criminal liability
behavior that deserves punishment.
Criminal liability falls on "conduct that unjustifiably and inexcusably inflicts or threatens substantial harm to individual or public interests
torts
noncriminal wrongs.
torts are private wrongs for which you can sue the party who wronged you and recover money.
Crime of murder is also a tort for wrongful death.
Chaney v. State (1970)
The need for punishment to make condemnation meaningful.
Alaska Supreme Court rules that the solider's punishment was far too lenient to impose any true punishment. The punishment did not reaffirm societal norms. The imposed sentence could lead to the con
Crimes of moral turpitude
The moral turpitude crimes consist of criminal behavior that needs no law to tell us it's criminal because it's inherently wrong or evil, like murder and rape.
Crimes without moral turpitude consist of behavior that's criminal only because a statute says
most widely used scheme for classifying crimes
Felonies and misdemeanors
Felonies
Felonies are crimes punishable by death or confinement in the state's prison for one year to life without parole.
A person who is convicted of a felony but pleads down to a lesser charge of a misdemeanor is still a felon.
Felonies have to be in court for
Misdemeanors
Misdemeanors are punishable by fine and/or confinement in the local jail for up to one year. "Punishable" depends on the possible
punishment, not the
actual* punishment.
general part of criminal law
The general part of criminal law consists of principles that apply to more than one crime. Most state criminal codes today include a general part.
The general principles are broad propositions that apply to more than one crime. Some general principles app
Complicity
Complicity are crimes that make one person criminally liable for someone else's conduct. Specific crimes of accomplice to murder; accomplice to robbery; or accomplice to any other crime for that matter.
Crimes of attempt, conspiracy, solicitation to commit specific crimes
attempted, murder, conspiring to murder, and soliciting to murder.
special part of criminal law
The special part of criminal law defines specific crimes and arranges them into groups according to the subject matter. All states include the definitions of at least some specific crimes, and most group them according to the subject matter.
The special p
Common law crimes
judges court opinions were the original source of criminal law and it remained that way for several centuries.
These crimes were created before legislatures existed and when social order depended on obedience to unwritten rules based on community customs
State common law crimes
Adopted by the 13 colonies from the English colonists who traveled to the new world.
Most states do not have common law crimes anymore but some states, including Florida, still recognize the common law of crimes.
California includes all of the common law
Federal Common Law Crimes
U.S. v. Hudson (1812): no criminal libel statute so the court cannot punish it for being a crime if the crime does not exist.
State Criminal Codes
The first criminal codes appeared in 1648, the work of the New England Puritans.
codified
(put into writing)
The Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts codified the colonies' criminal law, defining crimes and spelling out punishments.
David Dudley Field
Field's codes were designed to simplify legal practice by sparing attorneys the tedium of having to sift through an ever rising mountain of common law. As a result, Field was more concerned with streamlining than he was with systematizing or even reformin
The Model Penal Code (MPC)
The American Law Institute (ALI) was committed to replacing the common law. From the earliest of 13 drafts written during the 1950s to the final version in 1962, in the MPC, ALI finished a code that abolished common law crimes. After its adoption in 1962,
analysis of criminal liability
How to analyze statutes and cases to answer the question: "What behavior deserves criminal punishment?
municipal ordinances
City, town and village government can create criminal laws.
"zero tolerance" for drugs, violence, public disorder, and other "quality of life" offenses that violate community standards of good manners in public.
Municipal ordinances often duplicate and ov
administrative crimes
violations of federal and state agency rules that allow administrative agencies to make their own rules.
federal system
there are 52 criminal codes, one for each of the 50 states, one for the District of Columbia, and one for the U.S. criminal code.
The U.S. government's power is limited to crimes specifically related to national interests, such as crimes committed on mili
rates of imprisonment
measured by the number of prisoners per 100,000 people in the general population. The United States lead the world. Gender, age, and race are not equally represented in the prisoner population. Black men are imprisoned at the highest rate, 6.5 times highe
punishment
in everyday life, punishment means intentionally inflicting pain or other unpleasant consequences on another person.
criminal punishment
To qualify as criminal punishment, penalties have to meet 4 criteria:
(1) they have to inflict pain or other unpleasant consequences.
(2) they have to prescribe a punishment in the same law that defines the crime.
(3) they have to be administered intentio
retribution
retributionists insist that only the pain of punishment can pay for the offenders' past crimes. the punishment justifies itself.
Retribution looks back to past crimes and punished individuals for committing them. They contend that punishment benefits not
prevention
utilitarians insist that the pain of punishment can and should be only a means to a greater good, usually the prevention or at least the reduction of future crime.
looks forward and inflicts pain, not for its own sake but to prevent future crimes.
General deterrence
General deterrence aims by the threat of punishment, to prevent the general population who haven't committed crimes from doing so.
Special deterrence
Special deterrence aims by punishing already convicted offenders to prevent them from committing any more crimes in the future.
Incapacitation
Incapacitation prevents convicted criminals from committing future crimes by locking them up or more rarely, altering them surgically or executing them.
Includes mutilation--castration, amputation, and lobotomy--or death in capital punishment. In most cas
Rehabilitation
Rehabilitation aims to prevent future crimes by changing individual offenders so they'll want to play by the rules and will not commit any more crimes in the future.
follows from the medical model of criminal law. The purpose of punishment is to cure crim
Hedonism
humans seek pleasure and pain.
rationalism
states that individuals can, and ordinarily do, act to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. Rationalism also permits human beings to apply natural laws mechanistically instead of discretion.
deterrence theory
according to the theory, rational humans will not commit crimes if they know that the pain of punishment outweighs the pleasure gained from committing crimes. Prospective criminals weigh the pleasure they hope to get from committing a crime now against th
principle of utility
supporters of deterrence argue that the principle of utility--permitting only the minimum amount of pain necessary to prevent the crime--limits criminal punishment more than retribution does.
medical model" of criminal law
In this model, crime is a disease and criminals are sick.
indeterminate sentencing laws
Rehabilitation replaced deterrence as the aim of criminal sanctions and remained the dominant form of criminal punishment until the 1960s. Most states enact indeterminate sentencing laws that made prison release dependent on rehabilitation. Most prisons c
fixed (determinate) sentences
The idea that criminals deserved to be punished. This replaced the indeterminate sentencing, in which the sentence depends on the criminal harm suffered by the victim, not the rehabilitation of the offender.
Presumption of innocence
means that the prosecution has the burden of proof when it comes to proving the criminal act and intent.
proof beyond a reasonable doubt
the highest standard of proof known to the law. the highest does not mean beyond all doubt or to the level of absolute certainty.
reasonable doubt
consists of "proof that prevents one from being convinced of the defendant's guilt, or the belief that there is a real possibility that the defendant is not guilty.
bench trials
the accused give up their right to a jury trial, prosecutors have to prove guilt to the trial judge.
corpus delicti
body of the crime"
applies to the elements of criminal conduct and bad result crimes.
affirmative defenses
defenses of justification and of excuse because defendants have to present evidence. defense has to provide some evidence proving justification or excuse.
burden of production
when defense has to provide evidence to prove justification or excuse. some credible evidence is enough. in some jurisdictions, if defendants meet the burden of production, they also have the burden of persuasion, meaning they have to prove their defense
discretionary decision making
consisting of judgments made by professionals, based on unwritten rules, their training, and their experience.
not guilty" verdict
does not mean innocent, it means government did not prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
guilty" verdict
does not mean not innocent. it means the government proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
majority opinion
the opinion of the majority of the justices on the court who participated in the case.
concurring opinion
justices agree with the conclusions of the majority or the dissenting but they have different reasons for reaching the conclusion.
plurality opinion
an opinion that represents the reasoning of the greatest number (but less than a majority) of justices.
court's opinion
the court's opinion contains 2 essential ingredients:
(1) the court's holding--the legal rule the court has decided to apply to the facts of the cases.
(2) the court's reasoning--the reasons the court gives to support its holding. in some cases, the justi
judgment
how the court disposes of the case.
opinion
the court backs up its judgment by explaining how and why the court applied the law to the facts of the case.