bond redetermination, and the standards governing immigration judges' discretionary calls.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three historical sources agree on the core definition: flight is voluntary withdrawal by a person under accusation to evade the law. The formulations are nearly identical across Black's first and second editions and Bouvier's, suggesting this was a settled, uncontroversial definition by the late 19th century.
Bouvier's is the most useful of the three for historical research. It adds the forfeiture rule from Blackstone (4 Bl. Com. 387), situates flight within the broader criminal procedure framework, and cross-references fugitive from justice and extradition — signaling that flight was understood as the beginning of a legal chain that could end in extradition proceedings. It also cites case authority (164 U.S. 492) for the proposition that flight evidence tends to establish guilt, which neither Black's edition does.
What the historical dictionaries miss entirely: the immigration law usage, any nuance around the voluntary/involuntary distinction, and the constitutional limits on flight instructions to juries. These developments are post-dictionary.
Jurisdictional Note
The admissibility and weight of flight evidence in criminal trials is subject to state-by-state variation in how jury instructions are framed. Some jurisdictions permit detailed instructions on flight as consciousness of guilt; others restrict or disfavor such instructions. In immigration proceedings, flight risk standards are governed by federal law but applied with significant discretion at the immigration judge level, with outcomes varying in practice across immigration courts.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Bond Hearings — Danger and Flight Risk, Bond Amounts, and Redetermination (Law Mind Immigration Law Encyclopedia)