Criminal Law: Outline (Garvey)

Exam: Closed Book

Memorize Common Law

  • Look at successful prosecution of D’s with regards to how they were charged
  • If crime not defines in MPC, you will get a definition
  • You will be put in an MPC or Common Law Jurisdiction.
  • Murder – MPC
  • Malice Murder: Common Law
  • Pennsylvnia: Degrees

I. THE PRINCIPLES OF PUNISHMENT

Criminal Law: Moral Condemnation + Punishment.

  • Look to what a state wants to condemn and work backwards.

Punishment: a burden or hardship imposed for the purpose of expressing condemnation of a certain act.

  • Or, Punishment is hardship with intent to condemn.
  • Is all that distinguishes it a moral condemnation by the community?

What is a crimeWhatever the state says

Whatever the state punishesWhat is Punishment?

1. Hardship

2. Intent to Condemn

3. On person state represents as offenders

Courts look back at Common Law: Informative, but not Dispositive

  • Relevance: Interpretation and Gap Filling
  • Some states use a Reception Statute: If state has not codified all crimes in a jurisdiction, may enact Reception statute that says whatever is a crime at this time is a crime from here on Common Law drawn upon

Presumptions: Canons

  • Tie-Breakers
  • Rule of Lenity
  • Orthodox way of interpreting a criminal statute (If not clear, move down chain):

(1) Language

(2) Intention of Law Makers.

(3) Canons

  • If there is a tie, goes to Defendant. “Rule of Lenity”

Model Penal Code: Default Interpretation Rules

  • Fills statutory silence with something
  • Made in response to piecemeal development of codes
  • Not a Restatement

Appeals Process in State Criminal Case:

(If Federal Case, Second Step eliminated and start directly at Federal District Court)

Direct Appeal Process

US Supreme
If it’s Smith v. State, then it’s direct appeal.
Comes up through petitions for cert. / US Supreme / US Supreme
State Supreme / State Supreme / Federal Court of Appeals
State Trial / State Trial / Federal District

State Post-Conviction ReviewIf you lose here, you have

Federal habeas corpus

Would file if lost in Direct AP

Then move up the chain again.

Why the Second Stage?

  • Certain kinds of errors that affected the process of your conviction is not apparent in what happened (eg. say lawyer did terrible job at state trial).

Why might you need the Federal Court?

  • Claim maybe needs to be heard by a federal judge
  • Third column is controversial because it is primarily used by death row inmates because the state pays for lawyers
  • Also, in state processes. What if state says no violation of federal law?

Case: Owens v. State (13)

  • Guy is found in driveway with open beer cans in his car.
  • About the presumption of innocence
  • No one can be found guilty unless and until the state proves to the satisfaction of the trier of fact each material element beyond a reasonable doubt.
  • When is circumstantial evidence enough to convict someone of a crime?
  • Here, it looks like the evidence points to beyond a reasonable doubt that he was drunk
  • Standard of review for appeals court: Must uphold a conviction unless no rational finder of fact could reach the conclusion that it did. Or, it must reject the appeal if a rational trier of fact could not reach what it did.
  • Awfully hard to get a ruling over-turned. Must show evidence is insufficient.

What can you punish for?

  • Note 2 on 32

Crime – Punishment Hardship

Intent to Condemn

On person represented to be an offender

Burden on the state.

Why punish? (31)

  • Retributive: Because they deserve it.
  • What does it mean to say that a person deserves to be punish?
  • Utilitarian: Useful purposes
  • Instrumentalist: means to achieve some good.
  • Hybrid: Comfortable theory to embrace
  • Hybrids:
  • Restorative Justice: Healing, Restoring.
  • Mixed Theory: Utilitarian Column
  • Mixed hybrid – Negative Retribution
  • The fact that some greater good is necessary, but not sufficient
  • Need a limitation on the who and for what?
  • What do you take to be the reason we have punishment? (Note 1: 31)
  • Two Questions:
  • What is the general justifying aim of the criminal justice system?
  • Why do we enact laws that define specified conduct as criminal and impose punishment for violation of those laws.
  • To whom may punishment be applied and in what manner or amount?

Purpose: Why Punish?

Utilitarian / Retributivist
  • Increase the amount of good
  • We violate someone’s rights, but we are serving a greater good
  • Pure Form: Punish however much it takes to maximize the good. Look at the costs and the benefits: B>C
  • Benefits (34-5):
  • Reduced Crime
  • General Deterrence using person as an example
  • Individual/Specific Deterrence: You committed a crime, punish you, you now know that we mean it.
/
  • Simply because they did something wrong
  • To do justice
  • Pure Form: Those who deserve it, the guilty.
  • Just to the extent that they deserve it and no more

Scenario: Homeless Black Man taken in (37)

  • Arguments can be made by utilitarian on both accounts: Refrain from reinforcing racism v. Stopping violence.
  • Does the violation of rights somehow justify the good?
  • How much can you punish someone for a greater good?

More on Punishment:

  • Look at mental states in terms of culpability: Culpability Retributivism
  • How about the man who committed a crime a long time ago? See Note 3: 47
  • Often here about restoring the balance because a crime offsets the equilibrium of the world.
  • Often here of Morris and Hampton
  • Morris: When someone commits a crime, you’re taking a free-ride because other people are restraining themselves. Everyone benefits from this kind of restraint, but the criminal does not.
  • Hampton: Crime is a system of communication. Criminal saying I am better than you. Punishment takes that message back.
  • How about retributivism as the floor and utilitarianism as the ceiling?
  • Garvey Conception (56): Punishment is utilitarian within retribution’s limits.

Case: The Queen v. Dudley and Stevens (48)

  • Two sailors kill boy who was sick while stranded on a boat.
  • Issue: Whether English law recognized a defense of necessity when the crime was murder.
  • Homicide may not be excused when the person killed is an innocent and unoffending victim.
  • Could the findings of fact for the jury find necessity?
  • Charged with Malice Murder – malice = did the D’s intend to kill?
  • Suppose they weren’t justified, should they nonetheless be excused for what they did?
  • As in not blameworthy
  • If they’re not excused, should they be punished?
  • Here is the utilitarian/retributivist tension.
  • If punished, how much?
  • Good to mention at the time if guilty of malice and murder you’re hung.
  • Did they realize that they were doing something wrong? (For insanity cases)

Case: People v Superior Court (Du) (50)

  • D is 51, Korean, operating a store in a dangerous part of L.A.
  • Threats, shoplifting, harm.Racially charged incident
  • Crimes she can be charged with:Murder – Intent to kill
  • Action on part of D, pulling of trigger, action done so with mental state of killing girl.
  • Voluntary Manslaughter: Heat of Passion OR Imperfect Self-Defense
  • Partial Defenses
  • Don’t preclude liability. Take what would otherwise be murder and make it a lesser crime
  • D acted with intention to kill BUT
  • In the heat of passion, victim did something to defendant and lost self-control and killed
  • In Imperfect Self-Defense – if you honestly and reasonably believe you are facing an imminent fear of death. Reasonable person would not have believed, but we believe she did.
  • Self-Defense: We believe her and a reasonable person would have believed that even if we know after the fact victim was not going to kill
  • No Intent: We believe that was not the purpose.
  • No Act: Reflex. No act of will.
  • Why only probation? We have a presumption against probation for firearm use…so…

Case: United States v. Gementera (59)

  • Shaming penalties (not prevalent in Federal Courts.
  • Guy steals checks from mailboxes. Also has committed other crimes which are factored into the courts punishments.
  • Judge in the case imposes a short prison term, two months, and in addition, as a part of supervised release, a shaming penalty, with a sandwich board.
  • District court also added observation of postal workers, letters of apology to victims, and deliver lectures to local schools.
  • Legal question – whether or not the sandwich board condition is consistent with the statute, type of supervised condition a district judge can impose.
  • 1. When the DJ imposed decision, what was the purpose and was it legit?
  • 2. Assuming he did have a legit goal when he imposed the sentence, is the standing in front of the post office likely to achieve that goal? Was the sanction involved reasonably related?
  • Majority opinion says yes on both accounts.
  • Dissent: no on at least first question. Goal was to humiliate the guy. Humiliation is invalid.
  • Garvey’s question – do these types of penalties make sense? Should the judge be given this kind of humiliation?
  • Often judge gives D a choice: Jail or Package with shaming punishment
  • Is there the same deterrence function?
  • Shame is a statement about the person. Can it be destructive?
  • How do we bring the defender back into the fold?

II. ACTUS REUS

A. Voluntary Act

  • Actus Reus: the physical or external part of the crime
  • Objective parts of the crime.
  • Look at it in terms of elements: Results, conduct, attendant circumstance.
  • Mens Rea: Mental or internal ingredient.
  • Intend to do something wrong
  • Mental State
  • NOTE: No universal way of looking at these things.

Case: Martin v. State (127)

  • After being arrested in home, drunk dragged onto highway where he manifested drunk condition
  • A Voluntary act is necessary for there to be a crime.
  • Criminal liability requires a voluntary act or omission.

Actus Reus:

Causation

Conduct/ActionsResult

  • Attendant circumstances: things that must be present for the action.
  • Result Crimes: For conviction, must hit at the result
  • Conduct Crimes: Doing of certain actions often has attendant circumstances.
  • Break up statute:
  • Conduct: Drunk guy makes appearance.
  • While appearing, must be drunk, appear in a public place, and at that place, there are one or more persons.
  • Manifesting of a drunken condition: he is doing something. That conduct manifests a drunken condition.
  • What makes an act voluntary?
  • An exercise of free will
  • So two pieces of an action: bodily movement + will movement
  • Can have a no-willing/non-willing
  • Forming an intention to do something might be a mental act.
  • The intent of a crime, but coupled with a small action meant to push towards crime, then it’s a crime.
  • Why not make the formation of an intention a crime?
  • Action is evidence of an intention.
  • So cannot attack willing on its own.

Willing / Non-Willing/No Willing
Bodily Movement / Act / Reflexes
Convulsions, Seizures
(Sleepwalking)
(Hypnosis)
(Intoxication)
(Think of the prior incidents that lead you to situation)
No Bodily Movement / Mental Acts
Usually not subject to criminal liability.
(Omissions?) / Status
State of being
Possession (possession of the desire).
Like an addict

Model Penal Code: Article 2 – General Principles of Liability (980)

  • Can you think of sleepwalking/intoxication/hypnosis as states in which a person’s access to inhibitory desires are blocked?
  • So the desire was already there?
  • Partial displacements of the person: things being blocked or things being pushed on them (hypnosis).
  • How about semi-permanent or permanent issues?
  • Brain Tumor. But for the brain tumor, they would not have committed the crime.
  • Or what about the replacement of the self?
  • Semi-permanent – brainwashing.
  • How does the insanity defense enter into it?
  • But the fit is not perfect – insanity says you don’t know it’s a crime? Or an irresistible desire to commit the crime? The claim is not being made that you can’t not commit the crime, it’s that you’re not yourself.
  • Results: Brain tumor case – no liability. Assault case of some sort.
  • Split personality – some cases

Model Penal Code: 1.13

(2) “act” or “action” means bodily movement whether voluntary or involuntary

(3) “voluntary” has the meaning specified in Section 2.01.

Note Case: Decina (133)

  • D suffers from epilepsy
  • Gets into car and starts to drive. He has a seizure while driving and he hits several schoolchildren.
  • Claim on appeal is that during the relevant period of time, he did not act.
  • He was on notice not to do something – that’s an action
  • Open up the time frame and find a voluntary act.
  • How to distinguish car case from drunk house case:
  • Mens rea distinction
  • Mental state in Decina is recklessness
  • The getting into the car while driving is the issue.
  • Was he aware he was creating a risk of causing death?
  • Not as clear in Martin.
  • His appearance in public not as the conduct element but as the result
  • Was he aware of any risks that he would appear in public?
  • Nothing in case suggests he was.
  • Causation
  • Even if you say Martin was aware as he was drinking, he wasn’t aware of how his appearance was going to happen.
  • Decina is running a risk of deaths and it’s foreseeable
  • Statute language
  • Decina: Crime is defined in terms of doing something, anything that results in death where you have a reckless state of mind
  • Martin: statute talks about appearing.
  • Have to be creative to show that drinking is the same thing as appearing.

Case: State v. Utter (129)

  • Conditioned response
  • Guy stabs son and contends on defense a conditioned response. Had been drinking at the time.
  • Assumes 2 Claims at Trial:
  • (1) Because I have been trained in military, whenever someone came in behind me, it resulted in stabbing son – REFLEX CLAIM (never “acted”)
  • (2) I didn’t act because at time I was intoxicated – so state of unconsciousness so I didn’t really act.
  • An act within the definition of homicide is a willed movement
  • Charged with murder, convicted with manslaughter
  • Trial court said not to include evidence and also refused to instruct the jury on that defense of reflex. Why?
  • Said criminal insanity always rejected.
  • Murder: An action done with the intention to cause death (For our purposes).
  • Manslaughter: Negligence or engaging in action that causes death and while the D’s actions create a risk of causing death and it materializes, if the D was aware of creating that risk, the D was reckless with respect to the death. If unaware, the D is negligent concerning the death.
  • Utter arguing an evidentiary issue is at hand. Doesn’t know what happened in this apt.
  • Utter also says that the court erred in not instructing the jury concerning the idea that he didn’t act. I’m not guilty of the crime of murder or manslaughter because both require the state of action and I didn’t act.
  • Why does the D claim he didn’t act. In what way didn’t he act?
  • Is the opinion suggesting he gave two reasons why he didn’t act?
  • Reflex v. Action
  • Other claim: I didn’t act because I was intoxicated. Unconscious
  • 131: Irresistible Impulse
  • Similar to no act defense: Couldn’t stop himself.
  • Irresistible impulse test of insanity can be understood as the defendant has a desire to do something that if he or she does it would constitute a crime, such that it causes the person’s body to move without any intervening volition.
  • Volition: form of intention, separate from desire.
  • We say a bodily movement is not an act if it is not caused by volition
  • Appeals court says trial court was wrong. Not an insanity claim.
  • Because the trial court was wrong, the result should have been reversed?
  • Why do they uphold the conviction?
  • States it did not meet the burden of production. (Controversial).
  • Showed conviction, but failed to show triggering stimulus: Cannot remember what happened in the room.
  • Intoxication Claim:
  • He’s saying he didn’t act because the time he acted he was intoxicated.
  • 132: Proof of the crime failed
  • Forfeiture Rule/Imputation Rule: Let’s assume that the person was unconscious, the way that the law generally deals with this is to deny the defendant the “no act defense” based on the prior act of becoming intoxicated.
  • The law imputes consciousness to the defendant because you got voluntarily intoxicated, we will impute consciousness to you and we will impute mental states to you nonetheless.
  • Consciousness + Mental State (usually recklessness)
  • Person Charged with Murder: Intent to Kill
  • But can use intoxication to negate intent to kill
  • But NOT to negate recklessness. Shift to manslaughter.
  • Also Note 5 (133): Voluntary Act v. Mens Rea
  • Distinction between failure to act and mental state.
  • No culpable mental state – acted without mens rea.
  • Think of guy on shooting range who fires bullet. Girl walks out and gets hit. Pulling trigger was voluntary, but act lacked blameworthy state of mind (mens rea).
  • Example: Suppose I point a gun at you and say if you don’t physically assault someone, I am going to kill you. You then assault so and so.
  • You do have a culpable mental state.
  • Can you say you did not voluntarily hit so and so?You acted under duress.
  • Yes, you voluntarily moved your arm. I acted with the required mental state…
  • How you talk of voluntary – changes meaning.

B. Omissions (Negative Acts)

  • Omission Liability
  • When dealing with result: Typical Story – action causes result.
  • Actor at the time of the action possessing required mental states
  • For involuntary manslaughter: mental state = recklessness or negligence.

Case: People v. Beardsley (134)

  • D spending night with woman who was not his wife and fails to get her treatment before a morphine overdose that kills her.
  • Court ultimately concludes (reversal) not guilty of manslaughter.
  • Do you agree?Did he want her to die?Did he have a duty?
  • Did he discharge his duty?
  • State cannot show act with but for/proximate cause, so has to go to omission.
  • While it is the moral duty of every person to extend to others assistance when in danger, a person who fails to act to save the life of someone to whom he does not stand in the legal relation of protector is not chargeable with manslaughter.
  • Duty + Failure to Discharge Duty go to result.
  • Note 2 (137): Duties (last one criminal liability, others breach of legal duty)
  • (1) Where statute imposes a duty
  • (2) Where one stands in certain relation to another
  • (3) Where one has assumed a contractual duty to care for another
  • (4) Where one has voluntarily assumed the care of another and so secluded the helpless person as to prevent others from rendering aid.
  • (5) If you created the risk of harm to another. May be held criminally responsible for the resulting harm.
  • Here you could argue the 4th one – brought her to basement. Did he have a further duty?
  • Why did the state single this guy out?

KEY FOR EXAM: