Intro to Criminal Law: Final Exam

Necessity

A defense where immediate necessity justifies choosing to commit a lesser crime to avoid the harm of a greater crime.

Necessity Elements

1. Identify the evils.

2. Rank the evils.

3. Choose the lesser evil to avoid the greater evil that’s on the verge of happening (imminent).

Consent

This defense is rooted in the value our society places on personal freedom. It recognizes that there are instances in which people take their own lives or authorize others to inflict injuries on them.

Exceptions to Consent

1. No serious injury results from the consensual crime.

2. Injury that happens during a sporting event.

3. Conduct that benefits the consenting person, such as when as doctor performs surgery.

4. The consent is to sexual conduct.

Additional Requirements to Consent

1. Voluntary consent.

2. Knowing consent.

3. Authorized consent.

Insanity

A defense based on a defendant’s mental disease or defect.

M’Naghten Rule

This rule was established by English Common Law. It depends on a person’s mental capacity to know right from wrong.

Elements of the M’Naghten Rule

1. The defendant had a mental disease or defect at the time of the crime.

2. The disease or defect caused the defendant to not know either the: nature of their actions or what they were doing was wrong.

Product-of-Mental-Illness-Test

Also known as the Durham test. Acts that are the products of mental illness or disease excuse criminal liability. Only used in New Hampshire.

Irresistible Impulse Test

Also known as the volitional incapacity test. Even if the defendant knew what he was doing was wrong, was he able to resist the urge to commit the act? Is the defendant suffering form some mental disease that damages his will power? This test used to be the Federal standard.

John Hinckley

The man who was obsessed with Jodie Foster. He went to classes she was in, tried to call her on the phone, and wrote a letter to her confessing his love. He then tried to assassinate Ronald Regan to get her attention and prove his adoration for her.

Substantial Capacity Test (MPC)

A person is not responsible for criminal conduct if at the time of such conduct, as a result of mental disease or defect, he lacks substantial capacity to:

1. Appreciate the criminally (wrongfulness) of his conduct.

2. To conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.

Age

• Under 7: No criminal capacity to commit crimes.

• 7-14: Presumed to have no criminal capacity, but that presumption can be overcome.

• Over 14: Same treatment as adults.

Intoxication

Involuntary intoxication is an excuse to criminal liability in all states. Voluntary intoxication is not an excuse. Intoxication includes all substances that disturb mental and physical capacities.

Duress

Defense argues he should be excused because he was threatened with harm if he didn’t commit the crime (coercion).

Elements of Duress

1. Threats amounting to duress.

2. Immediacy of harm.

3. Crimes this defense applies to varies.

4. Degrees of belief regarding the threat. Varies depending on the jurisdiction.

Entrapment

Government agents (police) inducting people to commit crimes they otherwise would not have committed.

Principals

A party to a crime. The one who actually commits the object crime.

Accomplices

A party to a crime. Participants before and/or during the commission of the crime.

Accessories

A party to a crime. Participants after the crime has been committed.

Pinkerton Rule

Conspiracy to commit a crime and the crime itself are two separate crimes.

Examples of Accomplice Liability (Actus Reus)

1. Provide guns or other instruments of crime.

2. Serving as a lookout.

3. Sending the victim to the principal.

4. Acting as a getaway driver.

Elements of Accomplice Liability

1. Possible to be an accomplice and not be part of an agreement.

2. Is charged as the object crime.

Elements of an Accessory

• Actus Reus: Aiding a felon to avoid arrest, prosecution, or conviction.

• Mens Rea: Intent to aid a felon to avoid arrest, prosecution, or conviction.

Inchoate Crimes

Imposing criminal liability for crimes that have not been completed.

Attempt

1. Intent or purpose to commit a specific crime and

2. Act(s) to carry out that intent.

Substantial Capacity Test for Attempt (MPC)

1. Substantial steps toward completing the crime; and

2. Steps that “strongly corroborate” the actor’s criminal purpose.

3. Substantial steps that show the attempters are determined to commit the crime.

Abandonment

The intervening force is the defense himself.

Defense Requirements for Abandonment

1. Not because the circumstances are not opportune; or

2. Not a decision to postpone the criminal conduct until another time or to substitute another victim.

3. Not due to outside forces but a change of heart.

Legal Impossibility

Defense intends to commit a crime, does everything he can do to complete the crime, but what he intends to do isn’t a crime.

• Rationale: We don’t want to punish someone for something that the law permits.

Factual Impossibility

Defense intends to commit a crime and takes all the steps necessary to complete it but a fact makes it impossible to complete.

• Rationale: We don’t want people that are bent on breaking the law to go free due to a stroke of good luck.

Conspiracy

2 or more people coming into an agreement to commit a crime.

Elements of Conspiracy

Agreement/Act + Specific Intent = Conspiracy

Solicitation

Acting or encouraging another to commit a crime.

Elements of Solicitation

Actus Reus: Words that advise, urge, or entice another to commit a crime.

Mens Rea: Purposeful

Murder/Homicide

The umbrella term for the taking of the life of another person.

Justifiable Homicide

Killings done in self defense, capital punishment, and police use of deadly force.

Excusable Homicide

Killings done by persons not of sound memory and discretion (i.e. insane or immature).

Criminal Homicide

Homicides that are neither justified or excused.

Murder

Intentionally causing the death of another with “malice aforethought”.

Manslaughter

Unlawful killing of another without malice aforethought.

W.D.P Murders

Willful (intentional), specific intent to commit the murder.

Felony Murder

Unintentional deaths that occur during the commission of a felony.

Bifurcated Trial (Death Penalty)

The death penalty decision occurs in two factors:

1. Aggravated Factors: Circumstances relating to the commission of a crime that make it more grave than the average instance of that crime.

2. Mitigating Circumstances: Circumstances relating to the commission of a crime that may be considered to reduce the blameworthiness of the defendant.

Elements of Felony Murder

Actus Reus: Voluntary act of killing.

Mens Rea: Intent of committing a qualifying felony.

Third Party Exception

If during the commission of the felony, someone other than the parties to the crime kill another, the defense would not be held liable.

Resisting-Victim Exception

If a death occurs in the course of the victim resisting the defense’s attack, the defense would be held liable.

Manslaughter

The unlawful killing of another that occurs voluntarily due to the sudden heat of passion or involuntarily where there was no intent to do any harm.

Voluntary Manslaughter

Killing could not have occurred after a cooling off period.

Elements of Voluntary Manslaughter

Actus Reus: Voluntary act of killing another person.

Mens Rea: 1. Intent to kill or 2. Inflict serious bodily harm.

Adequate Provocation

The trigger that sets off the sudden killing of another person.

Four Common Law Provocations

1. Mutual Combat

2. Assault and Battery

3. Trespassing

4. Adultery

Involuntary Manslaughter

The killing of another person unintentionally.

Criminally Negligent Manslaughter

Actus Reus: Defendants acts create a high risk of death or serious bodily injury.

Mens Rea: Criminal recklessness or criminal negligence.

Unlawful Act Manslaughter

Unintended deaths that occur during the commission of non-homicide offenses. These offenses range anywhere between felonies to misdemeanors, to civil ordinance violations. The modern view is to abolish this view.