Criminal
Law Class Notes
Last
time, we started going over general and specific intent crimes.
Note
6, page 141
Receipt
of stolen property: is receipt conduct or a result? 95% of the time, it won’t matter. “Stolen property” is an attendant
circumstance. You must have the mens
rea of knowledge that the stuff is stolen in order to be found guilty. There are two mens rea terms here: “Intentionally”
and “knowledge”. A court will usually
take “intentionally” to be “general intent”.
However, if there is a specific intent in the definition, we still call
this a “specific intent crime”.
Common
law burglary, a crime you should memorize: the actus
Why
does this matter? We’ll see next week.
Model
Penal Code § 2.02
This
is about as important as it’s going to get, aside from the
utilitarian/retributivist stuff. This
section is at the center of everything.
The
Model Penal Code has had “differential” influence in this country. Some states have adopted the Model Penal Code
in full, while other states have only taken bits and pieces. Even when they have done so, courts have
interpreted penal codes to include § 2.02 even if the state didn’t choose to.
In
the common law and pre-Model Penal Code statutes, there were lots and lots of
terms for culpability. Confusement!
In
the Model Penal Code, we only have four terms, and they’re all well defined. The Model Penal Code also wipes out general
intent versus specific intent. If you’re
in a full Model Penal Code state, this distinction is gone.
Dressler
says that “P, K, R, N” is a continuum of culpability.
The
final exam is open book because, among other reasons, you need your case book
so you can consult the Model Penal Code.
Make notes in your copy of the Model Penal Code!
What’s
in § 2.05? It says you don’t need
culpability to be found guilty of “violations”.
What are violations? They are
offenses for which you can only be punished with a fine.
What
about the language about “material elements”?
Say
it’s a felony to do X, Y, and Z. Then
there must be a mens rea with respect to X, Y, and Z. It doesn’t matter which mens rea. There must be either P,
K, R, or N with respect to each material element of an offense.
This
provision effectively means that the Model Penal Code applies an elemental approach
rather than a culpability approach to mens rea. You must show a particular state of
mind, not just any bad or immoral state of mind.
Jacob,
Vanessa and Xavier
We’re
dealing with killing, which is a result crime.
We’re told that Jacob wants to kill Vanessa,
therefore, it must be the case that Vanessa was killed purposely according to
the Model Penal Code.
How
about Xavier? It must not be the case
that he was killed purposely, since he fervently hoped Xavier would not die. But was it done knowingly or recklessly?
Keep
in mind that a defendant does not have to testify and give any evidence about
his state of mind. How do we convince a
jury anything about someone’s state of mind?
The
law infers that people intend the “natural and probable consequences” of one’s
actions.
How
certain is practical certainty? The law
suggests that it’s so close to 100% that a miracle must happen for that result
not to occur.
Maybe
you can prove your client is of low intelligence, mentally ill, or on drugs or
alcohol, and thus your client may not have been aware that a result would
follow from his conduct.
Make
sure to distinguish between the voluntary act requirement and mens rea. The requirement for knowledge is that you were
aware, not should have been aware.
If
I can show that for some reason my client was not aware that a result was
practically certain, then my client did not act knowingly. Note that if we were using a culpability
analysis, my client may well be found guilty based on a general mens rea.
There
are time framing issues here that we’ll come back to
later. Dressler says we ought to look at
a person’s state of mind at the time of the killing act. He believes that the intent of doing
something before doesn’t matter if you don’t have it while you’re
committing the act.
Why
might we find that Xavier was killed recklessly? The difference between knowledge and
recklessness is the degree of certainty: “practical certainty” versus a “substantial
and unjustifiable risk”. The “substantial
and unjustifiable” language is very important and we’ll go over it more later.
Risk is the key difference and
the key word in the definition of recklessness.
Risk-taking involves a lesser degree of certainty. Everybody takes risks all the time, but not
all of them are “substantial and unjustifiable”. Some risks are good, some are bad. Some are big, some are small. But none are substantially certain.
What
was Jacob’s mens rea at common law?
Intent means purposely or knowingly.
Therefore, Jacob kills Vanessa intentionally, and arguably also kills
Xavier intentionally (if Xavier was killed knowingly by the Model Penal Code).
Roberta
and Sam
Roberta
throws salt over her shoulder and then burns down Sam’s house. She sincerely believes that throwing salt over
her shoulder will protect Sam. What
state of mind did she have when Sam was killed?
Was
Roberta aware of the risk? If so, she
was reckless, but if not, she was negligent.
Negligence
is the only one of the four states of mind that does not involve subjective
fault. You punish the person not for
what he was thinking, but for what he wasn’t thinking. In a sense, this is not literally mens rea. Negligence is very controversial in criminal
law.
Do
we have a time framing problem in this case?
Before she tossed the salt, she was aware of a risk. After she tossed the salt, she believed that
Sam was protected from death. At what
moment do we judge the state of mind?
Dressler thinks, again, you should look at the state of mind at the time
of the act. Under that theory, Roberta
would be negligent rather than reckless.
If
Roberta is unsure whether or not the salt would work, we’re clearly in the
realm of recklessness, or at least much closer to it. There might even be room to put us into
knowledge if the death of Sam is substantially certain.
Robbery
and Model Penal Code § 2.02
Is
Toby guilty of robbery if, while committing a theft, he negligently inflicts
serious bodily harm upon Ursula?
Nope,
because negligence is specifically excluded in § 2.02(3) as a state of mind
that makes one guilty if there isn’t a state of mind listed in the statute.
What’s
the point here? There’s a general rule
that tells you what to read into the statute.
This sort of saves space in the penal code. We’ve created a default mens rea in
the penal code that is above negligence.
If the legislature wants a person to be guilty if they negligently
commit an act, they must build that into the statute. The drafters of Model Penal Code are against
punishing for negligence, so they make the legislature do it explicitly.