Chapter 3 Summary

Chapter 3 examines the criminal law and reviews the establishment of criminal responsibility and criminal defense.

The Development of Law

• The criminal law as a form of social control occupies one end of a continuum:
   folkways → mores → norms → laws.
• The criminal justice system is governed by the criminal law, which developed in a sporadic and uneven fashion.
• The four sources of law are common law, constitutions, statutes, and administrative rules.

Common Law

• The early North American colonies adopted the principles of English common law, which called for cases to be decided on precedent. Precedent helped to develop consistency in the law.
• Four issues guide precedent: predictability, reliability, efficiency, and equality.
• Instead of being expressly specified by a constitution or a legislature, the common law is based on judicial decisions.
• Common law is sometimes called case law, judiciary law, judge-made law, customary law, or unwritten law.

Sources and Types of Law

• The criminal law represents the state against individuals.
• The first 10 amendments, the Bill of Rights, are an especially important cornerstone of the criminal law.
• Substantive laws proscribing murder, rape, robbery, and the like originate from statutes provided by Congress and state legislatures. Procedural law specifies how the criminal justice system is allowed to deal with those who break the law.
• Several agencies that govern health, customs, the environment, and parole promulgate administrative rules that are enforceable by the criminal law.
• Civil law is concerned with disputes between individuals. It deals with contracts, personal property, maritime law, and commercial law.

Classifications of Crime

• Crime can be classified into three categories: felonies, misdemeanors, and inchoate offenses.
• Felonies, the most serious types of crime, include murder, rape, assault, larceny, arson, and other offenses at the state and federal level.
• Misdemeanors are less serious than felonies and are subject to less severe penalties. Usually, the maximum incarceration for a misdemeanor is up to one year in jail.
• A crime could be categorized as either a misdemeanor or a felony, depending on the circumstances.
• Inchoate offenses are crimes that do not have to be completed for the offender to be arrested, charged, and punished. The three inchoate offenses are attempt, conspiracy, and solicitation.

Criminal Defense

• Five elements, called the corpus delicti (meaning “body of the crime”), must be present for an act to be labeled a crime: the criminal act (actus reus); criminal intent (mens rea); the relationship between actus reus and mens rea (concurrence). Two more elements must be present in some offenses: attendant circumstances and the result.
• Strict liability offenses are the primary exception to the requirement of the presence of both mens rea and actus reus. Strict liability offenses usually are crimes that concern the public’s welfare.
• Six arguments can be used in the defense against a criminal indictment: my client did not do it; my client did it, but is not responsible because he or she is insane; my client did it but has a good excuse; my client did it but has a good reason; my client did it but should be acquitted because the police or the prosecutor cheated; my client did it but was influenced by outside forces.