Criminal Law in U.S. Society
If you put the case into this category, then grade it as very serious, serious, or minor. The idea here is to stamp it with both the amount of disgrace (stigma) you believe a convicted "criminal" should suffer and roughly the kind and amount of punishment you believe the person deserves.
Crime
A law is ________________ if it forbids conduct and prescribes punishments in terms so uncertain that ordinary people have to guess at their meanining before they choose a course of action. (Lanzetta v. New Jersey 1939, 453)
Void for Vagueness
Actus Reus
Criminal Act
the idea that it's fair and just to punish only people we can blame
culpability or blameworthiness
the failure to act when there's a legal duty to act
criminal omission
Who quoted "Nothing is certain, but death and taxes." ?
Ben Franklin
"No crime without law; no punishment without law." No one can be convicted of or punished for, a crime unless the law defined the crime and prescribed the punishment before the person engaged in the behavior that was defined as a crime.
Principle of Legality
Mens Rea
Criminal Intent
Something that causes a person to act
Motive
the majority can't make a crime out of conduct protected by the fundamental rights in the U.S. Constitution
Constitutional democracy
This is a legal wrong that justifies suing someone and getting money, usually for some personal injury. In other words, name a price that the wrongdoer has to pay to another individual, but don't stamp it "criminal" (Coffee 1992, 1876-77).
Noncriminal Wrong
A right that bans "all governmental invasions of the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life."
Constitutional Right to Privacy
1. Criminal Act
2. Criminal Intent
3.Concurrence
4. Attendant circumstances
5. Bad result (causing a criminal harm)
The elements of a crime
fault that requires a "bad mind" in the actor.
subjective fault
Offenses that are crimes only because a specific statute or ordinance prohibits them
Mala Prohibita Offenses
What is the dual nature of U.S. criminal law divided into two categories: a small number of serious, core offenses and a large number of lesser crimes, or "everything else"?
Social Reality of U.S. Criminal Law
Punishments that are considered no longer acceptable to civilized society?
Barbaric punishments
Latin for " body of the crime"
Corpus delicti
The intent to commit the criminal act forbidden by statute
general intent
mistake defenses in which defendants usually present enough evidence to raise a reasonable doubt that the prosecution has proved the mens rea required for criminal liability
failure-of-proof defenses
What is the contributions of law, history, philosophy, the social sciences, and sometimes biology to explain the moral desires we wish to impose on the world?
Criminal Law Imagination
Other than the fact of prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
Apprendi Rule
Conduct that causes another person's death
Criminal Homicide
the general intent to commit the actus reus of a crime plus the intent to cause a criminally harmful result
specific intent
Criminal law created by city and town councils elected by city residents
municipal codes