Criminal Law Flashcards
Five circumstances where a legal duty to act may arise:
1) By statute (requirement to file a tax return)
2) By contract (lifeguard or nurse)
3) The relationship between the parties (parent/child)
4) The voluntary assumption of care
5) The defendant created the peril for the victim.
Specific Intent Crimes
Students Can Always Fake A Laugh, Even For Ridiculous Bar Facts
Solicitation
Conspiracy
Attempt
First Degree Premeditated Murder
Assault
Larceny
Embezzlement
False Pretenses
Robbery
Burglary
Forgery
Common Law Murder and Arson required mental state
Malice (reckless disregard of an obvious or high risk that the particular harmful result will occur).
Specific Intent Mens Rea
Intent to engage in proscribed conduct
General Intent Mens Rea
Awareness of acting in proscribed manner
Malice
Reckless disregard of a known risk
Purposefully
Conscious object to engage in proscribed act
Knowingly
Awareness that conduct is of a particular nature or will cause a particular result
Recklessly
Consciously disregarding a substantial and unjustifiable risk
Negligently
Failure to be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk.
Accomplice Liability - Principal
1) Conduct
2) Liability
1) Person who commits the illegal act or who causes an innocent agent to do so.
2) Liable for principle crime.
Accomplice Liability - Accomplice
1) Conduct
2) Liability
1) Person who aids or encourages principal to commit the illegal conduct
2) Liable for principal crime IF accomplice intended to aid or encourage crime.
Accomplice Liability - Accessory after the fact:
1) Conduct
2) Liability
1) Person who aids another to escape knowing that he has committed a felony.
2) Liable for separate, less serious crime of being an accessory after the fact.
Elements of Conspiracy
1) an agreement between two or more persons
2) an intent to enter into the agreement
3) an intent by at least two persons to achieve the objective of the agreement
Wharton Rule
Where two or more people are necessary for the commission of the substantive offense, there is no crime of conspiracy unless more parties participate in the agreement than are necessary for the crime.
Termination of conspiracy
Usually upon completion of the wrongful objective.
Liability for Co-conspirators crimes
A conspirator might be held liable for crimes committed by other conspirators if the crimes 1) were committed in furtherance of the objective of the conspiracy and 20 were foreseeable.
Defenses to conspiracy
Not really any, bc the crime is complete after a simple agreement.
Factual impossibility is NOT a defense.
Withdrawal is very hard to establish, but may be a defense to crime committed in furtherance of the conspiracy.
When is withdrawal effective in for conspiracy
A conspirator must perform an affirmative act that notifies all members of the conspiracy of the withdrawal. Notice must be given in time for all the members to abandon plans. Conspirator must try to neutralize all assistance they provided.
Solicitation Elements
Asking, inciting, counseling, advising, irging, or commanding another to commit a crime, with the intent that the person solicited commit the crime (person solicited does not need to agree to commit the crime).
Attempt elements
An act, done with intent to commit a crime, that falls short of completing the crime. Attempt requires 1) specific intent and 2) an overt act beyond mere preparation in furtherance of the crime.
Defenses to Attempt
Abandonment (NOT a defense at common law). MPC requires fully voluntary and complete abandonment.
Legal Impossibility
First degree murder
Deliberate and premeditated murder
First degree felony murder
Most common felonies for felony murder
Burglary, arson, rape, robbery, and kidnapping.
Limitations on felony murder
- The defendant must have committed or attempted to commit the underlying felony.
- The felony must be distinct from the killing itself
- Death must have been a foreseeable result
- The death must have been caused before the defendant’s immediate flight
In most jurisdictions, the D is not liable for felony murder when a co-felon is killed.
“proxmate cause” theory and “agency theory” felony murder
Prox” felons are liable for the death of innocent victims cause by someone ither than a co-felon,
Agency: The killing be committed by a felon or their agent.
Common law murder
The unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought.
Malice aforethought
There are no facts reducing the killing to voluntary manslaughter and was committed with one of the following states of mind:
- Intent to kill
- Intent to inflict great bodily injury
- Reckless indifference to an unjustifiably high risk to human life.
- Intent to commit a felony
Voluntary Manslaughter
A killing that would be murder but for the existence of an adequate provocation.
Four factors of adequate provocation
- It was a provocation that would arouse sudden and intense passion in the mind of an ordinary person.
- The D was in fact provoked
- There was not sufficient time between provocation and the killing for passions of a reasonable person to cool.
- The D in fact did not cool off between the provocation and the killing.
Involuntary manslaughter
A killing was committed with criminal negligence or, in some states, during the commission of an unlawful act.
Larceny
1) Crime
2) Method
3) Intent
4) Title
1) Taking and asportation of property from possession of another person.
2) Without consent or with consent obtained by fraud
3) With intent to steal
4) Title does not pass
Embezzlement
1) Conversion of property held pursuant to a trust agreement
2) Use of property in a way inconsistent with terms of trust
3) With intent to defraud
4) Title does not pass
False pretenses
1) Obtaining title to property
2) By consent induced by fraudulent misrepresentation
3) With intent to defraud
4) Title passes
Robbery
1) Taking of property from another’s presence
2) By force or by threat of force
3) With intent to steal
4) Title does not pass
Burglary
A breaking
And entry
Of a dwelling
Of another
At nighttime
With the intent to commit a felony in the structure
Arson elements
1) The malicious
2) Burning
3) Of the dwelling
4) of another
Insanity defense
1) Elements
2) Applicable crimes
1) Meet applicable insanity test (M’Naghten irresistible impulse, Durham, or M.P.C)
2) Defense to all crimes.
Involuntary Intoxication
1) Elements
2) Applicable crimes
1) taking intoxicating substance without knowledge of its nature, under duress, or pursuant to medical advice.
2) Treated as mental illness (apply appropriate insanity test), a defense to all crimes.
Voluntary Intoxication
1) Elements
2) Applicable crimes
1) Voluntary, intentional taking of a substance known to be intoxicating.
2) Defense to specific intent crime if intoxication prevents formation of required intent.
Infancy
1) Elements
2) Applicable crimes
1) Defendant under age 14 at common law; under modern statutes, defendant under age 13 or 14.
2) Common law: Under age seven, absolute defense to all crimes; under 14m rebuttable presumption of defense.
Modern statutes: Defense to adult crimes but may still be delinquent.
Diminished Capacity
1) Elements
2) Applicable crimes
1) As a result of mental defect short of insanity, defendant did not have the required mental state to commit the crime.
2) Most states with this defense limit it to specific intent crimes.
