Criminal Law Flashcards
Specific intent crimes
- First-degree murder
- Inchoate offenses
- Assault with intent to commit battery
- Theft offenses
Malice crimes
CL murder, arson
- Reckless disregard of high risk of harm
- Requires only criminal act without excuse, justification, or mitigation
General intent crimes
(e.g., battery, rape, kidnapping, and false imprisonment)
- Require the intent to perform an unlawful act
- Intent – knowingly, recklessly, or negligently
Model Penal Code MRs
- Purposefully – conscious objective to engage in conduct
- Knowingly/willfully – aware or knows that the result is practically certain to occur
- Recklessly – acts with conscious disregard of substantial and unjustifiable risk
- Negligently – should be aware of substantial and unjustifiable risk
Strict-liability crimes
Proof of the AR is sufficient for conviction (e.g., statutory rape, bigamy, regulation of food and drug)
Vicarious liability
Proof of MR is sufficient for conviction; generally limited to regulatory crimes
Mistake of fact
- Negates criminal intent (if honest)
- Defense to SI crime even if unreasonable
- Defense to GI/malice crime only if reasonable
Mistake of law
- Defendant relied on court decision/admin order
- Statutory definition of malum prohibitum crime not available before conduct, or
- Honestly held mistake of law negates required intent
Principal
Person whose acts or omissions are the AR of crime; must be actually or constructively present at the scene of the crime
Accomplice liability
Aids/abets principal prior to/during crime with intent that crime be committed
- Accessory before the fact – neither physically nor constructively present during the commission of crime, but possess the requisite intent
- Principal in second degree – physically or constructively present during the commission of crime
- Responsible for crime and all natural and probable consequences of it
- To withdraw, must
1. Repudiate prior aid,
2. Do all that is possible to countermand prior assistance, and
3. Do so before chain of events set in motion and unstoppable
Accessory after fact
Aids or assists felon to avoid apprehension or conviction after felony committed
- Must know felony was committed
- Only L for separate crime (e.g., obstruction of justice)
Insanity
- M’Naghten test – didn’t know nature/quality of act or wrongfulness of act because of defect due to mental disease (“right from wrong” test)
- Irresistible impulse – lacked capacity for self-control and free choice due to mental disease of defect
- Durham – unlawful act was product of defendant’s mental disease or defect (“but for” test)
- MPC (M’Naghten + irresistible impulse) – at time of conduct, defendant lacked substantial capacity to appreciate wrongfulness of act OR to conform conduct to law as a result of mental disease or defect
Intoxication
Voluntary – defense to SI crimes if it prevents required intent
Involuntary – taken without knowledge of intoxicating nature or under duress
- Negates element of GI, SI, or malice crime
Murder
Unlawful killing of another human being committed with malice aforethought
- Intent to kill
- Intent to do serious bodily injury
- Reckless indifference to human life (depraved heart)
- Felony murder (BARRK)
Statutory murder
First-degree (SI crime) – deliberate/premeditated or felony murder
Second-degree (malice crime) –necessary malicious intent or default category if not first-degree murder