Fall 2014 Criminal Law Outline – Stinneford
Key:
Common Law
MPC
Understanding Criminal Law
Powerpoints
Introduction and Principles of Punishment
Theories of Punishment
A. Utilitarian
a. Justification lies in the useful purposes that punishment serves
b. Forward looking – justification found in supposed benefits that will accrue from its imposition
i. Only advocate punishment that they believe will provide an overall social benefit
c. Jeremy Bentham – punishment admitted in as long as it promises to exclude some greater evil
i. Augment happiness of community and exclude anything that subtracts from that happiness
ii. Punishment justified only if it accomplishes enough good consequences to outweigh harm
iii. Purpose of laws is to maximize the net happiness of society
1. Laws should exclude all painful or unpleasant events
d. Kent Greenawalt – likely consequences determine the morality of action
i. General deterrence – knowing punishment follows crime deters people from committing crimes
1. D is punished in order to convince the general community to forego criminal conduct in the future
ii. Individual (specific) deterrence – imposition of punishment creates fear that if he repeats act he will be punished again
1. D’s punishment is meant to deter future misconduct by D
2. Incapacitation – D’s imprisonment keeps him from committing crimes in the outside society during this period of segregation
3. Intimidation – D’s punishment reminds him that if he returns to a life of crime, he will experience more pain
iii. Incapacitation/risk management – imprisonment puts convicted criminals out of general circulation
iv. Reform (rehabilitation) – punishment may help to reform the criminal so his wish to commit crimes is lessened, and so he can perhaps be a happier, more useful person
1. Ex: psychiatric care, therapy for drug addiction, academic/vocational training
e. Justification of a practice depends only on its consequences
i. Pain inflicted by punishment is justifiable only if it is expected to result in a reduction in the pain of crime that would otherwise occur
f. Criticism: could justify the punishment of an innocent person
B. Retributive
a. Justification lies in the fact that people deserve punishment
b. Backward looking – justification found in prior wrongdoing
i. Justified punishment solely on voluntary commission of a crime
c. Michael S. Moore – moral desert of offender is sufficient and necessary reason to punish
i. Moral culpability of offender gives society a duty to punish
ii. Wrongdoer must be punished for his culpable wrongdoing even if it does not deter any future crime
d. Immanuel Kant – right of sovereign to inflict pain upon subject to account for crime
i. Punishment not means for promoting good, but only because individual has committed a crime
ii. “even if a civil society resolved to dissolve itself the last murderer lying in the prison ought to be executed”
e. James Fitzjames Stephen – morally right to hate criminals and punishment expresses this hate
i. Assaultive retribution/public vengeance/societal retaliation
ii. Because criminal harms society, society can hurt him back
f. Herbert Morris – we have a right to punishment that derives from fundamental right to be treated as a person (a natural, inalienable, and absolute right)
i. Justice (punishment) restores the equilibrium of benefits and burdens by taking from the individual what he owes (exacting the debt)
ii. Punishment is means of securing a moral balance in the society
1. When person fails to exercise self-restraint he destroys the balance
2. Criminals owe a debt to society (punishment is payment of that debt)
g. Jeffrie G. Murphy & Jean Hampton – defeat of the wrongdoer at the hands of the victim that symbolizes the correct relative value of wrongdoer and victim
i. Punishment counters the appearance of the wrongdoer’s superiority and thus affirms the victim’s real value
ii. Crime victim respects himself – should be treated with dignity
iii. Victim vindication – reaffirms victim’s worth as a human being in the face of the criminal’s challenge (defeat of the wrongdoer)
h. Punishment deserved when wrongdoer freely chooses to violate society’s rules
i. Criticism – intentional infliction of pain through punishment is senseless and even cruel if it does no good
Penal Theories in Action
A. Who should be punished?
a. The Queen v. Dudley and Stephens – when stranded on ship in ocean, they kill young boy for food; if men had not fed on boy they would not have survived; the boy, much weaker, was likely to have died before them; was this murder? Should they be punished?; get punished because no valid defenses
i. Utilitarian – don’t punish because they killed 1 to save 3 (societal benefit); not likely to kill again – they acted out of need not evil
ii. Retributivism – you did what you shouldn’t have done so punishment is necessary
B. How much (and what) punishment should be imposed?
a. People v. Superior Court (Du) – Du shoots Latasha in the back of the head believing she was shoplifter and after Latasha hit her; gun had been altered to fire easily; convicted of voluntary manslaughter after rejecting defenses of unintentional killing and self-D
i. Probation officer found defendant unlikely to commit another crime if allowed to remain free; would not actively seek to harm another
ii. Du’ sentence: ten years in prison; suspended and put on probation
iii. Objectives of sentencing: to protect society (u); punish the defendant for committing a crime (r); encourage t
iii. MPC does NOT recognize lenity principle
E. The Requirement of Previously Defined Conduct
a. Commonwealth v. Mochan – man calls house making indecent sexual remarks; CL is sufficiently broad to punish as a misdemeanor, although there may be no exact precedent; he is guilty for committing act that injures public morality
i. CL permits prosecution of “any act which directly injures or tends to injure the public to such an extent as to require the state to interfere and punish the wrongdoer, as in the case of acts which injuriously affect public morality, or obstruct or pervert public justice, or administration of gov’t
b. Keeler v. Superior Court – deciding whether an unborn but viable fetus is a “human being”
i. CL – murder – unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought
ii. Determine legislative intent in formation of statute (in this case the California statute defining murder); to construe statute such that it differs from this original intent would exceed judicial power
1. Used CL to see legislative intent to define critical term of “human being”
2. CL – fetus is not a human being
3. When a statute contains a CL term, the presumption is that such a term retains its CL meaning absent a statutory definition to the contrary
iii. The power to define crimes and fix penalties is vested exclusively in the legislative branch
1. Courts may NOT go so far as to create an offense by enlarging a statute, by inserting or deleting words, or by giving the terms used false or unusual meanings (can’t be made to reach beyond plain intent)
iv. Due process
1. Fair warning/fair notice – terms of a penal statute creating a new offense must be sufficiently explicit to inform those who are subject to it what conduct on their part will render them liable to its penalties
a. Requirement of fair notice that conduct constitutes an offense
2. Constitutional prohibition against ex post facto laws
a. An unforeseeable judicial enlargement of a criminal statute, applied retroactively, operates precisely like an ex post factor law (State Supreme Court barred by Due Process Clause from doing this)
b. Can’t change the meaning of the statute and then punish someone who committed the crime which was innocent when the act was committed
F. The Values of Statutory Clarity
