Criminal Law

Complicity, better known as accomplice liability, is the act of assisting or encouraging another to commit a crime. Often times this term is correlated with the act of aiding or abetting which can be interpreted easily. Although an accomplice did not directly act within the crime, their actions that positively affected the crime can lead to their conviction as an accomplice. This can be a person who stood by and watched a crime happen, a person who helped plan out the process of a crime, or even a person who ignorantly aided one another with a crime. In two different cases studied, Pace vs. State of Indiana and Settles vs U.S, the appellants on trial are fighting against their involvement in their separate crimes. For Pace, his involvement with a robbery taken place within his vehicle that he failed to stop rules him liable as an accomplice. With his driving during the robbery and assisting the criminals escape from the victim, a trial could be formed to convict him as an accomplice. In the Settles case, a man, Whitley, is on trial for being an accomplice to a kidnapping and sexual assault committed by Settles. Without knowledge if Whitley had any involvement in the planning process of the crime, the trial stands to convict Whitley for standing watch out and allowing a crime to occur. A testimony by the victim claiming that Whitley was seen running away from the scene of the crime with Settles also ads to the evidence being used to convict him as an accomplice.

The Supreme Court of the United States, also known as the highest judicial body in the country, leads the federal judicial system. The Supreme Court is made up of the Chief Justice and eight other Associate Justices. With presidential nomination, these judges are on the Court for life and have the most important cases to deal with in their jurisdiction. Our current makeup of the Supreme Court consists of Chief Justice, John G. Roberts, Jr., having

The first Supreme Court Justice took office in 1789. His name was John Jay and he accepted the offer to take the position when offered it by George Washington. Congress approved him later in the year and he stayed in office until 1795. There have been many more Chief Justices in the United States Supreme Court with a current number of seventeen and with more to come.

The differences between legal rules and other kinds of rules is that criminal law refers to the consequences associated with breaking them. As the substantive law meaning that it is the law of crimes, referring that Criminal law is the code conduct that all in the society need to follow the rule, and the prohibitions on murder, assault, and burglary. Meaning that if an individual violates or commits these crimes they are going to be treated as a criminal by punishing act from the state. Civil law is refers to procedural law to follow the rule of the state from someone that has committed a crime. Which it is divided into 5 categories, for example torts, property, contract, family, and juvenile law.

The five principles of a crime are the guilty act or actus reus, the guilty intent or mens rea, the relationship between guilty act and guilty intent, the attendant circumstances and the results. The guilty act or actus reus is the inception of a crime, “this criminal liability occurs only after a voluntary act that results in criminal harm” (Neubauer & Fradella, 2014). This protects Americans from being punished for bad thoughts. The guilty intent or mens rea establishes and distinguishes between the mental state required in committing a crime. This insures that Americans are not prosecuted for innocently causing harm to another. The relationship and union between the guilty act and the guilty intent further distinguishes an act from being

Civil LawThe branch of legislation dealing with the rights and duties of citizens. Criminal Law- Legislation dealing with crime and its punishment. The fact of the case seems as if it could be a criminal case or a civil case. The teenagers abused the elderly physically, and verbally. This should make them pay a fine to the family members. That would make it a civil suit. The teens where put in front of a jury and found guilty and sentenced to some jail time while others were giving other sentences for various charges and the negligence of the Good Samaritan Home employers and the abuse by the nursing aides. That makes it a criminal suit.

Criminal law is better known about in the U.S. than Civil Law because criminal activity is usually publicized at a result of it being news and a civil cases are of private matter.

Before settling at nine justices in 1869, the number of Supreme Court Justices changed six times. In its entire history, the Supreme Court has had only 16 Chief Justices, and over 100 Associate

Mens Rea: The act must be accompanied by a particular state of mind. Mens rea does not equate to intentionality. For example, your neighbor’s dog barks incessantly causing her to want to cause harm to the animal. One day, she shoots the dog with the intent to kill it thus eliminating the cause of her stress which was the incessant barking. The Model Penal Code drafters made it clear that different kinds of mens rea could be attached to different components of a crime (Sampsell-Jones, 2013, p. 1458). The drafters changed the word intent and replaced it with ‘purposefully’.

Actus Reus, Mens Rea, Causation and Punishment are all considered elements of a crime. Actus reus or also known as the “Guilty act“, is the external physical part of a crime. In other words actus rea “refers to intentional criminal conduct or criminal negligence“ (Powerpoint). It is not only about what a person does but also about what they do not do. It is committing a voluntary act which ultimately causes harm to others.

Actus reus is the action that causes the harm. Actus reus must be voluntary. It must also be active. For example thoughts cannot be proven and cannot, by themselves, do harm. They cannot be considered a crime until they are acted on. Finally, it must be wrong or illegal. For example, shooting guns is not a crime. Firing a gun at a target range or in military training does not constitute an actus reus. Shooting a gun in a shopping mall however, is an actus reus.

The concurrence principle requires a logical connection or nexus between mens rea and an act before the conduct is labeled criminal and the act must have been motivated by a guilty mind (Brody and Acker, 2010). So someone breaks into my house because they are homeless and hungry. They decide after getting cleaned up and getting something to eat, to take some personal items from my house. They have not committed burglary because they did not intentionally break into my house with the idea of stealing something. They only wanted something to eat and to get clean.

In this course we have taken several field trips in order to get an understanding of the places and operations we have learned of in our previous courses in this degree program. From the patrol officers making arrests, to the courthouses where judges give sentencing, to the prisons where guilty parties serve their sentence, the Law Enforcement and Justice System is a complex yet straightforward system. Meant to grant justice to the community and prevent further atrocities to justice and peace from occurring. But for whatever reason, if these duties are broken, then the gears of justice begin to turn, and in so, the many cogs and belts that run this machine to make it one of the most efficient machines there is. Here we are to discuss my thoughts of the trip I had taken with the class to the State of Rhode Island’s Adult Correctional Institution or ACI for short.

Chinook Middle School security guard who was a former cop was charged with misdemeanor assault following allegations that on February 1, 2011, he choked a 14-year-old student until his face turned blue. Greg F. Seth was a former Seattle police officer who worked for the district for 15 years. After Seth had filed a complaint that the boy pushed past him the boy was immediately arrested (Pulkkinen, 2011). However, two months elapsed before the district filed a formal police report. Seth was subsequently placed on administrative leave and then fired from his job. According to King County Sherriff's Detective Timothy Gillette, Seth, 64, and an administrator at the SeaTac middle school were interviewing the boy about a theft when the incident occurred. When Seth put his hands on the boy's shoulder as he was leaving the administrator's office, the boy shrugged it off. Seth then grabbed the boy from behind and wrapped an arm around his neck and nearly lifted him off the ground. The school administrator later told the investigators that the boy's face turned purple, then blue as he was held on chokehold by Seth. The charging documents read that the boy drooled uncontrollably. The incident was also witnessed by another school executive. Seth falsely made the school resource officer to believe that the boy had assaulted him hence his demand that the boy be arrested. No photographs were however taken of the boy's neck immediately after the incident. The boy was

Mens Rea also known as 'Guilty Mind’ is the mental element necessary for a particular crime. It is the state of mind, which a person has at the time when he or she is performing the act that constitutes the commission of a crime. Actus reus is the second element of criminal responsibility. Can be described as the element of the criminal conduct, because it takes place outside of a criminals mind. It may consist of conduct, result, state of affairs or omission.