Offenses Against the Person Flashcards
Battery
Unlawful application of force to the person of another resulting in either bodily injury or an offensive touching; simple battery is a misdemeanor. Can be, but need not be, intentional, and the force need not be applied directly (ex: causing dog to attach a victim). Some jxs recognize consent as a defense to simple battery and/to certain specified batteries.
Aggravated battery: Most jxs trea the following as aggravated batteries and punish them as felonies:
- battery with a deadly weapon
- battery resulting in serious bodly harm; AND
- battery of a child, woman, or police officer
Assault
Assault is either:
- An attempt to commit a battery; OR
- Intentional creation - other than by mere words - of a reasonable apprehension in the mind of the victim of imminent bodily harm.
If there has been actual touching of the victim, the crime can only be battery, not assault
Aggravated Assault: Aggravated assault (ex: with a deadly weapon or with intent to rape or maim) is treated more severely than simple assault
Mayhem
CL - the felony of mayhem required either dismemberment or disablement of a bodily part. The trend is to abolish mayhem as a separate offense and to treat it instead as a form of aggravated battery
Common Law Homicide Categories
Three categories:
- Murder
- Voluntary Manslaughter
- Involuntary Manslaughter
Murder (CL)
Murder: Unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought. Malice aforethouht exists if there are no facts reducing the killing to voluntary manslaughter or excusing it and it 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 (abandoned/malignant heart)
- Intent to commit a felony (felony murder)
Intentional use of deadly weapon authorizes a permissive inference of intent to kill.
Voluntary Manslaughter (CL)
Killing that would be murder but for the existence of adequate provocation. Provocation is adequate only if:
- It would arose sudden and intense passion in the mind of an ordinary person, causing him to lose self-control (ex: exposure to a threat of deadly force, finding your spouse cheating, o being a victim of a serious battery)
- D was in fact provoked
- There was ot sufficient time etween provocation/s and killing for passions of a reaoable person to cool; and
- The D in fact did not cool off between the provocation and the killing
Imperfect Self Defense
Some states allow murder to be reduced to manslaughter even though (1) the D was at fault in starting the altercation; or (2) the D unreasonably but honestly believed in the necessity of responding with deadly force
Involuntary Mansglaughter
Committed with criminal negligence (or recklessness in MPC) or, in some states, during the commission of an unlawful act. Foreseeability of death also may be required.
Statutory Modification of Common Law Classification
Some Jxs, murder is divided into degrees by statute. A murder is second degree unless it comes under the following circumstances which would make it first degree:
- Deliberate and premeditated: If D made the decision to kill in cool and dispassionate manner and actually reflected on the idea of killing (eve if brief) (voluntary intox negates specific intent which is required by premeditation)
- First degree felony murder: Many states, a killing committed during the commission of an enumerated felony in felony murder and called first degree murder (burglary, arson, ape robbery, and kidnapping, and inherently dangerous felonies).
- Others: Some statutes make killings performed in certain ways (torture) first degree murder
Felony Murder
Any death caused in the commission of, or in attempt to commit a felony is murder. Malice is implied rom the intent to commit the underlying felony.
Included felonies: At CL:
- Buglary
- Arson
- Rape
- Sodomy
Limitations on Liability to Felony Murder
- D must have committed or attempted to commit the underlying felony; a defense that negates an element of the underlying offense will also e a defense to felony murder
- The felony must be distinct fromt he killing itself
- Death must havebeen forseeable as a result
- Death must have been caused before the defendant’s immediate flight from the felony ended; once the D reached a place of “temporary safety” subsequent deaths are not felony murder
- Most jxs, D isnt liable for felony murder when a co-felon is killed as a result of resistance from the felony victim or police
- Under proximate cause theory, felons are liable for the deaths of innocent victims caused by someone other than a co-felon. Under agency theory, the killing must be committed y a felon or his agent with limited exceptions in cases in which the victim was used as a shield or otherwise forced by the felon to occupy a dangerous place
Misdemeanor Manslaughter (Felony Murder)
Misdemeanor must be malum in se, or, if the misdemeanor involved is not malum in se, the death must have been foreseeable result of the commission of the misdemeanor.
Homicide Causation
D’s conduct must be both the cause in fact and proximate cause of the victim’s death
Cause-in-Fact: A D’s conduct is the cause in fact of te result if the result would not have occurred but for the d’s conduct.
Proximate Causation: A D;s conduct is the proximate cause of the result if the result is a natural and probable consequence of the conduct, even if the D did not anticipate the precise manner in which the result occurred. Superceeding factors break the chain of proximate causation.
Rules of Causation: An act that hastens a inevitable result is still the legal cause of that result. Simultaneous acts of two o more persons may be independently sufficient causes of a single result. A victim’s preexisting weakness or fragility, even if unforeseeable, does not break the chain of causation.
Causation Limitations
Year and Day Rule: Traditionally for D to be liable for homicide, the death of the victim must occur within one year and one day from infliction of the injury or wound Most states that have reviewed this rule have abolished it.
Intervening Acts: Generally, an intervening act shields the D from liability if the act is a coincidence or is outside the foreseeable sphere of risk created by the D.
Note: A 3rd party’s negligent medical care and thee victim’s refusal of medial treatment for religious reasons are both foreseeable risks, so the D would be liable.
Born Alive Rule
An infant had to be born alive to be a victim of a homicide crime. However, a number of stated have abrogated this rule by statute by extending protection to unborn children as potential homicide victims.
