IMPRISONMENT
IMPRISONMENT. The restraint of a person contrary to his will. 2 Inst. 589; Baldw. Rep. 239, 600. Imprisonment is either lawful or unlawful; lawful imprisonment is used either for crimes or for the appearance of a party in a civil suit, or on arrest in execution.
2. Imprisonment for crimes is either for the appearance of a person accused, as when he cannot give bail; or it is the effect of a sentence, and then it is a part of the punishnient.
3. Imprisonment in civil cases takes place when a defendant on being sued on bailable process refuses or cannot give the bail legally demanded, or is under a capias ad satisfaciendum, when he is taken in execution under a judgment. An unlawful imprisonment, commonly called false imprisonment, (q. v.) meaus any illegal imprisonment whatever, either with or without process, or under color of process wholly illegal, without regard to any question whether any crime has been committed or a debt due.
4. As to what will amount to an imprisonment, the most obvious modes are confinement in a prison or a private house, but a forcible detention in the street, or the touching of a person by a peace officer by way of arrest, are also imprisonments. Bac. Ab. Trespass, D 3; 1 Esp. R. 431, 526. It has been decided that lifting up a person in his chair, and carrying him out of the room in which he was sitting with others, and excluding him from the room, was not an imprisonment; 1 Chit. Pr. 48; and the merely giving charge of a person to a peace officer, not followed by any actual apprehension of the person, does not amount to an imprisonment, though the party to avoid it, next day attend at a police; 1 Esp. R. 431; New Rep. 211; 1 Carr. & Pavn. 153; S. C. II Eng. Com. Law, R. 351; and if, in consequence of a message from a sheriff's officer holding a writ, the defendant execute and send him a bail bond, such submission to the process will not constitute an arrest. 6 Bar. & Cres. 528; S. C. 13 Eng. Com. Law Rep. 245; Dowl. & R. 233. Vide, generally, 14 Vin. Ab. 342; 4 Com. Dig. 618; 1 Chit. Pr. 47; Merl. R«pert. mot Emprisonment; 17 Eng. Com. L. R. 246, n.