Legal Question in Criminal Law in Oklahoma

Re: Banned from a state?

What an excellent question you have. This is a condition that I have dealt with before and am quite sure that Oklahoma's highest criminal court has not yet addressed it's legality. However, court decisions from other states lead to the following probable conlusions: 1) It is probably illegal for a court to pronounce such a sentence without the agreement of the parties, including the defendant him/herself; 2) It may still be illegal even with everybody's agreement but the alternative may be to go to the penitentiary and rarely will the defendant argue about the legality of his voluntary banishment if it means he will go to prison instead.

If you want to email me directly, i can give you a more complete answer, as this forum only allows responses containing 3000 characters or less. But read the following anyway:

If ... a conditional termination [of imprisonment] may be onerous and in fact is, the applicant for liberty may consider it so and turn it down. He may be willing, however, to accede to the condition and consider it better than a cage. The assumption that a condition requiring one to leave the state to be an expulsion is not borne out by logic, since the applicant has a choice to leave voluntarily or stay in jail. Such assertion is inapropos here, where the petitioner voluntarily and in writing chose to be free on condition, rather than to remain in prison.... Simple answer to any sophistry indulged contrariwise is that a person sentenced to a term in prison, but supplicating freely and voluntarily may or may not accede to a conditional release. If he does, he is bound by his bond, and if not, he is bound by his sentence. Ridiculosity of the condition is not a matter of concern to us, if, no matter how ridiculous, it is not tainted with unconstitutionality.