NCJ Number
105109
Date Published
1987
Length
1004 pages
Annotation
This textbook for beginning law students updates cases and comments on criminal law through 1986 regarding criminal procedure, legal concepts of criminality, sources of the criminal law, crime definitions, special defenses, and constitutional limitations on the legislative power to create and define criminal offenses.
Abstract
The book begins with an overview of criminal procedures which encompass procedure between arrest and trial, postconviction remedies, and appeals. The legal concepts of criminality and the sources of the criminal law are also discussed in the introductory section. The section on crime definitions focuses on homicide, sex offenses and related problems, misappropriation and related property offenses, and uncompleted criminal conduct and criminal combinations. The discussion of special defenses covers entrapment; ignorance of the law and mistake of law and fact; compulsion, infancy, intoxication, diminished responsibility, and other noncontrollable factors; and insanity at the time of the crime and competency to stand trial. The discussion considers 'syndrome' defenses, including the battered woman syndrome, posttraumatic stress disorder, and the premenstrual syndrome defense. Case law and commentary on the constitutional limitations pertaining to the legislative power to create and define criminal offenses focus on the right of privacy, the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, due process of law, and equal protection of the law. Appended relevant provisions of the U.S. Constitution and its amendments, table of cases, chapter notes, and subject index.