Criminal Law

• Crime punishable by death or imprisonment of more than one year:
• Burglary
• Arson
• Robbery
• Rape
• Larceny
• Murder
• Manslaughter
• Mayhem  

• Punishable by imprisonment for less than one year or by only a fine
• At common law, all non-felonious crimes 

Act that is only wrong because it violates a statute

• Act that is inherently wrong or evil
• Crimes invoving general criminal intent or moral turpitude 

• Statutes must be fair and consistent
• Not arbitrarily or erratically enforced
• Must be specific and give person of ordinary intelligence fair notice of conduct that is prohibited  

• Actus Reus (guilty act)
• Mens Rea (guilty mind)
• Concurrence in time
• Occurance of a result    

• Voluntary act that causes unlawful result;
• An omission to act where defendant is under legal duty;
• Vicarious liability where defendant is responsible for acts of a third party  

• Legal duty to act; and
• Defendant can physically perform act 

• By statute
• By contract
• By relationship
• Where voluntary undertaking began
• Where someone creates another person's risk of peril    

• Insufficient: reflexive, convulsive, unconsciously performed; otherwise involuntary
• Sufficent: Habitual acts that one is aware of is conscious and voluntary 

• Intentionally: D desires his actions to cause certain consequences or knows that the acts are substantially certain to produce consequences
• Knowingly: D knows nature/result of conduct
• Purposely: Conscious objective to engage in conduct or cause result
• Willfully: Implies evil purpose in crimes involving moral turpitude
• Recklessly: D consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that a material element exits or will result from his crime; disregard be "gross deviation"
• Criminal negligence: D's conduct creates high degree of risk death or serious injury beyond tort standard     

• D wants, hopes, or wishes conduct will bring about a particular result; regardless of likelihood; or
• D is substantially certain purposeful act will have a particular result, even if he does not necessarily want a particular result  

• First-degree murder
• Theft crimes: larceny, robbery, extortion, embezzlement, false prestenses; and receiving stolen property
• Burglary
• Inchoate crimes
• Assault    

• General defenses
• Voluntary intoxication
• Unreasonable mistake  

• Merely requires commission of an unlawful act
• Intent only volunarily and purposely 

• Rape
• Battery
• Kidnapping
• False imprisonment
• Involuntary manslaughter
• Depraved-heart murder    

• Defendant acts 
• Intentionally or with reckless disregard
• Of an obvious or known risk
• That the particular harmful resort will occur

• Common law murder
• Arson

Culpability is imposed on defendant merely for doing the prohibited act

• Regulatory offenses (traffic violations, admin statutes, etc)
• Public welfare offenses (regulation of firearms, food and drugs)
• Morality crimes (statutory rape and bigamy)  

Preserves liability where defendant intends criminal conduct against one party but results in harm to another

Mental state puts act or omission into action

• Necessary in some but not most crimes
• Actual and proximate cause

• But-for test
• If multiple parties, then "substantial factor" in result

• Harm within the risk created by defendant's conduct in crimes involving negligence or recklessness
• Eggshell skull rule applies

• An action or actions by the defendant
• Cause of death of another person
• With criminal intent
• Without legal excuse or justification

Unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought

• Voluntary act;
• Involuntary act arising from a voluntary act;
• Omission to act where a legal duty exists

• Common law: "but-for" enough even if actions alone were insufficient
• Increasing speed of death is actual cause
• "Natural and probable"consequence of defendant's conduct
• Common law: results from act one year or less; not applied by most states
• Accomplice
• Conspiracy where killing is foreseeable
• Commission of a felony