Chapter 1
Criminal law is created by elected representatives in state legislatures.
What is state criminal code?
Punishments considered no longer acceptable by civilized society
What is barbaric punishment?
Conduct that causes another person's death
Something that causes a person to act
What is motive?
The area immediately surrounding the home
What is curtilage?
Offenses that are punishable by fine and/or confinement in the local jail for up to one year.
What is misdemeanor?
Punishments that are disproportionate to the crime commited
What is cruel and unusual punishment?
The requirement that mental attitudes have to turn into actions for a "crime" to be committed
What is manifest criminality?
Fault that requires a "bad mind" in the actor
What is subjective fault?
What is insanity?
Offenses that require some level of criminal intent
What is mala in se?
Requires the government to prove that a compelling interest justifies invading it
What is fundamental right to privacy?
The failure to act when there's a legal duty to act.
What is criminal omission?
The idea that it's fair and just to punish only people we can blame
What is culpability or blameworthiness?
When defendants use the excuse that they were forced to do what they did
What is defense of duress?
Crimes that are punishable by death or confinement in the state's prison for one year to life without parole
What is felony?
Bans "all government invasions of the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life".
What is constitutional right to privacy?
An obligation created by a statute, contract, or special relationship, and enforceable by law
What is legal duty?
Requires no purposeful or conscious bad mind in the actor
What is objective fault?
The justification that competent adults voluntarily consented to crimes against themselves and knew what they were consenting to
What is defense of consent?
What is mala prohibita offense?
A retroactive law criminalizes an act that wasn't a crime when it was committed, increases the punishment after the crime was committed, and takes away a defense that was available to a defendant when the crime was committed.
What is "ex post facto laws"?
Latin for "body of the crime"
What is corpus delicti?
Latin for guilty mind or criminal intent
What is mens rea?
Justifies the choice to commit a lesser crime to avoid the harm of a greater crime
What is choice-of-evils defense?