General Principles Flashcards
(10 cards)
Acts and Omissions
Acts and Omissions
All crimes require a voluntary act (actus reus), a culpable intent (mens rea), concurrence between the mens rea and actus reus, and causation (both actual and proximate) of the harm. Actus reus is the requirement that a defendant commit an overt voluntary act. A person must voluntarily commit the crime charged in order to be guilty of the crime – mere “guilty thoughts” or criminal intent alone are insufficient to convict a person.
State of Mind
Required Mental State (Mens Rea)
Mens rea is the mental state a defendant must have possessed in order to have committed the crime. A guilty mind, or mens rea, is generally regarded as an essential requirement for the imposition of criminal liability. The MPC uses an element analysis applying a specific mens rea to each element of a crime, reducing statutory mens rea culpability to four mental states: purposefully, knowingly, recklessly, or negligently. Purposefully is when a defendant has a conscious objective to engage in conduct to cause a certain result. Knowing or willfully is when a defendant is aware that their condcut is of the nature required by the crime. Recklessly is when a defendant acts with a conscious disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk. Negligently requires that the defendant is aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk.
State of Mind
Strict Liability
Strict liability crimes require no mens rea, the defendant must have merely committed the crime.
SL crimes include statutory rape, selling alcohol to a minor, and littering.
State of Mind
Mistake of Fact or Law
For general intent crimes, only reasonable mistakes of fact may be used as a defense. For specific intent crimes, all mistakes of fact are potential defenses, even unreasonable mistakes.
Responsibility
Mental Disorder
A person is lacking in criminal responsibility if he has a mental disease or defect, and as a result of that mental disease or defect, either he is substantially unable to appreciate the criminality (the wrongfulness) of his conduct, or he is substantially unable to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.
Responsibility
Intoxication
Intoxication is never by itself an excuse or justification for a crime, but it may be relevant to the issue of whether the defendant had the criminal intent that is required for conviction of this offense.
Causation
Causation
Causation requires a showing of both causation in fact – otherwise known as but-for causation – and proximate causation. A defendant’s conduct is a cause-in-fact of the prohibited result if the said result would not have occurred but for the defendant’s conduct. The core of proximate cause is foreseeability. Where a party by his wrongful conduct creates a condition of peril, his action can properly be found to be the proximate cause of a resulting injury, even though later events which combined to cause the injury may also be classified as negligent, so long as the later act is something which can reasonably be expected to follow in the natural sequence of events.
Justification and Excuse
Justification and Excuse
Justification provides that conduct that would otherwise constitute an offense is justified when it is necessary as an emergency measure to avoid an imminent public or private injury.
Jurisdiction
Jurisdiction
Criminal law jursidiction involves the power to create criminal law and the power to enforce the criminal law created. Thus, a state or nation which has no power to make certain conduct criminal has no power to enforce such conduct.
Defenses
Duress
Duress is when the defendant claims he committed the crime only because he was threatened by a third party and reasonably believed that the only way to avoid death or injury to himself or others was to commit the crime. In order to be a defense, there must be a threat of death or serious bodily harm.
