Criminal Law Case Illustrations

FINAL

Owens v. State

An intoxicated person, found asleep behind the wheel of a car parked in a driveway, with its motor running and lights on, is convicted of drunk driving, even though there was only circumstantial evidence that the car was driven on the highway. A conviction based upon circumstantial evidence alone, may be sustained if the circumstances are inconsistent with any reasonable hypothesis of innocence.

State v. Ragland

A convicted felony charged with possession of a weapon, contends that the judge erred in instructing the jury that they “must” convict, which conflicted with the jury’s nullification power. The power of jury nullification is not a precious attribute of a right to trial by jury.

Keeler v. Superior Court

Mr. Keeler (d) allegedly murdered an unborn but viable fetus by kicking his pregnant wife in the stomach. There is a violation of the Due Process Clause when a court construes a criminal statute contrary to the legislative intent and applies its expanded definition of the statute retroactively to a person’s conduct.

Queen v. Dudley & Stephens

One of three men faced with starvation kills a teenage boy, and the three men eat his body. The prospect of starvation is not a justification for killing an innocent person for subsistence, and a proposition that justifies such a killing as anything other than murder is dangerous, immoral, and opposed to all legal principle and analogy.

People v. Superior Court (Du)

Du was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to ten years after shooting Comb’s for stealing orange juice in the liquor store Du and her husband owned. The court held this sentence was unconstitutional due to sentencing objectives and looking at the totality of circumstances given rising tensions after altercations with her son and gangs in the area.

United States v. Gementera

Gementera (d) was sentenced to standing outside the post office with a sign stating “I stole mail, and this is my punishment” for eight hours after being convicted of stealing mail. The court held that the condition imposed was reasonably related to the objectives of rehabilitation.

Coker v. Georgia

Coker (d) was sentenced to death after escaping a correctional facility while serving time for violent crimes including rape, murder, and kidnapping. The Eighth Amendment protects against cruel and unusual punishment, and the death sentence was unconstitutional given the disproportionate nature of punishment.

Ewing v. California

The defendant, convicted of shoplifting three golf clubs, is given a sentence of 25 years to life under California’s three strikes laws. The Eighth Amendment does not require strict proportionality between the crime and sentence, but rather, it only prohibits extreme sentences that are grossly disproportionate to the crime.

Martin v. State

Police officers arrested an intoxicated man at his home, took him onto a highway, and then arrested him for public drunkenness. A defendant must perform the physical act for each element of a crime that has an actus reus component.

State v. Utter

Intoxicated father with an alleged conditioned response condition fatally stabs his don in the chest. A voluntary act requires consent of the actor’s will.

People v. Beardsley

Intoxicated male fails to assist his female friend who was in a stupor from drinking alcohol and ingesting morphine. A person may be held criminally liable if he fails to perform a legal duty and his omission causes harm.

United States v. Cardoba Hincapie

To be guilty of a crime which has as one of its elements, “mens rea”, the criminal must have a guilty state of mind.

Regina v. Cunningham

A thief stole a gas meter from the basement of a house, which caused the gas to leak into an adjoining house and partially asphyxiate an elderly woman who lived there. The mens rea requirement of malice is satisfied by a showing of either intentional or reckless conduct, a showing of wickedness will not suffice.

People v. Conley

After an altercation at a high school party, two boys got into a fight where one boy, hit the other in the face with a wine bottle, which caused extensive injuries to the other boy’s mouth and teeth. A person acts with intent if it is his conscious object to cause a social harm or he knows that such harm is almost certain to occur because of his conduct.

State v. Nations

A nightclub owner was charged with endangering the welfare of a child less than seventeen years old when she hired a sixteen-year-old girl to dance in her club. She claimed that she had asked the girl for identification and that she thought the girl was eighteen. Unless the applicable criminal code states otherwise, a requirement that a person commit a certain act “knowingly” with respect to a particular fact will not be satisfied unless the person had actual knowledge of the existence of the particular fact.

Morissette v. United States

Morissette (d) ventured onto an Air Force bombing range and retrieve some very old and rust bomb casing which he then sold as scrap. Failure by the legislature to include the mens rea in criminal statutes that is normally required at common law does not mean the crime is strict liability; such statutes will be interpreted to require the mens rea of such crimes required at common law.

Staples v. United States

Staples (d) waws convicted of violating the National Firearms Act, a felony, for possessing a machine gun, even though he did not know the gun was capable of firing more than one show with each activation of the trigger. A criminal statute written without a mens rea requirement will be construed in light of the background of the common law for such crimes to include a mens rea requirement unless there is an explicit indication that the legislature intended there to be no such requirements.

Garnett v. State

A twenty-year-old man with an IQ of 52 has sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old whom he believed was sixteen. Mistake of age is not a defense to the strict liability crime of statutory rape.

People v. Navarro

A man was charged with theft for taking four wooden beams from a construction site but argued that he had no intent to steal the beams because he thought they had been abandoned. Regarding a specific intent crime, a mistake of fact is a defense if the mistake negates the specific intent required in the definition of the crime.

People v. Marrero

Marrero (d), a federal corrections officer, was convicted for violating a statute which he believed gave him right to carry a gun. An erroneous interpretation of the law does not excuse violation of the law, even where the interpretation is reasonable.

Cheek v. United States

A pilot who had previously filed tax returns stopped filing them because he became influenced by a group who believed that the income tax system was unconstitutional. The IRS charged him with willful tax evasion. A mistake of law, either reasonable or unreasonable, will be a defense to a crime if it negates the specific intent required for conviction.

Oxendine v. State

A father is convicted of manslaughter, after beating his six-year-old child who had been earlier pushed into a bathtub causing injuries by the father’s girlfriend. Actual causation or causation-in-fact is a prerequisite to the imposition of criminal liability.

People v. Rideout

Rideout (d), who admittedly caused a motor-vehicle collision while he was drunk, was convicted of causing the death of a person who was later hit by a different vehicle, and he appealed. For a defendant’s conduct to constitute the proximate cause of an injury, the victim’s injury must be a direct and natural result of the defendant’s actions.

Velazquez v. State

Two drivers were drag-racing and one died after crashing through a guardrail; the other was convicted of vehicular homicide and appealed. There is no criminal liability unless it can be shown that the defendant’s conduct was a cause in fact of the prohibited result.

State v. Rose

An automobile driver is convicted of negligent manslaughter, after hitting a pedestrian, and dragging the pedestrian who was lodged underneath the vehicle. Elements of a crime must occur concurrently to impose criminal liability for that crime.

People v. Eulo

Shooter shot the victim who was pronounced brain dead. The hospital then harvested the victim’s organs and turned off life support. Shooter claims hospital killed the victim, not he. When a person is brain dead, he is dead for purposes of assigning criminal liability for homicide.

State v. Guthrie

A man sought to appeal his conviction for premeditated murder on the ground that the evidence established that the stabbing of which he was convicted was the result of teasing and not preexisting intent to kill. To establish that a murder is premeditated and deliberate there must be some proof that the defendant considered and weighed his decision to kill.

Midgett v. State

A father who had been in the habit of physically abusing and neglecting his son, got drunk and beat him again resulting in the child’s death. The father was found guilty of first-degree murder by the trial court. Evidence of intentional child abuse, which eventually resulted in the child’s death, is not sufficient by itself to show the premeditated intent to kill necessary to sustain a conviction for murder in the first degree.

State v. Forrest

Forrest’s (d) father was terminally ill and in the hospital with a DNR order. Forrest (d) killed his father by shooting him, stating he did not want his father to suffer any longer. Killing someone to prevent their further suffering is still murder in the first degree, if it is willful, deliberate, and premeditated.

Girouard v. State

A husband killed his wife by stabbing her 19 times after she said horrible thing, threatened to leave him and told him he would be court marshalled. Words alone are not adequate provocation to provoke a reasonable person to kill in the heat of passion, thus they are not enough to mitigate murder to manslaughter.

People v. Casassa

After dating Casassa (d) the victim told him that she was not interest. He obsessed about her, stalked her, and killed her. His only defense is that he was acting under extreme emotional disturbance caused by her rejection. The test of whether the extreme emotional disturbance of the killer had a reasonable explanation or excuse depends on a reasonable evaluation of the external circumstances that the killer believed he was facing and not on the killer’s personal point of view.

People v. Knoller

A woman’s dogs attached and killed a neighbor, and the dog owner was charged with and convicted of second-degree murder; she appealed, arguing that the state did not prove the malic element and she was entitled to a new trial. Malice, to satisfy the elements of second-degree murder, requires a defendant’s awareness of the risk of death to another.

State v. Williams

The Williams (d), parents of a 17-month-old child with an abscessed tooth, did not supply necessary medical care, and the child died as a result. A showing of ordinary negligence may be sufficient to support a conviction for manslaughter.

People v. Fuller

Two guys who had observed them stealing tires got into a high-speed chase which resulted in an accident that killed the driver of another car. The felony-murder rule imposes strict liability for deaths caused by the commission of one of the enumerated felonies, which include burglary, even when the death is accidental.

Fischer v. State

Fisher (d) was convicted of felony murder for the killing of a 9-year-old child. The danger to life of a residual felony is determined by the nature of the crime or by the manner in which it was perpetrated in a given set of circumstances.

People v. Smith

An abusive mother convicted of felony-murder in the death of her child appealed from her conviction, arguing that the felony murder rule did not apply to her case. A second-degree felony murder conviction cannot stand when it is based on a felony that is an integral part of the homicide and the evidence produced by the prosecution shows it to be an offense included in fact within the homicide.

State v. Sophophone

While four burglars were fleeing the scene of a robbery, one burglar was handcuffed and placed in a police car, and then one of the other burglars was lawfully shot and killed by a police officer. A felony cannot be convicted of felony murder for a lawful killing committed by a third party who is not a co-felon.

United States v. Peterson

Peterson (d) was convicted of manslaughter (over his argument of self-defense) for shooting and killing Ketit whom he caught stealing the windshield wipers off of his wrecked car. The aggressor in a conflict that results in another’s death cannot justify his actions under the right of self-defense.

Nelson v. State

Nelson (d) raises the defense of necessity as justification for his actions in taking a dump truck and front-end loader from a Highway Department Yard to pull his stuck vehicle from a marshy area. The defense of necessity may be raised only where the defendant’s law-violating actions were necessary to prevent an even greater harm for occurring.

Haskell v. Spokane

Taylor (d) was charged with two misdemeanors after he trespassed onto a railroad’s property to protest the transport of oil and coal, and he petitioned the court to allow him to assert the defense of necessity. The defense of necessity is not available to a defendant who engages in civil disobedience by violating a constitutional law.

United States v. Contento-Pachon

Contento-Pachon (d), a Colombian national acting under duress, swallows balloon filled with cocaine for transport to the U.S. and is arrested at customs. A defendant may assert the defense of duress when he acts under a threat of future harm only when the harm is likely to occur so quickly that the defendant cannot escape the situation.

United States v. Veach

Veach (d) was involved in a motor-vehicle accident, and when the law enforcement officers arrived at the scene, a visible intoxicated Veach resisted arrest and threatened and assaulted them, but he was not allowed to present a defense of voluntary intoxication. Intoxication, whether voluntary or involuntary may preclude the formation of specific intent and thus serve to negate the mens rea element of specific intent crimes.

United States v. Freeman

Freeman (d), a chronic drug abuser and alcoholic, was convicted of the sale of narcotics using the M’Naughten rules to determine criminal liability. MPC § 4.01, which emphasizes appreciation of conduct, rather than simply knowing whether it is right or wrong, should be used in place of the narrow M’Naughten Rules to determine whether a defendant lacks criminal responsibility due to mental impairment or defect.

State v. Johnson

Johnson sets forth the development of the insanity test. A new standard that allows a jury to consider volitional as well as cognitive impairments before imposing criminal responsibility supersedes the restrictive M’Naughten Rule.

State v. Wilson

Wilson (d) shot a death a friend’s father, Jack, because he thought Jack was the mastermind of a huge conspiracy to control everyone’s mind, particularly Wilson’s mind. Even if a defendant appreciates that his actions were illegal, if he believes, due to his mental disease or defect, that his actions were morally justified then he will not be criminally responsible for his actions.

People v. Gentry

Gentry (d) was convicted of attempted murder after spilling gasoline on his girlfriend during a fight which then ignited as she passed the stove. Only the specific intent to kill satisfies the intent element of the crime of attempted murder.

Bruce v. State

Bruce (d) was convicted of attempted felony murder, as well as other charges, for shooting a storekeeper he was attempting to rob at gunpoint. Attempted felony murder is not a crime in Maryland.

United States v. Mandujano

The court clarifies the definition of attempt as used in § 846 of Title 21. For the crime of attempt, preparation alone is not enough, there must be some appreciable fragment of the crime committed.

Commonwealth v. Peaslee

Peaslee (d) concocted a plan to burn a building and all its contents, but he changed his mind before the plan was accomplished. Collection and preparation of materials in a room for the purpose of setting fire to them, unaccompanied with solicitation of another to set the fire, is near enough to the accomplishment of the substantive offense to be punishable.

People v. Rizzo

Four men were convicted of attempted robbery after they were caught driving, searching for their intended victim who was never found. An attempt may be found only where the defendants have engaged in an act tending to the commission of the crime which is so near to its accomplishment that in all reasonable probability the crime itself would have been committed, but for timely inference.

People v. Miller

Miller (d) was convicted of attempted murder for threatening to kill Jeans and later approaching him with a loaded rifle. Whenever the design of a person to commit crime is clearly shown, slight acts done in furtherance of this design will constitute an attempt.

State v. Reeves

Reeves (d) and a friend devised and tried to carry out a plan to kill their homeroom teacher and steal her car. When an actor possesses materials to be used in the commission of a crime, at or near the scene of the crime, and where the possession of those materials can serve no lawful purpose of the actor under the circumstances, the jury is entitled, but not required, to find that the actor has taken a substantial step towards the commission of the crime even if such action is strongly corroborative of the actor’s overall purpose.

People v. Thousand

A Sheriff’s Deputy logged into a chat room, posing as a 14-year-old female, and chatted with Thousand (d), who was later charged with attempted distribution of obscene materials to a minor. A defendant is guilty of attempt if he attempted to commit an offense prohibited by law and engaged in conduct in furtherance of the intended offense, whether an element of the underlying offense could not be satisfied due to legal or factual impossibility.

Commonwealth v. McClosekey

Prisoner planned a prison breach but abandoned the plan before leaving the prison and attempting the escape. A prisoner contemplating a prison breach, but still within prison having not yet attempted the act, is able to abandon the criminal act voluntarily, thereby exonerating himself from criminal responsibility.

State v. Mann

The solicitor conceives the criminal idea and furthers its commission via another person by suggesting to, inducing, or manipulating that person.

State v. Cotton 

Cotton (d) wrote letters to his wife, which she never received, trying to get her to convince his stepdaughter not to testify against him at trial. If a solicitor’s message never reaches the person intended to be solicited, the act is criminal, but it must be prosecuted as an attempt to solicit.

People v. Carter

A defendant may be convicted and punished for both the conspiracy and the substantive crime.

Pinkerton v. United States

Two brothers were convicted of both conspiracy and the substantive offense even though only one participated in committing the offense. Participation in the conspiracy is enough to sustain a conviction for the substantive offense in furtherance of the conspiracy.

People v. Swain

Swain (d) was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder after his friend killed a young boy in a drive-by shooting. A conviction of conspiracy to commit murder requires a finding of intent to kill and cannot be based on a theory of implied malice.

People v. Lauria

Lauria (d) ran a telephone answering service, which he knew was used by several prostitutes in their business ventures; Lauria (d) was indicted with the prostitutes for conspiracy to commit prostitution. The intent of a supplier who knows his supplies with be put to criminal use may be established by (1) direct evidence that he intends to participate, or (2) through an inference that he intends to participate based on (a) his special interest in the activity, or (b) the felonious nature of the crime itself.

Commonwealth v. Azim

Azim (d) was the driver of a car which two friends jumped out of to beat and rob a man walking down the street. Once conspiracy is established an upheld, a member of the conspiracy is also guilty of criminal acts of his co-conspirator.

Commonwealth v. Cook

Cook (d) and his brother met a girl and partied a bit, after which Cook’s (d) brother forcibly raped her in the woods while Cook watched. While proof of a tacit agreement to commit a crime may be enough to establish a conspiracy, a defendant cannot be convicted of conspiracy solely on evidence tending to show his complicity as an accomplice in the commission of the substantive crime.

People v. Foster

Foster (d) devised a plan to rob an old man; however, his co-conspirator really had reported him to the police and was just feigning agreement. The Illinois legislation encompasses the bilateral theory of conspiracy, which requires the actual agreement of at least two participants.

State v. Ward

The court distinguishes and defines the common law treatment of felony principals and accessories. An accessory cannot be tried, without his consent, before the principal, and an accessory cannot be convicted of a higher crime than the principal.

State v. Hoselton

Hoselton (d) was charged and convicted as a principal in the first degree for acting as lookout while his friends broke into a boat’s storage locker. The accused’s response that “you could say” he was lookout, standing completely alone, does not establish that the accused was an aider and abettor by participating in, and wishing to bring about the entering with intent to commit larceny.

Riley v. State

Riley (d) and Portalia fired shorts at a crowd of young people around a bonfire and seriously wounded two of the people, but at trial, the prosecution could not prove which man fired the wounding shots. In proving liability as an accomplice, the prosecution must only show that the accomplice had the required mental state for the underlying substantive offense, as opposed to proving intent to promote the actual forbidden result.

State v. Linscott

Linscott (d) was convicted of murder, under a theory of accomplice liability, when his friend shot and killed a man the two had intended to rob. A rule allowing for a murder conviction under a theory of accomplice liability based on the objective standard, despite the absence of evidence that the defendant possessed the culpable subjective mental state that constitutes an element of the crime of murder, doesn’t represent a departure from prior Maine law and, as such, is constitutional.

State v. V.T.

A minor was adjudicated an accomplice in the theft of a camcorder, even though he just sat by while his friends engaged in the offense. Passive behavior, such as mere presence or even continuous presence, absent evidence that the defendant affirmatively did something to instigate, incite, embolden, or help others in committing a crime, is not enough to qualify as encouraging the crime for purposes of accomplice liability.  

Wilcox v. Jeffery

Wilcox (d) was a music magazine writer who was charged with aiding an alien to illegally take employment. A person may be guilty of aiding and abetting a criminal act by being present, taking part, concurring in, or encouraging the act.

State v. Helmenstein

Helmenstein (d) was convicted of burglary after he and his friends drove to a nearby town and broke into a store and stole beer and food. A conviction may not be had upon the testimony of an accomplice unless his testimony is corroborated by such other evidence as tends to connect the defendant with the commission of the offense, and the corroboration is not sufficient if it merely shows the commission of the offense or the circumstances thereof.

People v. Genoa

Genoa (d) was charged with aiding and abetting for giving money to an undercover agent to buy and then sell cocaine for a profit. A person cannot be convicted of aiding and abetting the commission of a crime when the underlying crime was never committed by anyone.