Essay Skeletons Flashcards
Express Malice Murder
Definition: an unlawful killing where the actor desired the death of the victim
Step 1: Actus Reus = unlawful killing
- Check statutes for degrees
Step 2: Mens Rea = Malice aforethought, “Willful, deliberate, and premeditated”/
- MPC: purposely or knowingly
Step 3: Causation
- But-For Cause
- Proximate Cause
- Concurrence
Step 4: Look for transferred intent
Step 5: Defenses
- Insanity - M’Naghten, Irresistible Impulse, Durham, Substantial Capacity
- Voluntary Intoxication
- Involuntary Intoxication
- Unforeseeable intervening agent
- MPC allows necessity and duress defenses, CL does not
- Self Defense (Castle Doctrine/SYG)
Step 6: Cases = Taylor (hit and run, legal papers), Guthrie (towel whip nose guy = stabbing), Carroll (argument = hubby shoots in head), State (steakhouse stabbing)
Implied Malice Murder
Definition: reckless killings that demonstrated a depraved indifference to human life
Step 1: Actus Reus = extremely reckless behavior leads to death
Step 2: Mens Rea = Severe depravity or evidence of an “abandoned and malignant heart.”
- MPC - “extreme indifference to the value of human life”
Step 3: Causation
- But-For Cause
- Proximate Cause
- Concurrence
Step 4: Defenses
- Insanity - M’Naghten, Irresistible impulse, Durham, Substantial capacity
- Did not intent to inflict great bodily injury (punch vs. stab)
- Involuntary intoxication
- Regular recklessness (ratchet down to involuntary manslaughter)
- Unforeseen intervening agent
Step 5: Cases = Knoller (deadly dogs), Snyder (suffocating babies)
Felony Murder
Definition: D commits an underlying felony that results in death
Required Elements
- Independent felony or merger limitation
- Inherently dangerous felony limitation
- “In furtherance of the felony” limitation
- Agency Approach
Step 1: Actus Reus = felony action that leads to death
Step 2: Mens Rea = mens rea of the felony
Step 3: Causation
- But-For Cause
- Proximate Cause
- Concurrence
Step 4: Check for required elements
Step 5: Defenses
- Defenses to felony
- Necessity to felony
- Duress to felony
Step 6: Cases = Sarun Chun (stoplight driveby), Howard (police chase car collision), Stewart (drug binge starved baby), Hernandez (undercover cop friendly fire), 5 teen burglary, Sophophone (burglary, cop kills co-felon)
Voluntary Manslaughter
Definition: killing performed with provocation or sudden “heat of passion”
Required Elements
- Adequate provocation
- Killing in the heat of passion
1. Extreme assault on the defendant
2. Mutual combat
3. Illegal arrest of the defendant
4. Injury or serious abuse of close relative (or friend)
5. Sudden discovery of spousal adultery
- Performed suddenly before reasonable opportunity to cool off
- Causation between provocation, passion, and killing
Step 1: Actus Reus = unlawful killing
Step 2: Mens Rea = provocation or sudden “heat of passion” /
- MPC: Extreme Emotional Disturbance - “under the influence of mental or emotional disturbance for which there is reasonable explanation or excuse.”
Step 3: Causation
- But-For Cause
- Proximate Cause
- Concurrence
Step 4: Check for required elements and if “heat of passion” is found
Step 5: Defenses
- Adequate provocation
- EED
- Self-defense
- Imperfect self-defense = a killing with a sincere but unreasonable belief in imminent harm
- Involuntary intoxication
- Diminished mental capacity
Step 6: Cases = Castagna (mob v. black guy), Girouard (small wife attacks), White (run ex-hubby over), Ellie Nesler (kills molester in trial)
Involuntary Manslaughter
Definition: Conduct that constitutes a substantial and unjustified risk that results in death
Step 1: Actus Reus = action that leads to death
Step 2: Mens Rea = Disregarded substantial and unjustifiable risk
Step 3: Causation
- But-For Cause
- Proximate Cause
- Concurrence
Step 4: Defenses
- Insanity - M’Naghten, Irresistible impulse, Durham, Lacks substantial capacity
- Killing was unintentional
- Involuntary intoxication
- Honest mistake vs. recklessness
Step 5: Cases = Kolzow (baby in car)
Misdemeanor Manslaughter
Definition: D commits an underlying misdemeanor that results in death
Step 1: Actus Reus = misdemeanor action that leads to death
Step 2: Mens Rea = mens rea of the misdemeanor
Step 3: Causation
- But-For Cause
- Proximate Cause
- Concurrence
Step 4: Defenses
- Insanity - M’Naghten, Irresistible impulse, Durham, Lacks substantial capacity
- Involuntary intoxication
Step 5: Cases = Biechele (indoor pyrotechnics)
Negligent Homicide
Definition: D’s negligent acts caused death
- MPC = does tailor certain characteristics to the RP (blindness)
Step 1: Actus Reus = negligent action that leads to death
Step 2: Mens Rea = negligence, RP would have been aware
Step 3: Causation
- But-For Cause
- Proximate Cause
- Concurrence
Step 4: Defenses
- Insanity - M’Naghten, Irresistible impulse, Durham, Lacks substantial capacity
- Involuntary intoxication
Step 5: Cases = Traughber (truck driver swerves), Small (kids, fire, apartment), Negligent Skier
Physical Battery
Definition: unlawful application of physical force
Required elements
- Must engage in an unlawful application of physical force
- Must result in either a physical (bodily) injury or an offensive touching
- Acting with purpose, knowledge, or recklessness (or sometimes negligence)
Step 1: Actus Reus = unlawful application of physical force that results in bodily injury or offensive touching
Step 2: Mens Rea = purpose, knowledge, or recklessness (or sometimes negligence) Step 3: Causation - But-For Cause - Proximate Cause - Concurrence
Step 4: Check required elements
Step 5: Defenses
- Self-defense
- Insanity - M’Naghten, Irresistible impulse, Durham, Substantial Capacity
- Involuntary intoxication
- Necessity
- Duress
Step 6: Cases = Peck (spit in cop’s face = bad day), doctor amputates arm not leg
Assault
Definition: attempted battery or placing victim in reasonable apprehension of bodily harm
Step 1: Actus Reus =
a) attempt to do an unlawful application of physical force that results in bodily injury or offensive touching, but does not need result
b) Action that places somebody in reasonable apprehension of bodily harm
Step 2: Mens Rea =
a) Attempted battery route = purpose, knowledge, recklessness, or sometimes negligence
b) Reasonable apprehension route = intent to cause the required apprehension
- D must be genuinely aware that behavior is threatening
- Must be reasonable apprehension (overly sensitive people don’t count)
Step 3: Causation
- But-For Cause
- Proximate Cause
- Concurrence
Step 4: Check which avenue: attempted battery OR reasonable apprehension
Step 5: Defenses
- Self-defense
- Insanity - M’Naghten, Irresistible impulse, Durham, Substantial Capacity
- Involuntary intoxication
- Necessity
- Duress
Step 6: Cases = Commonwealth v. Boodoosingh (charge w/ bat), Border Agent an the brick, Birthmark (mom and brother scared, flee house)
Kidnapping
Definition: Unlawful confinement of the victim or the restriction of the victim’s movement
Required elements
- Confining or carrying away the victim (most controversial element)
- Forcibly or by threat or fear of deception
- For a nefarious purpose
Georgia Asportation Test
- whether movement is in the nature of the evil that kidnapping statute protects against duration of movement
- movement during separate offense
- movement inherent part of that separate offense
- movement presents a significant danger independent of separate offense.
Step 1: Actus Reus = Unlawful confine or restriction of movement
Step 2: Mens Rea = usually requires intent or purpose
- MPC lists following purposes: to hold for ransom or reward, or as a shield or hostage, or to facilitate commission of any felony or flight thereafter, or to inflict bodily injury or to terrorize the victim of another
Step 3: Causation
- But-For Cause
- Proximate Cause
- Concurrence
Step 4: Check required elements
Step 5: Check Asportation requirements
Step 6: Defenses
- Insanity - M’Naghten, Irresistible impulse, Durham, Lacks substantial capacity
- Involuntary intoxication
- Necessity
- Duress
Step 7: Cases = Goolsby (double home invasion and rape)
Stalking
Definition: Extension of the crime of assault, stalking can be far in the future, mental/emotional - instead of physical
Step 1: Actus Reus = Actions that place someone in a physical/mental/emotional state of reasonable apprehension of bodily injury
Step 2: Mens Rea = intent to cause the required apprehension
Step 3: Causation
- But-For Cause
- Proximate Cause
- Concurrence
Step 4: Defenses
- Insanity - M’Naghten, Irresistible impulse, Durham, Lacks substantial capacity
- Involuntary intoxication
- Necessity
- Duress
Step 5: Cases = Rebecca Schaeffer (actress killed by fan), Florida Villages (name calling in pool guy), Mitch McConnell (online and phone threats)
Rape
Definition: Non-consensual sexual intercourse completed by force or threat of force
Required elements*
- Some jx. require physical resistance or verbal resistance
- Force or threat of force
- Lack of consent
Step 1: Actus Reus = sex by force or threat
Step 2: Mens Rea = purpose or knowledge
Step 3: Causation
- But-For Cause
- Proximate Cause
- Concurrence
Step 4: Determine if resistance is necessary, and if met
Step 5: Determine if by force or threat of force
- Force - physical force that sometimes overcomes resistance
- Threat of force - threat prevents the victim from resisting due to a reasonable fear or apprehension re the victim’s safety
- Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic
- MPC = limited crime of rape to threats of “imminent death, serious bodily injury, extreme pain or kidnapping.” (has lesser crime of “gross sexual imposition”
Step 6: Determine if lack of consent
- Was there communication or just a state of mind?
Step 7: Was there Rape by Fraud?
- Fraud in the factum - lie about the nature of the act itself
- Fraud in the inducement - D lies about something to convince to have sex
Step 8: was there statutory rape?
Step 9: Defenses
- If state of mind -> mistake of fact (thought had consent)
- Insanity - M’Naghten, Irresistible impulse, Durham, Lacks substantial capacity
- Involuntary intoxication
- Duress
- Necessity
Step 10: Cases = Jones (ended affair, but rape), Rusk (light choking), Lopez (forest rape), Newton (teacher drinking sodomy), Boro (deadly disease doctor), Sabbar Kashur (israel)
Self-Defense
Definition: Non-deadly force is permitted in response to a non-deadly threat
Required elements:
Reasonable belief of an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury
Must be necessary and that his response was proportionate
Can use to defend others
MPC - reject imminence and requires that defensive force be an “immediately necessary” at the time of its deployment”
Step 1: Actus Reus = Non-deadly force
Step 2: Mens Rea = Reasonable belief of an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury
Step 3: Causation
- But-For Cause
- Proximate Cause
- Concurrence
Step 4: Was the threat imminent? (cannot be too early or too late)
Step 5: Was D the aggressor?
Step 6: Was there a duty to retreat?
Step 7: Does the Castle Doctrine apply?
Step 8: Does Stand Your Ground apply?
Step 9: Cases = Norman (abused, prostituted, waits and kills), Peterson (Stealing windshields, warns then shoots), Riddle (insult wife, gets rifle and shoots friend), George Zimmerman, Goetz (subway dude), Oscar Pisorius (South Africa Olympian)
Defensive Force by Police Officers
Definition: Police can use self-defense to justify unlawful killing
Cases = Eric Garner, Graham v. Connor (reasonable officer), Richard Matt (fled to Canada), Michael Brown, Michael Brelo (137 shots at victims car), Breonna Taylor
Necessity
Definition: committing the crime was “necessary”
Required elements:
- Violation of the law produces a lesser evil than had the defendant complied with the law.
- The danger must represent a present, imminent, or immediate threat
- The defendant cannot be responsible for creating the very situation that produced the state of necessity
- The defendant must have no alternative but to violate the law
- There must be a causal relationship between the criminal act and the harm to be avoided
- The defendant must not have continued the illegal conduct after the harm was averted
- Most jurisdictions disallowed the defense if the crime in question represents a legislative choice to disallow a claim of necessity
- MPC = “choice of evils” defense and requires that “the harm, or evil sought to be avoided by such conduct is greater than that sought to be prevented by the law defining the offense charged…”
Applications
- CL, not available for murder, but MPC allows
- Can be used for felony murder, use necessity for underlying felony
- Direct civil disobedience (not indirect)
Cases = Ridner (3 shotgun shells in pocket), Dudley (Shipwreck Cannibalism), guy kills abortion doctor