Crim Law Cali Flashcards
Mens Rea: elements of an offense (common law)
- Purpose
- Intent
- Willfulness
- Knowledge
- Recklessness
- Negligence
Actus Reas: Common Law
- Affirmative Act
-Involuntary: non bodily
- Voluntary - Ommision
- Relations
- Statute
- voluntary
- creation of peril
Actus reas: MPC
Voluntary
Ommissions
act
some bodily movement
4 types of acts
- Act
- Voluntariness
- Omissions
- Possession
non voluntary
- Relex of Convulsion
- Bodily movement during unconsciousness or sleep
- Conduct during hypnosis or resulting form hypnotic suggestion
- bodily movement that otherwise is not a product of the effort or determination of the actor, either conscious or habitual
Omision
failure to act: not acting creates the criminal liability
Mens rea
level of purpose
Under the Code, a person is not guilty of an offense unless he or she “acted purposely, knowingly, recklessly, or negligently . . . with respect to each material element of the offense.”
Mens rea in Common law v. MPC
Purpose = intentional in common law
Intentional = purpose and knowledge
Purpose in Mens rea
most culpable mental state is that it is the actor’s “conscious object” to engage in the prohibited conduct or to cause the prohibited result.
Knowledge in mens rea
when knowledge of the existence of a particular fact is an element of an offense, such knowledge is established if a person is aware of a high probability of its existence
Recklessness mens rea
MPC: two essential components of the definition are the level of awareness required – conscious disregard – and the nature of the risk that the actor disregards
objective in nature
allowing the jury to measure the actor’s conduct against the conduct of others like themselves.
Subjective in nature
allowing juries to take into consideration those aspects of the actor and the conduct that are unique, idiosyncratic, or unusual in some way
Mens rea of negligence
A person acts negligently with respect to a material element of an offense when he should be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the material element exists or will result from his conduct
involves a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would observe in the actor’s situation.
2 components to negligence
Failure to perceive a risk
Nature of the risk: substantial and unjustifiable
Minimum Culpability Requirements under the MPC
person is not guilty of an offense unless he acted purposely, knowingly, recklessly or negligently, as the law may require, with respect to each material element of the offense.
material elements
an element that does not relate exclusively to the statute of limitations, jurisdiction, venue, or to any other matter similarly unconnected with (i) the harm or evil, incident to conduct, sought to be prevented by the law defining the offense, or (ii) the existence of a justification or excuse for such conduct.
Mistake as to matter of fact is a defense if
- the ignorance or mistake negatives the purpose, knowledge, belief, recklessness or negligence required to establish a material element of the offense; or
- the law provides that the state of mind established by such ignorance or mistake constitutes a defense.
Types of Offenses
result offenses: ex homicide
conduct offense: diving while intoxicated
2 types of causation
Factual: but for cause
Legal: Proximate cause
Causation to be criminal
needs to be both factual and legal (but for and proximate)
Nonintentional offenses
including “transferred intent (or rather “awareness” or “risk”), “ “intervening cause,” “foreseeability,” and the like).
Strict liability MPC
NO STRICT LIABILITY IN MPC
Concurrence
to have a crime at common law, it was necessary to have both an actus reus and a mens rea. It is not enough, however, that both elements be present at some point in time. The doctrine of concurrence requires that these elements concur, or coincide, in order for criminal liability to be appropriate.
Justification Defenses
to say that someone’s conduct is “excused” ordinarily connotes that the conduct is thought to be undesirable but that for some reason the actor is not to be blamed for it.
3 questions to decide if behavior gives rise to criminal liability
(1) Did a violation of a criminal statute occur?
(2) If so, was that violation unjustified?
(3) If so, was the person committing the violation excused?
necessity as excuse
balance of evils
necessity as excuse
duress
subjective entrapment
is a third-level excuse defense that turns on the impossibility of withstanding the inducement provided by the law enforcement official setting the trap.
Here, the causal connection between the inducement and the criminal act must be very close: the inducement must be the but-for cause of the act, i.e., but for the inducement the person would not have committed the offense in question. This requirement is often framed in terms of the actor’s “predisposition” to commit the offense. If she was predisposed to commit it, no entrapment.v
The Three Levels of the Analysis of Criminal Liability
- Did a violation of a criminal statute occur (facial criminality)
- If so, was that violation unjustified (legality)
- If so, was the person committing the violation excused (responsibility)
Let’s assume she was reckless, then, regarding the situation giving rise to the threat that gave rise to her commission of the offense. Let’s forget for a moment that this offense is a strict liability offense. If you like, imagine the legislature, after much citizen protest, decides to transform the offense into a knowledge offense, criminalizing “knowingly distributing beer to a person under the age of twenty-five.”
Duress?
NO: Recklessly placing oneself in the situation giving rise to the duress bars the defense. Therefore, Maggie would be guilty of the offense as charged.
Duress MPC
Model Penal Code recognizes only duress caused by “the use of, or a threat to use, unlawful force,” thus apparently restricting the scope of duress to personal duress.
necessity as justification
Balance of evils
Assuming this balance of harms comes out in the actor’s favor, the behavior is justified under necessity as justification if it was necessary to avert the greater harm
necessity as an excuse (duress)
Available in cases where the balancing of harms does not come out in the actor’s favor.
objective entrapment
focuses on the inducer, rather than the induced, i.e., on law enforcement rather than on the defendant. It expands the entrapment defense to cases in which the actor was predisposed to commit the offense, which is another way of saying that the inducement was not the but-for cause of the criminal act.
it reflects due process concerns and covers only cases of “outrageous government misconduct,” which is another way of saying that it virtually never succeeds.
