Criminal Law Class Notes
Back
to the other day…
What
should
What’s
the policy argument for reducing
Some
intentional killings, if they are the result of provocation, reduce murder to
manslaughter. But this isn’t a heat of
passion case.
How
would we characterize the emotion of
Adequate
provocation makes someone angry which makes them intentionally kill. Why does this reduce the level of guilt of an
actor in the eyes of the law? What
explains this? It’s a lot harder to
control yourself when you’re very angry.
When we’ve very angry, our self-control is undermined. But we don’t think one’s self-control is fully
undermined by anger. When you’re angry,
you could do a lot of things other than kill.
You could vent your anger in some other way.
Why
couldn’t you have fear in place of anger in “heat of passion”? Fear is an emotion that is like anger in that
it makes self-control more difficult. We
may be able to empathize more with fear than with anger.
The
Model Penal Code would actually agree with
As
to the hypo in Anderson: the driver who has a gun to his head and is told to
run red lights and hits and kills someone is said to have an “abandoned and
malignant heart”. If a gun is put to
your head, do you really have an “abandoned and malignant heart”? What defense would you claim? You could claim necessity, maybe. It’s the imminent death of two people versus
speeding, which is risky but doesn’t lead to the certain death of anybody.
In
the opinion, everyone treated duress as a justification.
The
Model Penal Code necessity defense allows the intentional killing of an
innocent person to save a greater number of lives. In a Model Penal Code jurisdiction, you could
have a complete defense.
But
would the person in the hypo act with “extreme indifference to the value of
human life”? Not really, you would be
manifesting care about the value of human life. Depraved heart is basically extreme recklessness. But what’s recklessness? You must be aware of a substantial and
unjustifiable risk. Isn’t the risk in
the hypo justifiable? If you use the
Hand formula, you’re making the right decision in speeding. Under no circumstances would you be found recklessness
or negligent. You accidentally killed
someone.
So
then the defendant is happy! You have a
failure of proof pseudo-defense. The
burden goes back on the prosecutor! It
should be easy for the defendant to be acquitted. The defendant didn’t have any mens rea!
This
case has lots of good stuff in it.
Dressler says both the majority and the dissent are wrong. Dressler says that the majority said that
duress is a justification, which he says is wrong. The dissent comes up with a hypothetical that’s
all wrong on its own according to Dressler.
Ted
Bundy
Imagine
that we’re defense attorneys questioning our own client. We’ve decided that we want to go with an
insanity defense.
He’s
saying something about “forces of nature”.
He’s saying something about God.
Insanity
Some
tests!
1. M’Naghten test
2. M’Naghten + “irresistible impulse” or
control test
3.
4. Model Penal
Code test
There
must be some kind of mental illness in order for the insanity defense to kick
in.
A
person can be mentally ill without being insane. But you can’t be insane without a mental
illness.
Was
Bundy mentally ill? Was Bundy evil?
For
the sake of discussion, assume Bundy is mentally ill. Which insanity test is the most favorable if
we’re the defense attorney?
Was
Bundy insane? How about under M’Naghten? You’re insane if you didn’t know the nature
and quality of your actions, or if you didn’t know right from wrong when
you did what you did. Keep in mind what “nature
and quality” means. For example, a
five-year-old doesn’t know what killing means exactly. They might not really understand death. They get the infancy defense. But maybe some adults are kind of “adult
infants”.
The
traditional hypo for the first prong of M’Naghten is that you’re insane
if you think you’re squeezing an orange when you’re really squeezing someone’s
neck.
Did
Bundy know right from wrong? Did he know
legal right from wrong or moral right from wrong?
Bundy
knew that what he was doing was a crime.
Bundy believes that he can’t be morally wrong. Does Bundy believe that he did nothing wrong,
or does he believe that society would consider him okay?
Dressler
makes a legalistic point: to the extent that a M’Naghten jurisdiction
uses the moral right from wrong test, the defendant’s belief about whether he
did right or wrong is not the standard.
The question for the psychiatrists and the jury is: Did Bundy know that society
thought what he did was morally wrong?
If the answer is yes, then Bundy is not insane under that prong of the
test.
If
you make the free will choice to act according to your own morality, you must
accept the consequences.