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Crimes Against Persons
US Government
Mrs. Lacks
Four types of CAP
• taking a life
• unwanted sexual invasions
• bodily injury
• personal restraint
Battery
• Unwanted and unjustified offensive touching (pushing, punching,
shoving, kicking, etc)
• Requires contact with victim’s body
• Some injury required
• Minor injury = misdemeanor
• Serious injury = felonies
Assault
• Intentional scaring or menacing (yelling, use of bad language,
threatening)
• Specific intent to frighten another
• Words alone are generally insufficient, but with gestures its enough
• Awareness of victim is generally essential
• Conditional threats are generally insufficient
• Attempted battery assault
• Specific intent to commit a battery plus taking substantial steps toward
completion, but no completion
• Incomplete physical injury, victim awareness is irrelevant
Stalking
• Intentionally scaring another person by following, tormenting, or
harassing him or her
• Fill in gaps in law by criminalizing conduct which falls short of assault
and battery
• All states have enacted some sort of stalking law (since early 1990s)
• Statutes vary greatly
Stalking
• Actus Reus:
• Variety of actions, generally involving maintaining physical proximity or visual
proximity
• Some states require threats
• All states require conduct be repeated
• Some states provide list of very specific acts
• Mens Rea
• Offender must have specific intent to commit the actus reus
• Offender must also have mental attitude causing bad result but statutes vary as to
which mental attitude is needed.
• Subjective fault (half states)—offender himself knew behavior would cause result
• Objective fault (1/3 states)—reasonable person would know behavior would cause bad result.
Cyberstalking
• Using internet, e-mail, other electronic communications devices to
stalk another person through threatening behavior
Rape
• Originally, criminal law recognized only
• Common law rape: Intentional, forced, nonconsensual, heterosexual vaginal
penetration (by a non-spouse)
• Common law sodomy: Anal intercourse between two males
• Modern interpretation
• Aggravated rape: Rape by strangers or men with weapons who physically
injure victims
• Unarmed acquaintance rape: Nonconsensual sex between dates, lovers,
neighbors, co-workers, employers
Rape
• Actus reus – sexual penetration by force or threat of force
• No force if victim consented; historically victims have had to show they
absolutely did not consent
• Resistance rule has changed over time – from “utmost” (all power they had)
to “reasonable” to being dropped completely (resistance tends to need to be
present in acquaintance cases)
• Mens rea- intentional sexual penetration
Statutory Rape
• Having sex with minors
• Age of victim substitutes for force requirement
• Non-consent is not an element
• Consent is not a defense because minors cannot give consent (legally
incompetent to consent)
• Some states allow for reasonable mistake of age
Grades of Rape
• Most statutes distinguish between aggravated rape and simple
rape
• Aggravated rape involves additional circumstance
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Serious bodily injury to victim
Stranger commits rape
Rape occurs in connection with other crime
Rapist is armed
Rapist has accomplices
Victim is minor and rapist is several years older
Kidnapping
• Common law crime
• Originally involved taking king’s relatives (to another country) for
ransom
• Seizing
• Carrying away (asportation of) or
• Confining
• By force, threat of force, fraud or deception
• Another person
Kidnapping
• Actus Rea: seizing and carrying away
• Distance has become a non-issue
• Quality and character of the carrying away not the actual distance
• Mens Rea: intent to deprive the other person of his liberty
Kidnapping
• Grading Seriousness of Kidnapping
• Simple
• Aggravating
• For purpose of: sexual invasions, hostage taking, ransom, robbing, murdering,
blackmailing, terrorizing victim, achieving political claims
False Imprisonment
• Lesser form of kidnapping
• Deprive a person of personal liberty
• No asportation requirement
• Deprivation of liberty is brief
• Compelling a person to remain where he does not wish to remain
False Imprisonment
• Actus reus
• forcible detention—even if brief
• Restraint must interfere substantially with the victim’s liberty, but
in most states any interference is enough
• Physical force or threatened force accomplishes the detention
• Mens Rea:
• specific intent to confine and restrain another without his or her
consent
Crimes Against Persons: Murder
Homicide
• Homicide: when someone is killed
• criminal homicide
• noncriminal homicide (Justifiable homicide or Excusable
homicide)
• Common Law divided criminal homicide into
• Murder (Killing a person with malice aforethought)
• First degree, second degree, felony murder, corporate murder
• Manslaughter (Killing a person without malice aforethought)
• Voluntary or involuntary
Malice Aforethought
• Malice: specific intent, killing on purpose with ill will, hate, or spite
• Aforethought: acts planning in advance
First Degree Murder
• Premeditated, deliberate, intent to kill murder
• Felony murder
• Only crime for which death penalty can be imposed (capital
cases)
• Death penalty issues complicate murder law
• Supreme Court decisions have resulted in following
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Mandatory death sentences are banned
Unguided discretionary death penalty decisions are banned
Mitigating factors are required
Additional aggravating factors are allowed
First Degree Murder
• Actus Reus
• Voluntary act of killing
• many forms of killing
• Many statutes require heinous atrocious or cruel acts to accomplish the actus reus of
first degree murder
• Mens Rea
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Wilfull, deliberate, and premeditated murder (The “grand criterion of murder”
Something more than the intent to kill
Often disagreement what deliberate and premeditated mean
Wilfull = intent to kill
Premeditated = sufficient time to enable the mid to frame the design to kill
Deliberate = conscious of purpose and design
Second Degree Murder
• Implied malice
• Intent to inflict serious bodily injury
• Depraved heart murders (unintentional, but extremely reckless)
• Some states make this the “catch all” category
Felony Murder
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Unintentional deaths that occur during the commission of some felonies
States vary as to what felonies are included—some list the felonies
Variation regarding whether co-defendant’s death can be basis for felony murder
Third party exception; resisting victim exception
Some states say that felony murder applies to “inherently dangerous felonies.”
• Approach 1- Determine whether felony is inherently dangerous by looking at the crime in the
abstract
• Approach 2-determine whether the felony is inherently dangerous by looking at the facts
presented in the case. (case by case approach)
Corporate Murder
• Corporations commit murder through the acts of their agents
• Ford Pinto
• Autumn Hills Convalescent Center
• Concerns about corporate murder stem from concerns about
vicarious liability in general (imputing acts of one to another)
Manslaughter
• Voluntary Manslaughter
• Intentional killing
• Done in the sudden heat of passion
– Timing of whether this was still in heat of passion is determined by the facts of the case
• Without a cooling off period
– Objective test of cooling off time (would a reasonable person under the same circumstances had time to
cool off)
• Because of legally adequate provocation
– Provocation is both subjective (defendant himself was provoked) and objective (reasonable person
would be provoked)
– Types of provocation recognized
• Mutual combat, assault and battery, trespass and adultery
• Paramour rule: common law rule that held that a man who found his wife in the arms of her lover
was not guilty of murder but rather voluntary manslaughter (presumed that this would be
adequate provocation which would cause sudden heat of passion)
– Words cannot be provocation, but there may be statutes that allow words to suffice for provocation
– Last straw rule, smoldering resentment
Manslaughter
• Involuntary Manslaughter
• Criminal homicide constitutes manslaughter when
• It is committed recklessly; or under the influence of extreme mental or emotional
disturbance for which there is reasonable explanation or excuse
• Example: Hitting and killing a pedestrian crossing the street after you’ve had a couple of
drinks
• Actus reus –killing
• Mens rea –unintentional killing
Unlawful Act Manslaughter
• Death that occurs during the commission of an unlawful act
• Sometimes referred to as misdemeanor homicide