Pages: 31

Chapter 1 discusses why criminal codes came about and focuses its attention on the moral, religious, spiritual, and human foundations and influences that led up to our present system. Tracking all the way back to the Romans and Greeks, the chapter provides the type of historical perspective often missing in criminal law texts and affords the reader with a critical, histrionic perspective. Criminal law has a chronological story wrapped up in religious and moral traditions, politics, and social forces that shape these codes and statutes. Special attention is given to classical and medieval conceptions in the law of crimes and how those conceptual basics traveled all the way to the founding this Republic. In sum, Chapter 1 blends the worlds of history, philosophy, ethics, and oral tradition with modern statutory frameworks. As such, the chapter looks at great thinkers who played central roles in the shaping of criminal laws, such as Cicero, Aquinas, Plato, Hobbes, Bentham, and Locke. In the final analysis the reader will appreciate the complicated origins of criminal law and discern the diverse forces at work in the shaping of the modern American criminal law system.

Pages: 59

Chapter 2 is primarily definitional in design and introduces the reader to the myriad of ways crime is described in the modern criminal justice model. Crimes are defined from varied perspectives including the issue of moral and ethical prohibition, custom and habit, mores and cultural expectation, and as judgment concerning the propriety of conduct—namely whether it is deviant or other form of aberration. Next, the reader will be introduced to the formalistic definitions commonly witnessed in criminal codes, from the felony and misdemeanor to summary offenses and minor infractions. The chapter evaluates a host of state-by-state criminal codifications as well as corresponding case law that evaluates its legitimacy and encompasses the change in definitions and criminal parameters that have occurred over the last decade. Also included is a full examination of how crime definitions are tied to potential punishments that can be inflicted for the proscribed conduct. Finally, the chapter considers how criminal participants are categorized and how their roles are designated in the form of principals, accessories, as well as new coverage on corporate and vicarious liability.

Pages: 54

Chapter 3’s subject matter includes actus reus, the act committed or omitted, and mens rea, the mind and the intent of the actor-the two seminal elements necessary for criminal culpability. Both components form criminal proof in prosecution. Aside from intentional acts, the criminal law excuses mistakes and certain forms of ignorance and fully appreciates the dynamics of coercion and duress, mental capability and infancy, and other factors that affect the voluntariness of human activity. On the mental side, the law distinguishes the severity and grades of criminal offense by the level and clarity of mental thought. Lower levels of intentionality are generally lower levels of criminality and culpability. When external and extenuating influences drive choice, the criminal actor operates from general intent, which usually represents a lower level or degree of criminal culpability. At the end of the criminal intent spectrum are those criminal actors who act carelessly or with gross negligence, those who could or should have known that injury would result from their conduct and those whose conduct. Finally, the chapter scrutinizes strict liability offenses where for all intents and purposes proving intent becomes moot.

Pages: 68

Chapter 4 commences the journey into particular criminal offenses and more specifically categorized offenses against the body that result in the death of another. Lumped under the term “homicide,” the most heinous of crimes, are those offenses that involve taking the life of another either with planned intentionality, as in murder in the first degree, with rage or passion or other mitigation, as in manslaughter, or by gross negligence or in violation of a strict liability statute, such as criminally negligent homicide—a common offense in DUI murder circumstances. Principles involving provocation, mitigation, and standard defense strategy are fully covered. Special attention is given to the complicated lineage of the felony murder rule (FMR) that holds accountable the full range of criminal participants in a case of multiple players and often inflicts harsh and brutal results on those not intending to kill another. The ramifications for any criminal participation are quite severe under the FMR doctrine. Other homicide forms that produce controversial reactions or are currently pressed in the decriminalized category are also assessed and include suicide, abortion, and infanticide.

Pages: 59

Bodily injury offenses are further scrutinized in Chapter 5, where the chief emphasis is on non-terminal, yet frightfully dangerous, criminal conduct. To be sure, all these forms of criminal agency can evolve into potential life-and-death situations and the law delivers serious consequences for these infractions. Robbery, the property taking with violent means and physical assault, starts the treatment. Kidnapping, the multifaceted and multi-intentional crime, receives extensive coverage with particular attention given the motive, rationale and intent of kidnapping and the underlying or corresponding felony. The various forms of assault, from aggravated to simple, continue the chapter’s direction. At its end, the chapter analyzes the growing plague of those who employ terror rather than actual physical contact to achieve criminal ends, as well as the tragedy of physical injury in the family setting.

Pages: 78

Chapter 6’s distressing coverage involves the full range of sexual offenses against a host of victims. While most people condemn the unacceptability of sexual crimes the current age continues to feel the pressures to decriminalize sexual crime with a corresponding push to eliminate any notions of deviance or sexual perversion. For example, calls for child consent ages to be lowered, and bizarre pleas for elimination of the term pedophilia with “Minor Attracted Person” and at the same time, the maddening exhortation to eliminated polygamy and bigamy restrictions, one can only recoil against this push to decriminalize. Rape and its modern progeny of criminal offenses take center stage in this comprehensive chapter. Aside from the common law perspective, the reader will be introduced to the dynamic reform efforts presently afoot in the criminal justice system. Topics involving gender neutrality, elimination of earnest resistance, expansion of the types of penetration and sexual activity, and sexual history and character evidence all receive significant coverage. Other areas of concern include the escalating plague of incest, the legitimization and argumentation about sexual activity with children, and the criminalization of HIV transmission.

Pages: 62

Moving away from bodily offenses, Chapter 7 reviews the standard property offenses in every criminal code, from larceny/theft to bribery and forgery. The chapter expends enormous time highlighting the evolution of larceny in terms of its coverage of property types and scope. Although common law larceny remains thoroughly intact, the offense has been revolutionized over the last five decades to encompass theft of once-unimagined interests including services, utilities, government benefits, and commercial and business documents. How these offenses are carried out in the world of internet and electronic commerce is fully evaluated. Reviewed too are the crimes of embezzlement, forgery, and bribery, both the public and the commercial variety as well as emerging fraud codifications that mirror and reflect our virtual world. In forgery, the reader is exposed to the types of instruments that can be subject to the statute and the impact technology has had on the fast-evolving list of forgeable instruments.

Pages: 43

Chapter 8 focuses on the habitation and the genre of offenses unique to its construction. If the home or domicile demands respect from the legal system, it is rooted in the traditional expectation of privacy and corresponding outrage one experiences when the home is violated. The domicile receives special treatment because of its intimate reality with the victim. This is why arson has long been held a brutal and unacceptable offense. Arson not only destroys property but too often human life. In burglary, the intruder’s breaking and entry undermines the tranquility that a resident has every right to expect. Whatever the felonious purpose of the burglary actor, it cannot be tolerated by a culture dedicated to the protection of its citizenry. While the general concept relative to burglary is “specified felony therein” as dictated under the common law, this principle has been greatly expanded upon statutorily. And the proof of the breaking and entering and the underlying felony both need proven. The complexity of dual intentionalities receives focused attention in the law of burglary. The offense of trespass receives significant attention because it is often a gateway to other criminal actions.

Pages: 79

Chapter 9 represents the delicate balance necessary for the protection of morals and community integrity as contrasted with an overly repressive control of private action and private vice. The law of crimes, when it comes to public morality, is not always easy to reconcile with basic freedoms of the American citizenry. Criminal codes have attempted to regulate conduct on many fronts and with varying degrees of resistance and tolerance. Extreme restrictions on conduct, such as complete Prohibition, did not fare well with the American populace. Prohibition, for example, speaks loudly about the impossibility of eradicating a particular form of vice and reasonable, rationale controls such as age and hours of sale, may keep the balance that moral propriety requires. Chapter 9 is all about finding a balance that involves the perennial problems of public morality. Prostitution, drug legalization, obscenity, and pornography, to name a few, are part of this legal and ethical thicket. A host of questions regarding these matters of law and public morality will lead to reasoned inquiry.

Pages: 26

Incomplete or “inchoate” offenses are assessed in Chapter 10. By inchoate, we mean that the offense, whatever it may be, never reaches full completion. Murder or arson, as examples, might not be completed for a variety of reasons, such as apprehension, failure, or mere bungling. The failure to complete the act should not afford a defense to a criminal actor who cannot successfully carry out his misdeed. Inchoate also implies incompleteness as to the usual criminal elements. By way of illustration, the law resists punishing those who fail in one element or the other. The act must be coupled with the intentionality, except in the case of conspiracy, which punishes the planning and preparation of criminality without concern for its completion. In this sense, conspiracy is totally inchoate, though some overt step need be taken toward the completion of the criminal act. The same thesis applies to criminal attempts where the actor makes a try at the crime but cannot follow through for whatever reason. Attempts cannot go unnoticed and the law makes inchoate provisions for subsequent prosecution.

Pages: 66

Chapter 11’s analysis dwells upon how defenses serve to undermine a fundamental element in a crime. In defenses, the criminal hopes to obliterate either the actus reus or mens rea component. In factual impossibility claims, the defendants cannot be charged with the killing of a dead person. So too is a case of self-defense whereby a party legitimately and proportionately defends himself or herself against harm. Here the act is not murder but defense of life and limb. In mens rea defenses, the strategy is to undercut the mental faculties of the defendant as much as feasible. Insanity defenses, whether ALI or M’Naghten, zero in on a defendant’s capacity to know the nature of his or her conduct, or to at least appreciate its wrongfulness. Newer applications as to sanity are also covered including the “guilty but mentally ill” conclusion. A defendant who believes that the victim consented to conduct is equally incapable of formulating the level of mental intent for many first-degree offenses. Other defense analyses consist of entrapment, duress, and coercion; and novel defenses such as battered spouse, PTSD, or repressed child memory syndrome are weighed and debated.