NCJ Number
188205
Date Published
1998
Length
1084 pages
Annotation
This volume presents and discusses approximately 1,000 criminal cases to aid law students in understanding general concepts of criminality, the law related to specific offenses, and special defenses to criminal prosecutions.
Abstract
The first section focuses on the criminal justice system and legal concepts of criminality. The first chapter provides an overview of criminal procedure and explains the processes that occur between arrest and trial, during the trial through the sentencing phase, and after the trial. The second chapter details the essential concepts of criminality, including the prohibited conduct, the perpetrator’s mental state, the causal connection, and the burden of proof. Additional chapters discuss the sources of the criminal law; problems in defining criminal conduct; constitutional limitations on defining criminal conduct, in terms of police power, due process, vagueness, overbreadth, the First Amendment, the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, and exclusion of evidence from criminal trials. The second section focuses on criminal law relating to specific offenses, including homicides, sex offenses, misappropriation and related property offenses, uncompleted criminal conduct, solicitation, conspiracy, and parties to a crime. The third section covers special defenses to criminal prosecutions and examines cases relating to entrapment, compulsion, intoxication, automatism, other non-controllable factors, insanity at the time of the prohibited act, and competency to stand trial. Footnotes, appended excerpts from the United States Constitution, and index